ENGL / COMM 4103: Rhetoric & Persuasion

1. ENGL / COMM 4103:Rhetoric & Persuasion Francis Bacon: Rhetoric & Empiricism

2. Glenn: Renaissance Women’s Rhetoric “Rhetoric, in the most traditional sense, remained the province of men, the product of teaching and practice, a means of achievement and power” (Glenn 141).

3. Observations from Rhetoric Retold • Renaissance women continued to have little power. • “By marriage, the husband and wife became one person in law—and that person was the husband” (Stone qtd. in Glenn 121). • Exceptional women were mostly aristocratic: • Queen Elizabeth I: • “Superbly educated . . . accomplished and prolific in rhetoric and poetics” (118). • The Tudor Women: • Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Catherine Parr, and Lady Jane Grey all demonstrated exceptional educations and awareness of rhetorical theory and practice (129 – 131)

4. Observations from Rhetoric Retold • English Rhetoric: • Leonard Cox, The Art or Crafte of Rhetoryke(1530) • First systematic English version of a Ciceronian approach to invention (Glenn 139) • Thomas Wilson, Arte of Rhetorique (1553) • First complete English version of a full Ciceronian rhetoric (139). • Style, persuasion, and poetics: • During the Renaissance, English rhetoric became closely associated with poetry and style: • “The English language must be elevated, beautiful, and rhythmic to be memorable and persuasive” (140)

5. Empiricism • Reaction to both Scholasticism and Classicism: • Rejected the closed and often useless Scholastic emphasis on precise definition and syllogistic logic. • Rejected much accepted Classical scientific knowledge: • Scientific knowledge should be primarily based on repeated observation. • The deductive process – moving from general assumptions to specific conclusions – was flawed in regard to scientific enquiry. • Empiricism and the Individual: • Empiricism emphasized the individual’s ability to accurately observe, record, and interpret natural phenomena.

6. Empirical Bacon For Bacon, the discovery of a New World . . . Demanded a corresponding discovery of a new mental world in which old patterns of thinking, traditional prejudices, subjective distortions, verbal confusions, and general intellectual blindness would be overcome by a new method of acquiring knowledge. This method was to be fundamentally empirical. (Tarnas 272)

7. Francis Bacon & Empiricism • Bacon’s Empirical Approach: • Theological: • Science as “the material and human counterpart to God’s plan of spiritual salvation. Man was created by God to interpret and hold dominion over nature . . . Science was therefore his religious obligation” (Tarnas 273). • Philosophical: • Bacon felt it was necessary to rigorously question and often reject received philosophical foundations for human knowledge: • “To fill the world with assumed final causes, as did Aristotle, or with intelligible divine essences, as did Plato, was to obscure from man a genuine understanding of nature on its own terms” (Tarnas 273). • “The true philosopher directly approached the real world and studied it, without falsely anticipating and prejudicing the outcome” (Tarnas 273). • “The Aristotelian search for formal and final causes . . . [was] just [a] distortion, deceptively attractive to the emotionally tainted intellect” (Tarnas 274).

8. Francis Bacon & Psychology • Faculty Psychology • Faculty psychology, as developed by Bacon, was the dominant understanding of the psyche for three centuries (Bizzell and Herzberg 737). • Faculty psychology is the belief that all people are endowed with certain mental faculties: • Bacon cites three faculties: • Reason, memory, and imagination (and two others: appetite and the will) • All people possess each of the faculties in varying degrees. • The faculties can be developed through education and practice. • Preview! • Later iterations of faculty psychology (in the 18th century) focus on the faculties of judgment and taste.

9. The Four Intellectual Arts • Bacon divides intellectual activity into four “arts”: • Invention • Aristotelian: “To draw forth or call before us that which may be pertinent to the purpose which we take into our consideration” (740) • Judgment • Deduction is ok, but is often flawed and pointless. • Induction is the way to go! • Memory • Systems of memorization are usually cumbersome and ridiculous. • Prenotion: • Mental systems for organizing memories. • Emblem: • Visual mnemonic devices. • Delivery • Oral or written; rhetoric a must here.

10. Bacon’s “Four Idols” • Bacon described four major impediments to human understanding and knowledge: • Idols of the Tribe • Human nature. • Idols of the Cave • Individual idiosyncracies. • Idols of the Marketplace • Human communication. • Idols of the Theatre • Flawed philosophical systems

11. Bacon’s Definition of Rhetoric: “The duty and office of Rhetoric is to apply Reason to Imagination for the better moving of the will” (743).

12. Bacon and Rhetoric • Two part focus: • The application of reason to human emotion to produce an effect. • Rhetoric “links morality and reason” (Bizzell and Herzberg 738). • “Logic handleth reason exact and in truth, and Rhetoric handleth it as it is planted in popular opinions and manners” (Bacon 744). • Rhetoric is, in this sense, applied philosophy. • Bacon’s defense of rhetoric: • “Rhetoric can be no more charged with the colouring of the worse part, than Logic with Sophistry, or Morality with Vice” (Bacon 743).

13. Bacon and Rhetoric • To combat the effects of the Idols of the Marketplace. • The problem: • “The ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding” (Bacon 746) • Definitions do not necessarily help alleviate the confusion (746). • “But words plainly force and over-rule the understanding , and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into numberless empty controversies and idle fancies” (746) • The solution: • A scientific approach to language: • Observation, observation, observation, all of which leads to • General conclusions about the nature of words and language (Popkin 331). • Knowledge (of rhetoric) is power.