János Apáczai Csere and post-Ramist dialectics

Abstract

This paper examines the relation of János Csere Apáczai’s works on dialectics—namely the parts 2 and 3 of the ‘Magyar Encyclopaedia’ (‘Hungarian Encyclopaedia’), and the ‘Magyar Logicatska’ (‘Concise Hungarian Logic’)—to the traditions of post-Ramism; attempting to place the works of Apáczai in the Transylvanian and international intellectual context. The paper analyses the relation of these texts of Apáczai to post-Ramism from three aspects: mediality/visuality, encyclopaedism and vernacularity, and compares the ways of the formation of Hungarian terminology in the ‘Encyclopaedia’ and the ‘Logicatska’, seeking to examine what might have motivated Apáczai to publish two works on the same topic at almost the same time.