Textbooks on logic of the early modern era—of any era—are forbidding to most scholars. If you are like me, your knowledge of the humanist art of logic is either secondhand, through histories of the subject, or occasional, through chance encounters where the art of logic abuts on your own field of study, say, the history of rhetoric, literary criticism, theology, jurisprudence, or natural history. To paraphrase Benedick, Some achieve logic, and some have logic thrust upon them.
In her translation and introduction to Philip Melanchthon’s Erotemata dialectices, which first appeared in 1547 and was among the most significant humanist works on logic, Jeanne Fahnestock has greatly lowered the barrier to entry and made even more approachable a textbook that was written expressly for a general learned audience. In the words of Fahnestock, Erotemata dialectices represents “a global art with an eye to teachers and to Melanchthon’s colleagues across the...
