The Renaissance of Rhetoric and the Beginnings of Modern Rhetorics

The Renaissance of Rhetoric and the

Beginnings of Modern Rhetorics

March 15, 2012

How Did we Get Here?

#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

#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

#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

#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

#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)

#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

Which Brings us to…


The Renaissance

The Renaissance

General Characteristics of the Age:

• A decreasing influence of the Catholic church due to:

The Renaissance



1. Increasing heresy

The Renaissance



1. Increasing heresy2. Scientific

breakthroughs

The Renaissance




breakthroughs3. Religious reforms

The Renaissance




breakthroughs3. Religious reforms4. Nationalism in

increasingly powerful and wealthy city-states such as Paris and Florence

The Renaissance


• 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



The Beginnings of the

Enlightenment and the Modern

age

the Enlightenment and the Modern 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


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”


Giambattista Vico:

• 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


Giambattista Vico:

• Without language, the human knower is lost: speech and thought are inseparable (ie language is epistemic)


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


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


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


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

Now what?

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.

“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.”

"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.”

“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. . ."

“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.”

“The duty and office of Rhetoric is to apply

Reason to Imagination for the better moving of

the will.”

“. . .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…”

“. . .figures of thought, if properly fashioned by careful word choice, could fascinate the

mind and thereby hold attention or move the

soul.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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. . .”

“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. . .”

“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.”

“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.”

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

The Renaissance of Rhetoric and the

Beginnings of Modern Rhetorics

March 15, 2012

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The Renaissance of Rhetoric and the Beginnings of Modern Rhetorics