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…
Which Brings
us to…
The
Renaissance
The Renaissance
General Characteristics of the
Age:
• A decreasing influence of
the Catholic church due to:
The Renaissance
General Characteristics of the
Age:
• A decreasing influence of
the Catholic church due to:
1. Increasing heresy
The Renaissance
General Characteristics of the
Age:
• A decreasing influence of
the Catholic church due to:
1. Increasing heresy
2. Scientific breakthroughs
The Renaissance
General Characteristics of the
Age:
• A decreasing influence of
the Catholic church due to:
1. Increasing heresy
2. Scientific breakthroughs
3. Religious reforms
The Renaissance
General Characteristics of the
Age:
• A decreasing influence of
the Catholic church due to:
1. Increasing heresy
2. Scientific breakthroughs
3. Religious reforms
4. Nationalism in
increasingly powerful
and wealthy city-states
such as Paris and
Florence
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
Which Brings
us to…
Which Brings
us to…
The Beginnings
of the
Enlightenment
and the
Modern age
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
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”
the Enlightenment
and the Modern age
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
the Enlightenment
and the Modern age
Giambattista Vico:
• Without language, the
human knower is lost:
speech and thought are
inseparable (ie language is
epistemic)
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
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
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
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
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