The Renaissance of Rhetoric and the Beginnings of Modern Rhetorics

1. The Renaissance of Rhetoric and the Beginnings of Modern Rhetorics March 15, 2012

2. How Did we Get Here?

3. #1: The Fall of Rome • As we saw with Cicero and Quintilian, Rome was home to great and influential teachers and practitioners of rhetoric • The Second Sophistic represented a revival in interest in the Classical Greek rhetoricians in Rome

4. #1: The Fall of Rome • As we saw with Cicero and Quintilian, Rome was home to great and influential teachers and practitioners of rhetoric • The Second Sophistic represented a revival in interest in the Classical Greek rhetoricians in Rome • But that all changed as Rome declined in power and was eventually destroyed by invaders and “barbarians” from the East

5. #2: The Rise of Christianity • With the decline of Rome, we see the growing influence of Christianity and, thus, a new and unique approach to rhetoric • In particular, as we see with St. Augustine, we note a return to Platonic ideas of a noumenal world—only in this case, a Christian concept of it

6. #2: The Rise of Christianity • Despite the early Christians’ skepticism of rhetoric (claiming that rhetorical ornamentation was sinful and a weapon of pagans—ie Jerome), St. Augustine, inspired by Cicero’s systems of rhetoric, Platonic ideal forms, and the example of Jesus, developed a system of rhetoric specifically designed for Christian teaching and preaching

7. #3: The Medieval Period • Many scholars of this period were greatly influenced by St. Augustine and his view of rhetoric, including Hugh of St. Victor and Thomas Aquinas and Roger Bacon • Nonetheless, despite this common influence, we see a division between the humanists (retrieving scholars from the past) and the scholastics (often neoplatonic, logical, and skeptical of rhetoric)

8. #3: The Medieval Period • We also see the rise in the art of letter writing and, simultaneously, public speaking in the form of sermons and for political purposes • We don’t see tremendous strides forward in the field of rhetoric in this period, but the Medieval period serves to preserve the documents of the past and put many of the rhetorical treatises into practice

9. Which Brings us to…

10. Which Brings us to…The Renaissance

11. The Renaissance General Characteristics of the Age: • A decreasing influence of the Catholic church due to:

12. The Renaissance General Characteristics of the Age: • A decreasing influence of the Catholic church due to: • Increasing heresy

13. The Renaissance General Characteristics of the Age: • A decreasing influence of the Catholic church due to: • Increasing heresy • Scientific breakthroughs

14. The Renaissance General Characteristics of the Age: • A decreasing influence of the Catholic church due to: • Increasing heresy • Scientific breakthroughs • Religious reforms

15. The Renaissance General Characteristics of the Age: • A decreasing influence of the Catholic church due to: • Increasing heresy • Scientific breakthroughs • Religious reforms • Nationalism in increasingly powerful and wealthy city-states such as Paris and Florence

16. The Renaissance General Characteristics of the Age: • A virulence in humanism fueled, in part, by the “rediscovery” of the Roman rhetorical texts (Cicero, Quintilian), Aristotle’s Rhetoric and the Sophists • We see rhetoric being employed in literature (Dante, Erasmus); politics (Machiavelli); religion (Melanchthon, Luther) and other areas of human culture

17. Which Brings us to…

18. Which Brings us to…The Beginnings of the Enlightenment and the Modern age

19. the Enlightenment and the Modern age General Characteristics of the Age: • The continued influence of humanism • The rise of the “new science”—empiricism and the scientific method • Focus on epistemology and theories on how humans gain knowledge • Skepticism and a questioning of all premises and beliefs

20. the Enlightenment and the Modern age Rene Descartes: • Believed that reason, as opposed to imagination or the senses (ie. empiricism), can supply us with evidence about existence in the world • Dialectic, not rhetoric, brings us to truth • Systematic Doubt about everything! • “Cogito ego sum”

21. the Enlightenment and the Modern age GiambattistaVico: • VS. Descartes, Vico saw other ways to learn other than just reason and mathematics • Instead, a “humanistic imagination” required the imagination, myths, fables, narratives to find knowledge • Claimed humans are more rhetorical than rational and more religious than scientific

22. the Enlightenment and the Modern age GiambattistaVico: • Without language, the human knower is lost: speech and thought are inseparable (ie language is epistemic)

23. the Enlightenment and the Modern age Sir Francis Bacon • Believed that arts and sciences generate new knowledge based on sense data (empiricism), speech and arguments merely retrieve what we already know • Defined rhetoric as the function of applying reason to the imagination for the better moving of the will

24. the Enlightenment and the Modern age Sir Francis Bacon • This definition of rhetoric highlights what became the basis of “faculty psychology”: understanding, reason, imagination, appetites, and will • Influenced by Plato, the linguistic theory of Augustine, and the dialectical approach of Ramus

25. the Enlightenment and the Modern age John Locke • Backed up Bacon’s claims that the mind was composed of various functions, esp. the will and understanding • Endorsed empiricism and the scientific method, with the mind at the center of the universe collecting new data through experience; language secondary because it can only provide an understanding of what has already been discovered by the senses

26. the Enlightenment and the Modern age John Locke • Rhetoric has the ability to take arguments and evidence, deduced from sensed experience and use them to create a story or picture that will induce change in the hearer • Associationism: a better way of learning for Locke; ideas become associated with one another over time so that one idea recalls another

27. Now what?

28. Now what? I’ll put you into four Teams of ten members (at the most). Your team names are: Team Augustine Team Ramus Team Vico Team Bacon Each team will get a score sheet. Write down your team name and all team members. Have your text book and primary texts open and ready. We’ll be focusing on St. Augustine, Ramus, Vico, and Francis Bacon today.

29. “The answer is that eloquence does not address itself to the rational part of our nature, but almost entirely to our passions. The rational part in us may be taken captive by a net woven of purely intellectual reasonings, but the passionate side of our nature can never be swayed and overcome unless this is done by more sensuous and materialistic means.”

30. "There are two universal, general gifts bestowed by nature upon man, Reason and Speech: dialectic is the theory of the former, grammar and rhetoric of the latter. Dialectic therefore should draw on the general strengths of human reason in the consideration and the arrangement of the subject matter. . .rhetoric should demonstrate the embellishment of speech first in tropes and figures, second in dignified delivery.”

31. “But our Saviour, speaking of Divine Knowledge, saith, that the kingdom of heaven is like a good householder, that bringeth forth both new and old store. . ."

32. “For teaching, of course, true eloquence consists, not in making people like what they disliked, nor in making them do what they shrank from, but in making clear what was obscure; yet if this be done without grace of style, the benefit does not extend beyond the few eager students who are anxious to know whatever is to be learnt, however rude and unpolished the form in which it is put; and who, when they have succeeded in their object, find the plain truth pleasant food enough.”

33. “The duty and office of Rhetoric is to apply Reason to Imagination for the better moving of the will.”

34. “. . .the dialectical and rhetorical arts of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian are fallacious and confused in their treatment of the dialectical and rhetorical usage of reason, and then of speech…”

35. “. . .figures of thought, if properly fashioned by careful word choice, could fascinate the mind and thereby hold attention or move the soul.”

36. “An orator ought to speak in such a way to instruct, to please, and to persuade…It is necessary, therefore…that [he] should not only teach in order to instruct, and please in order to hold [attention], but also move in order to win.”

37. “Quintilian should turn the whole thing around and should more correctly conclude that since dialectic is not a moral virtue which can shape a good man, so neither is rhetoric.”

38. “And therefore it was great injustice in Plato, though springing out of a just hatred of the rhetoricians of his time, to esteem Rhetoric but as a voluptuary art, resembling it to cookery. . .for we see that speech is much more conversant in adorning that which is good than in coloring that which is evil. . .”

39. “The invention of speech or argument is not properly an invention. . .the use of this invention is no other but out of the knowledge whereof our mind is already possessed, to draw forth or call before us that which may be pertinent to the purpose which we take into our consideration. . .it is no invention, but a remembrance or suggestion. . .”

40. “On the other hand, the man who lays down rules for interpretation is like one who teaches reading, that is, shows others how to read for themselves. So that, just as he who knows how to read is not dependent on some one else, when he finds a book, to tell him what is written in it, so the man who is in possession of the rules which I here attempt to lay down, if he meet with an obscure passage in the books which he reads, will not need an interpreter to lay open the secret to him, but, holding fast by certain rules, and following up certain indications, will arrive at the hidden sense without any error, or at least without falling into any gross absurdity.”

41. “It is a positive fact that, just as knowledge originates in truth and error in falsity, so common sense arises from perceptions based on verisimilitude. Probabilities stand, so to speak, midway between truth and falsity, since things which most of the time are true, are only very seldom false. . .I may add that common sense, besides being the criterion of practical judgment, is also the guiding standard of eloquence.”

42. “No doubt all that man is given to know is, like man himself, limited and imperfect.”

43. The Renaissance of Rhetoric and the Beginnings of Modern Rhetorics March 15, 2012