English 622: Classical Rhetoric

What I found to be very interesting about this week’s group of readings was the, sometimes implicit and sometimes explicit, continuations and additions to the themes and topics we have been discussing throughout the semester. One example would be from Christine de Pizan’s The Treasure of the City of Ladies, where we can see some pretty interesting extensions being applied to the theories Aristotle provided in On Rhetoric.

As I was reading through St. Augustine’s text for this week, I could not help but notice that a lot of the main points Augustine was making in Book IV were continuations on many of the same themes we have been reading about and discussing throughout the semester. First, like Aristotle, there is the idea that rhetoric is neither naturally good nor naturally bad.

As I was reading Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria my mind kept making parallels to the educational structure currently in place in the United States. First there is the idea that there is instructional methods and study materials that are age appropriate, which sounds a little like the distinctions we make for the education received in elementary schools, high schools, and college. We also see the idea of students learning in environments that best match their own learning needs.

The first aspect of Cicero’s On Oratory and Orators that struck me, was the concept of the perfect orator, which is a person “who shall have abilities to deliver opinions on both sides of a question on all subjects, after the manner of Aristotle, and, from a knowledge of the precepts of that philosopher, to deliver two contradictory orations on every conceivable topic, or shall be able, after the manner of Arcesilas or Carneades, to dispute against every proposition that can be laid down, and shall unite with those powers rhetorical skill, and practice and exercise in speaking, he w

To begin my response for this week, I would like to return to Plato for a moment and the post I submitted regarding the Phaedrus. The reason I want to step back for a moment is based on something Dr. Blakesley said during class last week, and something I alluded to in my own post, which is the idea of Aristotle’s On Rhetoric being a response to the following passage:

The most striking aspect of book one in Aristotle’s On Rhetoric is that we are once again presented with a new classification and purpose of Rhetoric. According to Aristotle, “Rhetoric is an antistrophos to dialectic; for both are concerned with such things as are, to a certain extent, within the knowledge of all people and belong to no separately defined science” (30). Part of the reasoning for this is because speakers often need both to reach the desired end.

In “Against the Sophists”, Isocrates seems to be trying to distance himself from previous teachers of rhetoric, or “sophists” by going for the outright kill in his arguments against sophistry. First, Isocrates makes the claim that the sophists are not interested in their students discovering truth, but are instead interested in teaching deception. As Isocrates points out, “[a]s it is now, those who dare to make boasts with too little caution have made it appear that those who choose to take it easy are better advised than those who apply themselves to philosophy.

In the pieces we have read up to this point in the semester, there seems to an ongoing discussion about creating distinctions between sophistic argumentation and platonic dialectic and conflicting attitudes toward pure rhetorical mastery. On the one hand you have the sophists, who claim to be masters at arguing any point of a given situation or topic with the desire to persuade an audience into accepting what they have presented as the most appealing argument through situational ethics.

To begin my response for this week, I would fist like to turn to the final sentences of the “Gorgias”: “So let’s use the account that has now been disclosed to use as our guide, one that indicates to us that this way of life is the best, to practice justice and the rest of excellence both in life and in death. Let us follow it, then, and call on others to do so, too, and let’s not follow the one that you believe in and call on me to follow. For that one is worthless, Callicles” (869).

Hello to everyone. My name is Jeff Bacha and this is my second semester at Purdue. I am a PHD student in the Rhetoric and Composition program and I am originally from Flint, MI. I received by MA in Rhetoric and Composition from Georgia State University in Atlanta.

My main interests are in digital and visual rhetoric. I hope that this course will give me a deeper understanding of some classical approaches to rhetoric and how they may be tailored or implemented into digital and visual environments.