Influence
De inventione dialectica was very influential in creating a proper place for logic in rhetorical studies, and was of great significance in the education of early humanists. It is a highly original, critical, and systematic treatment of all ideas and concepts related to dialectics. "The significance of De inventione dialectica for the history of argumentation is that it assimilated the art of dialectic to that of rhetoric. Argumentation focused not on truth but on what might be said with reason. Accordingly, Agricola focused on the Topics rather than the Analytics of Aristotle and on Cicero, but also on the writings of historians, poets, and orators. Thus, for Agricola, dialectic was an open field; the art of finding 'whatever can be said with any degree of probability on any subject' (Hamilton, David. "From Dialectic to Didactic"). Agricola's De formando studio - his long letter on a private educational programme - was printed as a small booklet and thus influenced pedagogical insights of the early-sixteenth century.
Erasmus greatly admired Agricola, eulogizing him in "Adagia" and calling him "the first to bring a breath of better literature from Italy." Erasmus claimed him as a father/teacher figure and may have actually met him through his own schoolmaster Alexander Hegius (most probably one of Agricola's students) at Hegius's school in Deventer. This is a demonstration of Agricola's real legacy: his importance should not be measured so much by what he wrote, but rather by his personal influence over others, and his powerful stimulus - he was truly a great teacher and model humanist. In addition to Hegius, Agricola's students include Conrad Celtis (in Heidelberg). Nevertheless, Erasmus made it his personal mission to ensure that several of Agricola's major works were printed posthumously.
Agricola's 'De inventione dialectica' has a huge impact on the Deaf community. He held that a person who is born deaf can express himself by putting down his thoughts in writing. The book was not published until 1515. His statement that deaf people can be taught a language is one of the earliest positive statements about deafness on record (Gannon, 1981).
Read more about this topic: Rodolphus Agricola
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The higher the state of civilization, the more completely do the actions of one member of the social body influence all the rest, and the less possible is it for any one man to do a wrong thing without interfering, more or less, with the freedom of all his fellow-citizens.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“They tell us that women can bring better things to pass by indirect influence. Try to persuade any man that he will have more weight, more influence, if he gives up his vote, allies himself with no party and relies on influence to achieve his ends! By all means let us use to the utmost whatever influence we have, but in all justice do not ask us to be content with this.”
—Mrs. William C. Gannett, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 5, ch. 8, by Ida Husted Harper (1922)