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 disciplines” (35). And in her admirable introduction, which includes an overview of the disciplines on which Melanchthon drew to illustrate dialectic, Fahnestock has made a persuasive overture to her colleagues across the disciplines. The publication of The Dialectical Questions, the first translation and the first edition of Erotemata dialectices since the Corpus reformatorum edition of 1846, removes any excuse to continue relying exclusively on secondhand or chance encounters.Erotemata dialectices was Melanchthon’s third textbook on logic, or dialectic, as humanists called it, sometimes with reference to the Greek word dialegomai, which calls up the spoken word. It is twice as long as his prior effort, first published in 1528, and it represents his definitive teaching on the subject. A first impression of three thousand copies sold out within a month of its publication in September 1547, and Melanchthon quickly went to work correcting it for a second edition that appeared in 1548. Erotemata dialectices stayed in print until the first decade of the seventeenth century, running through forty-seven editions concentrated in Leipzig and Wittenberg, the intellectual capitals of Saxony under Albertine rule. It is of “unique historical importance” (4).The uniqueness of Erotemata dialectices lies in its wide-ranging collection of material to illustrate the art of dialectic, its use of natural language or classical Latin to teach the art (characteristic of humanist logic), and its construction of dialectic as an art of teaching. Melanchthon’s contemporary definition of dialectic as the art that teaches how to teach is amply illustrated in this work, which stakes out a limitless domain of learning. Erotemata dialectices is his attempt to demonstrate the truth of Peter of Spain’s observation that dialectic is the art of arts, the science of sciences.Like Melanchthon’s second dialectic, Erotemata dialectices covers in a standard order much of the material of a comprehensive textbook. It appears in four books and proceeds in the order of the treatises in Aristotle’s Organon. Melanchthon treats terms in book 1, propositions in book 2, inference (“argumentation”) in book 3, and topics and fallacies in book 4. All this is presented in a question-and-answer format, which foregrounds Melanchthon’s understanding of dialectic as an art of teaching.To this conventional outline Melanchthon adds sections that advance his humanist commitments. For instance, he adds sections on the “expository genres” of definition, division, and method at the end of book 1. The purpose of these seems to be to keep the art of dialectic in dialogue with the neighboring liberal arts grammar and rhetoric. In book 3, he supplements the rules of the syllogism with forms of argument drawn from Aristotle’s Rhetoric, including enthymeme, induction, example, and sorites. Not all supplemental material runs in the same direction. At the end of book 4, following chapters on the fallacies, Melanchthon offers a chapter on the modes of signifying, partly to lob a few more insults at the Schoolmen (the modes of signifying were studied in treatises called the Parva logicalia attributed to Peter of Spain), partly, it seems, to leave none of the conventional lump unleavened.Melanchthon rehearses the conventional three operations of dialectic (defining, dividing, and connecting). But, in an era of public controversies over matters of faith, he adds a fourth: “unraveling and refuting the incoherent and the false.” This operation frames book 4, the topics, in a way that makes argumentation a kind of telos of topical invention. For this and other reasons, Fahnestock calls the Erotemata dialectices a “global art of argument” (139).Its global quality is immediately apparent. In Fahnestock’s praiseworthy and timely translation, Erotemata dialectices reads like a well-organized abstract of intellectual life at school and university in a time before encyclopedias and databases became the norm, when pupils interrogated teachers, texts, and even things—not devices—and when teachers, texts, and things were considered capable of giving meaningful responses. Queries of the teacher of dialectic mingle here with queries of the theologian, the philosopher, and the physician. What is man? What is a definition? What is virtue? What is a valid inference? What causes pain?Melanchthon observed no boundaries in illustrating the questions asked in a learned environment. In the pages of Erotemata dialectices, a definition of the solstice is followed by a definition of divine grace. An example from botany is followed by a potentially thorny review of penitence. A hypothesis about the circulation of the blood is followed by a clarification of a place in scripture. Conjunctions like these reflect one of Melanchthon’s aims: to shape learned discourse on the model of dialectic as an art of teaching. The textbook captures learned inquiry both as it is and as it ought to be, somewhat like Melanchthon’s declamations, collected and printed in the same era, capture what people say on formal academic occasions and how they ought to say it.Even though academic discourse is the primary object of study in Erotemata dialectices, Melanchthon also attempts to apply dialectic in more general ways. On the importance of “definition,” he writes: “Just as daily prayer reminds us all that whenever we think about God, we should reflect on his definition: Who is it to whom we speak? In what way should He be distinguished from fictitious gods and from evil and pernicious spirits?” (222). Dialectic is thus useful even in prayer, an application Melanchthon advertises in a prefatory letter and illustrates occasionally throughout the text.Erotemata dialectices is by no means unknown to historians of logic and rhetoric, but it stands to be read more widely, and, by translating it, Fahnestock has done a great service to scholars in several fields. Moreover, by collating several editions between 1547 and 1555, she has established a much firmer critical footing than is available in the only modern edition of the text, that of the Corpus reformatorum (which was based on a 1580 edition of Erotemata dialectices). Melanchthon incessantly revised his works on dialectic, and Fahnestock has helpfully recorded his changes to this text in her translation. Passages added in editions following 1547 are marked in the text, brief variants are reported in notes, and longer variants are recorded in appendices at the end of each book. References to column numbers in the Corpus reformatorum edition, on which numerous studies of Melanchthon’s dialectic are based, are helpfully included in the margins.Readers will approach The Dialectical Questions with questions of their own, many of which Fahnestock has anticipated and answered in a rich introduction running to 150 pages. This introduction is a substantial work of scholarship, complete with an up-to-date bibliography, addressed to a broad scholarly audience. In plain language, Fahnestock treats the historical context of Erotemata dialectices, its biographical context, and its relationship to earlier works on the subject by Melanchthon. She also takes up the crucial question of intended audience. If we are to believe the advertisement on the title page, it is for the young, but in fact the book itself, which speaks of students and the young in the third person, implies a teacher who could selectively guide the young through its material. School statutes of the era support this view. Fahnestock also argues a university audience: “In addition to teachers, those actually more likely to read the [Erotemata dialectices] itself and not an abbreviation were the students of dialectic at the university level” (66–67).In the second half of the introduction, Fahnestock turns to the examples that make Erotemata dialectices unique in the history of logic. She reviews these examples under the headings mathematics, natural philosophy (astronomy, astrology, botany), and medicine. She illustrates how special qualities of Melanchthon’s instruction reflect his attention to natural philosophy and how contemporary epochal developments in natural philosophy may have shaped his teaching of dialectic. In these ways, she makes a persuasive case that Erotemata dialectices deserves the attention of a broad array of historians.For this reason, it is fitting that the book appear in the series International Studies in the History of Rhetoric (ISHR). Dialectic does not just abut on the domain of rhetoric; the two arts share common ground. Throughout his career, Melanchthon insisted that rhetoric and dialectic be studied together, and readers in the second half of the sixteenth century seem to have taken this to heart. If you call up a copy of an early printing of Erotemata dialectices, there is a good chance you will find it bound with an early printing of Melanchthon’s third principal work on rhetoric, the Elementa rhetorices. The collection of The Dialectical Questions in the ISHR series argues for the collection of a new English translation and study of Elementa rhetorices. This new volume would be slimmer but could be filled out profitably with translations of De rhetorica libri tres (1519) and Institutiones rhetoricae (1521), both unavailable in English. The question is, Could Jeanne Fahnestock be persuaded to take this on? If not, who will?