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Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason

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A review of Walter Ong's famous study, Ramus, method, and the Decay of Dialogue, may seem odd now more than fourty years after the book first appeared (1958, republished 1983). Back then it was more than positively received by great renaissance scholars like Wilbur S. Howell, R.R. Bolger, Neal W. Gilbert, John E. Murdoch and others. Murdoch wrote that "anyone with the slightest interest in the Renaissance should turn, and return, to this work". The book not only gives a rich introduction to Ramus the man and his work, but also relates Ramus' writings and the socalled "ramistic movement" which it effectuated to its wider historical and intellectual context, or rather contexts: the pedagogical traditions of the West, medieval scholasticism, the dialectic of Rudolph Agricola and so forth. Ongs discussion of ramism in the light of orality/literacy-themes connected to the use of printing technology, makes the book seem strikingly modern. Certainly, the book has been turned and returned to. However, Ong's study is perhaps still in need of recommendation. It is an eloquent book, but it is not easily read. It has been criticised by scholars on renaissance rhetoric (Monfasani, Fumaroli) and/or ramism (Bruyère, Meerhoff), sometimes justly so, sometimes on the basis of a misreading or a less than kind interpretation of what the author says. Brian Vickers in his excellent and influential In Defence of Rhetoric (1988) almost gives us the impression that the book has actually been outdistanced by its critics - which it certainly has not. Even if Ong's views on spesific points have been refined (for instance by Kees Meerhoff in his discussion of ramist teachings on rhetorical figures in Ramus, Du Bellay et les autres, 1986), his voluminous study also contains insights as well as information which will be found nowhere else. To refer it would require more than thousand words. I recommend every student of rhetoric, early modern philosophy and renaissance culture to get hold of the book, and read it. I recommend the publisher to republish it. It is still wanted.