HOSTON Howard, Commonplace learning : Ramism and its German ramifications, 1543-1630, Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007, 333 p.

      Ramism was the most controversial pedagogical movement to sweep through the Protestant world in the latter sixteenth century. While its origins in France, its impact in colonial America, and its influence in England, Scotland, and Ireland have been studied in detail, its uniquely warm reception in central Europe - where the great majority of posthumous reprintings of Ramus's work appeared - has never been synoptically studied. This book, the first contextualized study of this rich tradition, therefore has wide-ranging implications for the intellectual, cultural, and social histories not only of the Holy Roman Empire but also of the entire Protestant world in the crucial decades immediately preceding the advent of the 'new philosophy' in the mid-seventeenth century.


Somaire

First-generation Ramism
1. Introduction: the earliest German Ramism
i. Ramism in Germany: a neglected tradition
ii. Ramism and Calvinism: an overworked explanation
iii. The spread of Ramism in north-western Germany: a fresh start
2. Foundations: Ramism in German context, 1543-1600
i. The rudiments of Ramism
ii. Ramism and humanism, c. 1580-1600
iii. Ramism in Hanseatic cities and imperial counties
Second-generation semi-Ramism
3. Institutionalisation: semi-Ramism in Reformed academies, 1580-1600
i. Adaptation: the advent of Philippo-Ramism
ii. Confessionalisation: Ramism and Calvinism revisited
iii. Expansion: Ramism and the encyclopaedia
4. Adaptation: Post-Ramist methods in Reformed universities, 1590-1613
i. Beyond Philippo-Ramism: Casmann, Timpler, Keckermann, and Alsted
ii. 'Methodical Peripateticism': Heidelberg and Keckermann's systema, 1590-1601
iii. Precursor to the Encyclopaedia: Danzig and Keckermann's Systema systematum, 1602-13
Third-generation post-Ramist eclecticism
5. Compilation: Alsted's Cursus philosophici encyclopaedia, 1609-20
i. Form: the Encyclopaedia as systema systematum
ii. Composition: the Encyclopaedia as bibliotheca universalis locorum communium
iii. Matter: the Encyclopaedia as bibliotheca philosophica
6. Culmination: Alsted's Encyclopaedia septem tomis distincta, 1620-30
i. Synthesis: the Encyclopaedia as systema harmonicum
ii. Expansion: from Cursus philosophici encyclopaedia (1620) to Encyclopedia omnium disciplinarum (1630)
iii. Dissolution: the Encyclopaedia as Farragines disciplinarum
7. Interim conclusions
i. Destruction and further ramification, 1622-70
ii. The common principles: means and ends of the German post-Ramist tradition