« The Rise of Logical Skills and the 13th Century Origins of the Logical Man », in Logical Skills. Social-Historical Perspectives, ed. J. Brumberg-Chaumont and Cl. Rosental, Springer, 2021, p. 91-120.
Résumé
This paper is dedicated to the first universities and mendicant schools,
where thousands of students began to converge during the thirteenth century.
Logic played an unpreceded role in basic and higher education. A “Parisian logical
model” of education was shaped at the University of Paris, adopted by mendicant
Orders in their schools of logic (studia artium), diffused in all disciplines,
and progressively spread in Southern Europe. Medieval education became heavily
based upon logical, and even “logician” practices, with the “syllogization” of
exegetical, disputational, and evaluation practices.
The notion of logical skill conveniently captures this unique situation for the
discipline of logic, as well as the way medieval thinkers conceived of logic as a
universal, transdisciplinary method, a natural operation of the mind, a modality of
knowledge (modus sciendi), the very form of teaching and graduating, a “habitus,”
a technique (ars) and a science.
The divisions of Aristotelian logic, the “artificial logic,” were for the first time
naturalized and projected on the very structure of human mind, which was thereby
“logicalized” and ascribed a “natural logic.” A strong anthropological dimension
was bestowed on logic. The discipline of logic was deemed a necessary instrument
in the philosophical “perfection” and the Christian “reparation” of man as an intellectual
creature by a group of logically skilled, professional philosophers and theologians,
whereas men deprived of logical education were described as “logically
disabled,” and stuck into inferior forms of humanity.
The world of medieval intellectual elites displayed a variety of social uses of
logic, beyond academic circles, especially in the performance of pastoral duties.
The possible historical records of the social usefulness of logic are explored: for
students, the majority in medieval universities, who left university without a degree,
but with a solid logical education, for ordinary mendicant friars, dedicated to
preaching and confession, who frequented logical schools, and for members of the
parish clergy sent to the faculties of arts.