RAMUS, PETRUS or PIERRE DE LA RAMEE (I 1572), French humanist, was born at the village of Cuth in Picardy in 1515, a member of a noble but impoverished family; his father was a charcoal-burner. Having gained admission, in a menial capacity, to the college of Navarre, he worked with his hands by day and carried on his studies at night. The reaction against scholasticism was still in full tide, and Ramus outdid his predecessors in the impetuosity of his revolt. On the occasion of taking his degree he actually took as his thesis "Every thing that Aristotle taught is false." This tour de force was fol lowed up by the publication in 1543 of Aristotelicae Animadver siones and Dialecticae Partitiones, the former a criticism on the old logic and the latter a new textbook of the science. What are substantially fresh editions of the Partitiones appeared in 1547 as Institutiones Dialecticae, and in 1548 as Scholae Dialecticae; his Dialectique (1555), a French version of his system, is the earliest work on the subject in French. Meanwhile Ramus had opened courses of lectures, but was interdicted (1544) on the ground of undermining the foundations of philosophy and re ligion. The decree against him was presently cancelled, and in 1551 Henry II. made him professor of philosophy and rhetoric
at the College de France. But in 1561 he embraced Protestantism, and was compelled to flee from Paris, and in 1568 from France. But he returned before the massacre of St. Bartholomew (1572), of which he was one of the victims.
The logic of Ramus enjoyed a great celebrity for a time, and there existed a school of Ramists boasting numerous adherents in France, Germany and Holland. There is even a little treatise from the hand of Milton, published two years before his death, called Artis Logicae Plenior Institutio ad Petri Rami Methodum concinnata.
See Waddington-Kastus, De Petri Rami vita, scriptis, philosophia (1848), and Ramus, sa vie, ses icrits et ses opinions ( , in .