The Rhetorcial Tradition
Bizzell and Herzberg, eds.
“Francis Bacon”
From The Advancement of Learning
From Novum Organum
“John Locke”
From An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
“Giambattista Vico”
From On the Study Methods of Our Time
Rhetoric in the European Tradition
Thomas Conley
Chapter Six: “Rhetoric in the Seventeenth Century”
“Francis Bacon”
Bacon was born to a connected family. His father was Sir Nicholas Bacon and a statesman in the service of Queen Elizabeth while his mother, Lady Bacon, posessed a good humanist education and a Protestant faith. Bacon was home taught and sent off to Cambridge at 12. He eventually became a lawyer and by 23 was seated in the House of Commons during Elizabeth’s reign; under James I, Bacon becomes Lord Chancellor. In 1621 he enters the nobility as Lord Verulam, Viscount St. Albans. It seems Bacon was the consumate Renaissance rhetor/rhetorician who leveraged the family name, his education, and his interaction with those in court to construct a meteoric rise in social class. Bacon would be the physical manifestation of what the etiquette books of the day taught was possible.
Bacon used a concise, aphoristic speaking/writing style in contrast to the popular, neo-Ciceronian copious style popular at that time. He also kept a sizable library full of the aphorisms from the commonplace books of the day; using aphorisms (adages) was important for Bacon since–according to scholars–Bacon recognized “the heuristic quality of the writing process itself…commonplaces are intednednotfor mere decoration but as a means of investigating how our knowledge can be formulated in effective language, in discourse that shapes our beliefs and actions” (739).
Bacon argued against Scholasticism and used Ramism when it suited his purposes, but he was not a supporter of Ramus. Bacon did not agree with the seperation of dialectic and rhetoric (737).
Bacon believed in “vigorous empirical study” in contrast to Scholasticism. Bacon “warned against narrow empiricism or what would later be called positivism, an uncritcalacceptance of the idea that sense perceptions constituted reality” (737).
Seperation of faculties, perception is not infallable, nor are mental operations neutral, and the four branches of logic (which sound a lot like the five canons of rhetoric) on 737.
“[S]cientific discourse is a technical treatment of truth, whereas rhetoric links knowledge to social concerns” (738).
“Rhetoric is a serious art and a great responsibility, for it brings knowledge into play in the world. It links morality with reason, although Bacon notes that this is not sufficient in and of itself to enforce ethical behavior” (738).
From The Advancement of Learning
Section on Preparation and Suggestion on 740. Here he begins the oblique attack on Scholasticism by taking on Aristotle. Aristotle disliked pre-made thesi, so Bacon goes about showing how Aristotle’s claims against them are refuted by common sense, Christ, and Cicero. Preparation and Suggestion appear to be subdivisions of Invention; Invention for rhetoric is Remembrance. Rhetorical acts are using knowledge already understood as a way to practice probabilistic reasoning.
Judgment is discussed on the bottom of 741 (first column). It seems this is the one section of reasoning where it is alright to use syllogism since it can stop fallacious claims.
On the bottom of 741 (second column) is the defense of commonplace books. Bacon seems to qualify this defense only extends to commonplace books which describe reality and not the stilted, pedantic scenarios of school.
The top of the second column on 742 discusses Delivery. Bacon describes Delivery as “expressing or transferring…knowledge to others” (742). There are three parts to Delivery (which he also calls Tradition):
- Organ
- Method
- Illustration
Only Organ and Illustration are described. The Organ of Tradition (Delivery) is Speech or Writing. The Illustration of Tradition (Delivery) is “that science we call Rhetoric, or Art of Eloquence” (742); it would appear that rhetoric illustrates the ways people can deliver knowledge to others.
In the first column of 743, Bacon explains “the duty and office of Rhetoric is to apply Reason to Imagination for the better moving of the will.” This would appears to be how Bacon differs most from Ramus; rhetoric is a part of knowledge production and, later discussed, the ways to parlay the status that comes with knowledge into power and direct others how to live–again using Delivery (743 middle of second column after bloc quote).
For as in buildings there is great pleasure and use in the well-casting of the staircases, entries, doors, widows, and the like; so in speech the conveyances and passages are of special ornament and effect. So may we redeem the faults passed, and prevent the inconveniences future. (745)
With the above quote Bacon claims that speech (therefore delivery-tradition) is important and should be more than superficial ornamentation or pedantic demonstration of eloquence. Still, does Bacon’s model privilege the speaking subject as the conduit of all information? Is the audience/individual listener nothing more than a passive recipient?
From Novum Organum
Idols are the fetishized objects, ideas, theories, and terms that stop people from understanding experiential reality. There are four:
- Idols of the Tribe
- Idols of the Cave
- Idols of the Market-place [sic]
- Idols of the Theatre [sic]
The way to work around these idols is to use induction. As mentioned in the intro, Bacon believes in empiricism but not positivism (the refutation of positivism will be made clear in Idols of the Tribe definition).
Idols of the Tribe–a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things. All perceptions as well of the sense as the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe (hence, positivism is flawed in Bacon’s paradigm) (745).
Idols of the Cave–idols of the individual man. Every man has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolours the light of nature; a man’s education or his conversation with others also serve as a cave which refracts and discolors the light of nature–as well as the books he’s read and whom he esteems and admires.
Idols of the Market-place–Commerce and the going-ons of business often bring men together, and words are imposed according to the apprehension of this vulgar activity. Words have the power to confuse when used without training; words “force and overrule…understanding” of the material world “and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into numberless empty controversies and idle fancies” (746).
Idols of the Theatre–these are idols “which have immigrated into men’s minds form the various dogmas of philosophies and also from the wrong laws of demonstration” (746). Bacon calls these Idols of Theatre because he sees “all received systems [as] so many stage-plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion” (746). This applies to ancient systems of philosophy and religion as well as current ones. Bacon appears to be calling for constant vigilance and the continued rigor of science on all parts of the world–even the accepted axioms of science. Only through this type of self-reflexive activity can the Idols of the Theatre be side-stepped.
Idols of the Market-place are the most dangerous as they are the most insidious. Through the association of words and names to objects these inexact words become commonplace and make their ways into science and philosophy.
The idols imposed by words on the understanding are of two kinds
- either names of things which do not exist (there is no observable material of the signified)
- they are the names of things which exist, but yet confused and ill-defined, and hastily and irregularly derived from realities. (746)
An example of number one would be the term “humid” (747).
An example of number two would be terms like Fortune, Prime Mover. Element of Fire. These words and the misunderstandings they create are built on “false and idle theories” which can be expelled through empiricism (747-748).
“John Locke”
One of Locke’s many degrees was in philosophy, which was still the study and practice of Scholastic disputation. Dissatisfied with this curriculum and interested in experimental science, Locke studied medicine and eventually set-up an amateur practice.
Like Bacon, Locke believesthatthere is a real external world and that knowledge of it is possible, but only if we understand the processes by which we come to such knowledge…We have direct sensations, of course, but only of our ideas of these sensations; all other ideas are formed by reflecting upon the primary ideas caused by sensory perception. Reflection is the act of relating our ideas to one another, forming mental associations, and examining the mental processes of which we are aware: thinking, doubting, believing, and so on. These operations of the faculty of understanding are the source of all our knowledge. (814)
Beacuse of his belief in this process, Locke finds the syllogism useless since it “neither describes nor conforms to this process of achieving knowledge” (814).
Since words are the signs of our ideas, and individuals have to reflect to understand the world around them and how they came to make the knowledge base that governs their reality, Locke is carried into discussing language. Because all we know is “only our ideas and their relationships to one another…ideas are the signs of real things [and] words are the signs of our ideas” (814-815), Locke is forced to reflect upon language and how it works to make experiential reality.
Book 3 is excerpted within the reading. While several things are going on in the text, one main thing to focus on is how Locke insists on clarity in language. “Words…carry cultural connotations–or even personal ones–that complicate the relationship between communicated word and signified idea” (815). For this reason, Locke attack Scholastic philosophy “for creating obscurities through disputation, and he attacks rhetoric for increasing ambiguities through excessive ornamentation” (815).
In Book 4 Locke creates a method “for examining the internal coherence of propositions, on the assumptionthat verbal propositions stand for mental ones and that mental ones stand for real external phenomena” (815). Locke takes a nonrelativistic view of knowledge, which means that knowledge is something external to culture/society, and more importantly “Knowledge itself is independent of language” (815). Rhetoric and Scholastic philosophy are merely barriers to reaching true Knowledge. B&H explain this drove several rhetoricians of the age to retort with the explanation good style emphasized perspicuity, or clarity, and also to develop “a psychological theory of persuasion and taste” (815); “Vico, Sheridan, and Campbell, as well as a number of philosophers, pursued Locke’s suggestive but incomplete account of the relationship of language and knowledge, though never far enough to link rhetoric explicitly with the process of creating ‘true’ knowledge” (816).
From An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Locke makes a running distinction throughout this text between civil or philosophical purposes. While in both sets of discourses words are problematic since they are based on flawed conceptions of the objects they speak (humans can not know the true essence of something so the sounds assigned to the object don’t actually signify the object) and since there is no one, universal language everyone uses (nor even a uniform usage by all the speakers of one language–speakers “abuse” words), these flaws are exceptionally detrimental to philosophy. Philosophy is the one way to get at “real” truth and “real” knowledge which exist separate from language, culture, society, and time; therefore this activity is held back by the shortcomings of people–not that this touchstone doesn’t exist.
When it comes to the topic of rhetoric, Locke calls for clarity and order. Anything else is dangerous as rhetoric in its mot eloquent form deceives and plays on the vice that humankind has in being pleasurably deceived; “wit and fancy find easier entertainment in the world than dry truth and real knowledge” (827).
“Giambattista Vico”
Vico argued against Descartes’ claims that math and science were the only legitimate sources of knowledge and that the “other branches of human inquiry…law, history and the arts” (862) were inconsequential. Vico’s position, due to the temperament and popularity of Descartes’ work at the time, earned him the label of “reactionary.”
“Vico argues that rhetoric provides a superior philosophy of knowledge, for all knowledge, even the scientific, is based on argument and conviction” (862).
In “On the Study Methods of Our Time,” Vico seeks to reconcile humanism…with modern but non-Cartesian science. He objects to Descartes’s insensitivity to the function of language in producing knowledge. Without language, says Vico, the human knoweris lost. Language reveals the processes of reason, passion, and imagination, as well as the social conventions and historical circumstances that shape our concerns. The etymology of the national language reveals our social history; similarly, language socializes each individual…The Cartesian method is useful, Vico concedes, but it cannot be allowed to overpower the kind of sensus communis or common sense that the study of eloquence stimulates with its appeals to imagination and memory and its practice in the commonplaces of argument. (862)
Here is a small list of Vico’s charges against Descartes’s theories:
- Mathematical proof is ultimately based on our acceptance of the system of axioms created by human beings; we can point to no demonstration of the applicability of the axioms to the world itself
- The Cartesian method of division focuses ideally on isolated particles of knowledge, stifling the kind of analogic thinking that generates so many insights.
- The Cartesian model of the isolated inquirer precludes dialogue, which fertilizes thought.
- The Cartesian method fails to encourage independent discovery, proceeding instead on a plodding course from axiom to proof. (862-863)
Vico feared if this model was accepted as the only educational model it would prevent teaching other types of inquiry and knowledge making, and in a circuitous way, devalue pragmatic subjects like public affairs and create leaders with no clue how to govern a nation-state.
Vico’s concepts interconnecting language, history, science, and culture is now seens as invaluable to philosophers and rhetoricians. “Vico unites ethics and eloquence through his concept of sesnus communis, a “common sense” that is both epistemological in function and culturally based. Thus Vico forges a link between rhetoric and philosophy that contemporary thinkers are still exploring” (864).
From On the Study Methods of Our Time
In this tract Vico is asking for a humanist education that does not use Cartesian based sciences. Although he never directly mentions Descartes nor his theories, his references to the (then) current philosophical approach is Vico’s method of censure; this censuring works by comparing the current pedagogical (philosophical approach=philosophy of education) to the standard of “the Ancients.” By comparing and contrasting the two pedagogical approaches, Vico attempts to convince the reader of the shortcomings of the Cartesian method of study and the benefits of blending the received practices of the Ancients (still alive in rhetoric, history, art, and law) with sciences not based on the individual knower and formal logic.
The most interesting (at least to me) section of the text is where Vico describes the shortcomings of the French. Through demonstrating how language defines how things can be arranged and in what style, Vico claims that thought and understanding of the material world is exceptionally different in France than in other European countries. It reads as racist and nationalist, but since France is a former empire and a large player in the modern European Union, I think it’s safe to focus on the understanding of probabilistic reasoning-language-thought connection and not the pejoritization of the French nation-state and its people (874) (also, I figure this is another covert attack on Descartes since it’s his home country).
The interesting complication of Vico’s system, something not taken up the introduction, is his championing of a unitary social system–something akin to what currently happens in places like France and the United Kingdom. Vico states:
I would suggest that our professors should so co-ordinate all disciplines into a single system so as to harmonize them with our religion and with the spirit of the political form under which we live. In this way, a coherent body of learning having been established, it will be possible to teach it according to the genius of our public polity. (876)
Vico builds this off the idea that in ancient Greece there were only single instructors teaching all subjects and most were exceptionally patriotic. While I understand this system and its advantages, and how it works on a large level to govern an entire society, it seems something intentionally left out of the introduction; in the introduction Vico reads more as an egalitarian populist.
The multitude versus the wise man–column two, page 873.
Rebuttal to imagined critics–column one, page 873.
The practical man as the sage and the man best suited to make his way through everyday reality in a way that benefits him–column one page 872.
The difference between abstract knowledge and prudence–column two, page 871-872.
Projected outcome of a good humanist education–column two page 870.
Rhetoric in the European Tradition
Thomas Conley
Chapter Six: “Rhetoric in the Seventeenth Century”
In this chapter Conley asserts that the seventeeth was only slightly less chaotic and bloody than the sixteenth, saying “only five years of the sixteenth century were free from political conflict: for the seventeenth, the total is four. This century saw radical political upheavals and protracted wars in every European country” (151). These wars and upheavals shaped philosophy, literature, and rhetoric in ways–according to Conley–have just recently been reconsidered.
The emphasis during the first part of this century was affecting the emotions; this was a product of the Reformation and the Counterreformation as clergy from both sides looked to gain followers. Conley refers to this as the Baroque mentality, which was heavily influenced by the Jesuits. The Jesuits stressed “the communicative potential of the arts, their ability to have an effect on the audiences, to move it and involve it” (156). There are three forgotten rhetoricians from this time:
- Caussin (155-157)
- Keckermann (157-159)
- Vossius (159-162)
All three focused on emotion. This was a switch from the controversia/dialecitcal of the previous age as it was more unilateral; it become more so with the philosophical emphasis on strong monarchs (Hobbes 166-167), emphasis on rhetoric as persuasive delivery and not a knowledge making art (Bacon 167-171), and Cartesian science (171-173; dualism, individual knower, thesis to proof, the possibility of only true or false outcomes).
While several other historians of rhetoric have blamed this big three for the (lowly) position of rhetoric within the current academy, Conley asserts it’s the rhetoricians who used the work of the above three philosphers that moved Rhetorica from the top of the hierarchy to the basement. Citing a few rhetoricians he thinks little of , Conley names Bernard Lemy as the embodied death knell of rhetoric. Lemy uses the work of Descartes to “explicitly” revise “the whole notion of rhetoric, transforming a means for handling controversia into a unilateral process of influence” (176). Lemy does this by divorcing persuasion from argumentation; persuasion now occurs by Cartesian proofs and not probabilistic reasoning.
One thing Conley stresses is the misconception that the move to “plain style” during this period was an all out rejection of rhetoric–that moving away from copiawas a sign of deficiency and corruption in comparison to the rhetorical study of previous periods. Conley refutes this by explaining:
the retreat from metaphor and from highly amplified prose was not a retreat, from a rhetorical standpoint, from affective prose, but an improved way of achieving emotional impact and moving wills. The plain style can be more effective because it is more concrete (therefore impressing the imagination more deeply), easier to follow (hence more directly affective), more precise in its diction (see “concrete”), and better fitted, as they thought, to the way the mind, appetites, and will of man work psychologically. (170)
According to the episteme of the time, Conley asserts, rhetoricians developed rhetorical strategies they felt effective, as suasive methods meeting the kairotic moment.
