The Enlightenment and Rhetoric -Also a Video of Me Conferencing :)

The Enlightenment saw the rise of linguistics, grammar, semiotics, epistemology and even psychology joining the list of things that are related in some way to rhetoric. A debate also arose on rhetoric as the primary source of rhetorical practices and admiration and if this was really a necessary part of it. While traditional rhetoric remained strong in schools, Cartesian curriculum combining religion, mathematics, science, history and French also emerged. In this method, empirical scientific study began to form and “assignments were based on students’ own experience or their response to reading” (795). This sounds very similar to what most assignments in freshman writing entail in modern times. Although Europe resisted the change to empirical studies, tutors who knew this method were still available, and clearly it is what became the foundation for scientific inquiry as we know it today.

When one looks up the word rhetoric today, one of the definitions listed in Webster’s Dictionary is “insincere or grandiloquent language.” This definition is certainly influenced partly by the ideas of Bacon, Descartes, and Ramis who saw rhetoric as the art of obfuscation. The enlightenment saw thinkers wanting to revert to a “plain” language and attacking rhetoric once again for being a means to manipulate people with fancy language, just like the debate between Plato and the Sophists. This lead to John Locke’s ideas on what words actually mean. Locke said that “the chief end of language in communication [is] to be understood” and words have failed to serve this duty “when any word does not excite in the hearer the same idea which it stands for in the speaker” (817). He saw a fundamental flaw in this transfer of ideas when it comes to intangible concepts, like morality, or concepts made up of many small ideas. Thus, one should not try to confuse the faculties of understanding of the audience by adding extra fancy language. It is interesting how Locke uses rhetoric to attack rhetoric, but he does point out that he examines the fallible nature of words not because he “thinks commentaries are needless; but to show how uncertain the names of mixed modes naturally are” (820). He says that figurative language “in all discourses that pretend to inform or instruct” are “wholly to be avoided; and where truth and knowledge are concerned cannot but be the fault either of the language or person that makes use of them” (827). Thus, Locke believes that rhetoric can be used for manipulation and this should not taint education. This is very similar to the ideas that Plato had. This makes me wonder what Locke or Plato would think of a journal article written today, as they tend to be very wordy and grandiose in style, yet they are used in university education all the time.

Locke’s discussion on words leads to a study of epistemology because Locke goes on to discuss the nature of knowledge and how “words having no signification, the idea which each stands for must be learned and retained, by those who would exchange thoughts” (818). Hence, the nature of knowledge itself and how we learn is being scrutinized.  The Rhetorical Tradition also explains that “Locke argues that all ideas are mental combinations of sense perceptions and that words refer not directly to things but mental phenomena” (Bizzell 799). Locke and other philosophers had a fascination with how the faculties for understanding in humans worked and sensory perception. This lead to an analysis of the mind that would pave the way for modern psychology.

I always associated these ideas on word signifiers with the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, “although the word was used in this sense in the 17th century by the English philosopher John Locke, the idea of semiotics as an interdisciplinary mode for examining phenomena in different fields emerged only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the independent work of Saussure.” In addition, I realized that Etienne Bonnot De Condillac was inspired by Locke to come up with the idea of universal grammar, which lead to the invention of the study of linguistics.  I always attributed the concept of universal grammar to Noam Chomsky. I now realize that de Saussure and Chomsky were building off of these ideas from the Enlightenment, which actually makes their ideas more clear to me.

The Enlightenment is also (unfortunately) when grammar instruction began its association with rhetoric. Ironically, the investigation of “pure” language was developing while linguistics was simultaneously coming up with ideas that completely disprove “pure” language. The Rhetorical Tradition calls it the “eighteenth-century fetish for correctness in language” (Bizzell 802). This idea still persists today in order to oppress low income populations. However, people like Sir William Jones discovered similarities “among Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit” that presented the idea of universal grammar (801). The idea of universal grammar can be used to prove that one language is not necessarily superior to another because they all share common characteristics. One could make this observation about African American Vernacular English today, for example.

This is area is of particular interest to me, as I wrote about the language purity rhetoric that emerged in the United States during this same period in my paper, "Standard American English and Education: The Necessary Contamination of Pure English" last semester. I just presented this paper at the Acacia graduate conference at Cal State Fullerton on Saturday March 24th. I will insert the video below. 

What is Rhetoric Part III

As much as European thinkers struggled with the application of rhetoric in various fields such as law or medicine, going into the Renaissance, they began again to try to define what Rhetoric itself actually is basing ideas off of the great Greek and Roman thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Gorgias, Cicero, and Quintilian. As we explore the Renaissance, we learn that Roman Catholic church’s stranglehold on Europe began to loosen (a little), and Renaissance rhetoric is associated with Italian Humanism and the poet Petrarch who “sought a model for thinking, writing, and acting in society that was faithfully Christian, yet more conducive to the development of individual talents than scholasticism seemed to be” (557). As people began to debate ideals, two writers who discussed what rhetoric itself  as a discipline where Ramus and Bacon.

Peter Ramus lived from 1515-1572 and studied at university of Paris. Ramus “worked his way through school as a servant to wealthier students” (674). While he studied the classic thinkers, he was banned from teaching until 1547 because he thought Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian was useless. “Aristotle’s logic both lacked many virtues and abounded in faults…yet now Quintilian follows Aristotle’s and cicero’s confusion of dialectic and rhetoric” (681). He believed the ability to reason is innate in normal humans and one did not need to learn it from Aristotle.  He also felt Philosophy or dialectic should be considered separate from rhetoric, and that rhetoric consisted only of style and delivery. Dialectic, on the other hand, included arrangement, invention and memory. Although memory was not seen as important, however, because arrangement has natural structure of human mind. This reminded me of my speech teachers in past who insisted on an outline rather than learning the speech word for word. Ramus also though arrangement is based on a syllogism starting with general principals and working down through levels of generality to particulars (676). This reminded me of the introduction of an academic essay where one gradually works through various definitions of the topic, becoming more and more specific as they work their way toward the thesis. Interestingly, Ramus did not have a specific profession, such as a politician, in mind in his ideas on rhetoric, which is very different than most previous thinkers leading up to him that we have discussed who constantly debated the fields in which rhetoric should be applied.

Almost shockingly, Ramus felt that studying classical rhetoric was a waste of time, and one could see how his ideas seem radical to the status quo. In fact, his ideas are still radical today in that regard. Ramus states in his diatribe against Quintilian, “For how many days, indeed how many years and ages do we suppose are wretchedly spent on false conjectures about these disciplines [dialectic and rhetoric]? I wish I had not known the wretchedness of wasting so much of my youth in this way” (681). This does not sound like a guy who liked school. Quintilian, conversely, stated that we should spend all our extra time studying and not waste it on other pursuits, “But if all these hours were allotted to study, [and not visits, idle conversations, private amusements, etc.] our life would seem long enough and out time amply sufficient for learning” (427). Definitely polar opposite positions on the benefits of studying.

Francis Bacon, on the other hand, had a more level-headed view on things than Ramus, but he also debated on the nuances of what rhetoric actually is rather than its application. He lived from 1561-1626 and was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, orator, and author. He served both as Attorney General and as Lord Chancellor of England. He also never met a bribe he did like, and his political stance seemed mainly to be self-preservation. Unfortunately, he did not invent bacon, but his name does make me hungry (ha ha).  Bacon divided knowledge into two branches: Theology and philosophy and “then divided the latter into theoretical inquiry, which investigates causes and practical inquiry, which seeks effects” (737). He used Ramus’ binary opposition, but saw Ramus’ dialectic as a version of the Scholasticism Ramus claims to condemn. Also, Bacon did not subscribe to Ramus’ separation of dialectic and Rhetoric. He felt that the disciplines needed to overlap. In the The Advancement of Learning  he states, “The duty and office of Rhetoric is to apply reason to imagination for the better moving of the will” (743). He felt that men’s minds should fortify themselves against the assaults of the four classes of idols which beset them (745). He said there are Idols of the Tribe, which is the tribe or race of man “human understanding is like a false mirror, which receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolours the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it” (745).  This sounds a lot like Plato’s concept of reality as not fully perceptible by humans.  Idols of the Cave are the idols of the individual since everyone has a cave of their own. Idols of the Market Place is the association of men with each other on account of commerce. The most troublesome of all the Idols. The idol of the Theatre is dogma of philosophy “all received systems are but so many stage plays” (746).