Rhetoric in the European Tradition
Thomas Conley
Chapter Seven: “Eighteenth Century Rhetorics”
The Rhetorical Tradition
Bizzell and Herzberg, eds.
“Thoman Sheridan”
A Course of Lectures on Elocution
“George Campbell”
From The Philosophy of Rhetoric
“Hugh Blair”
From Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres
Rhetoric in the European Tradition
Thomas Conley
Chapter Seven: “Eighteenth Century Rhetorics”
188-189 Swift works to satirize the Cartesian ideas of dualism and the theory that words affect the body by mere physiological force; in the example Swift mentions vowel sounds, belching and farting as ways to move audiences.
Bottom of 189 qand into 190, Conley describes how Swift’s comical send up of representation theory was a hyperbolic take on the work of Descartes, Hobbes, and Locke, but then explains how Swift’s sarcasm can be seen as the logical, extreme conclusion of such theories.
First full paragraph of 190=the mission statement of the chapter.
Conley asserts “[r]hetoricians [had] appropriated the vocabulary of the New Philosophy because they had already become convinced…such things were precisely what persuasion consisted in” (190), meaning that rhetoricians of the time period believed that persuasion was achieved through simplicity and clarity. Because of this, Conley explains “We will not therefore take the view that the New Philosophy itself brought about radical changes in rhetorical theory” (190).
The problem for rhetoricians in this time period was the solipsism which came with the New Philosophy. If all that could be known is the self, and if all that can be proven to exist is the self, and all that can be communicated is consciousness of the speaker, how then can a speaker be clear and move “others’ souls” (196)?
Buffier gets around this by creating the principle he called “common sense.” He defines it as “the disposition which nature has put in all men, or clearly in the greatest number of men, to form…a common and uniform judgment concerning objects from the objects of one’s own consciousness” (Buffier qtd in Conley 196).
Buffier makes this common sense self-evident. “[T]here is something in men which is called truth, wisdom, and prudence, and it is not something wholly arbitrary”; “all men are not in conspiracy to deceive me”; “what is affirmed through the experiences and testimony of all men is incontestably true”; “a fact attested by a very large number of reasonable men who claim to have witnessed it cannot reasonably be revoked by doubt”; and all of this was “something of a spiritual nature” (196). This, according to Conley meant “[t]he essence of the art of rhetoric…could now be grounded firmly on ’self -evident’ truths, as could the faculty of taste” (197).
So if moves can be made in rhetoric’s past to respond to issue which threaten its efficacy at that moment, then how is Glenn’s use of Aspasia somehow disingenuous as claimed by her critics? It seems a common enough move in all the periods we’ve studied this semester. Rhetoricians of the past are forgotten or for-grounded, as well as elements of rhetoric, as the needs of the milieu required so rhetorical study could survive through being viewed as as a vibrant and useful course of study. Isn’t that all that’s going on in Glenn’s Rhetoric Retold in a very broad way?
DuMarsais is important to rhetoric as he freed “meaning from the limitations of the representational theory of meaning by demonstrating the rational principles of association that govern meaning even where the meaning is not literal” (198).
There is evidently no need, in Bouhours’ view, to take all that New Philosophy into account since, in the final analysis as it bears on eloquence, it supplies nothing new and only complicates matter by formalizing something that can be made obvious simply by looking at the ways various authors express themselves…it provided a relatively painless and accessible way by which a reader could sharpen his (or her) sense of good literature– that is–acquire taste. (200)
The above quote seems to match the issue in this time period Lois alluded to last class–the beginnings of literary studies as a way to teach rhetoric and make people familiar with the various rhetorics popular throughout Western Europe.
Rollin–French–audience is the focus, and the use of the simple style ensures that the rhetor can have affect on the audience (201-202). This also is at the time of the bourgeois honnete homme, the educated, gentil, member of polite society. Rhetorical training was important as it cultivated the mind and speech (think Quintillian), and just was important was aesthetic taste; this was achieved through a familiarity with many intellectual endeavors, especially belle lettres.
Buffier and DuMarsais made conscious adjustments to the New Philosophy, while Bouhours and Rollin may be seen as the “classicizers” who ignored the doctrines being promoted i nthe name of reason.
French cultural dominacne occurs through the rhetorics coming out of France and the need for philosophers and examples of strong, absolute monarchs working without the doctrine of divine approval. The Reformation threw the social order into flux, and all things French still promoted a strong central authority. The eventual rebellion was less about philosophical/rhetorical schisms and more about the desire for other Europeans countries to speak their own languages in “polite society.”
Education, and especially university education, used for the purposes of national identity/cultural hegemony building and a way to pacify the new merchant class and the old money nobles (still a new thing) (204).
Rhetorics from the Hinterlands (the fringes of the British Isles) is built on the English system of social aspiration and possibility for advancement on the social ladder. Speaking well for all “polite” and governmental situations was a concern for these provincials. From this movement comes Campbell and Blair.
One thing [the New Philosophy] was able to provide [for] some rhetoricians…was a psychological model that could be appealed to in order to show how rhetoric works. But the new New Philosophy had to be adjusted and revised in order for it to be used because, in itself, it made rhetoric virtually impossible or, if possible, then disreputable. (224)
The idea of common sense and belle lettres seems to carry across all of England and the Continent in this period; the figure of the honnetes hommes was so strong it survived no matter the culture or the language. This, too, would be the beginning of literary study. Contrary to popular belief, modern English Studies comes from rhetoric, not vice versa.
The Rhetorical Tradition
Bizzell and Herzberg, eds.
“Thoman Sheridan”
Sheridan received a classical education from his father, Dr. Thomas Sheridan; mentoring from his godfather, Jonathan Swift; an MA from Trinity College (Dublin); and was an actor of note before becoming an advocate of correct elocution–in English. It was his believe and claim, like all things related to education, that correct elocution would improve the moral fiber, the ethical practices, revive the fine arts, raise religion to its proper place within English society, and encourage sincere support for the British constitution (why is this the only rhetorical strategy to drum up support for education?)
He argues, too, that just as language is the medium of reason, so voice and gesture are the “natural language of the passions.” John Locke had demonstrated the former connection, but the latter, says Sheridan, need further philosophical investigation. Sheridan’s lectures appeal to science, reverence for the ancients, linguistic anxiety (the popular passion fir speaking correctly), and morality, bringing to bear every possible argument for the importance of elocution. The very excess of this insistent overevaluation of elocution led to criticism and undervaluation of Sheridan’s project. (879-880)
[Sheridan] cautions against reading-pronunciation (eg, pronouncing “often” with the “t”) and urges speakers to attend to the meaning of sentences to determine the placement of emphasis and pauses. Gestures should also be natural. But, he notes, the meaning of gestures is conventional; they are actions attached to ideas: Natural therefore means “not mechanical,” rather than “springing from human nature.” (880)
A Course of Lectures on Elocution
Bottom of column one of 881 into the top of the second column Sheridan gives a very wide and seemingly untroubled (read: no interference by the New Philosophy) definition of language.
The claim at the end of the piece (888) appears to be the power of language as an affective tool to move people, and whether this is due to my knowledge of his career as an actor I don’t know, but it seems to match Conley’s discussion in chapter seven of a unilateral style of rhetoric. There is convention, but it is up to the speaker to utilize that convention and move the passive audience through the performative act of speaking.
Sheridan makes a long account of animals and how making utterances is natural, there is no real need for explanation beyond the fact that all animals, including man, have this power and have learned to utilize it for the common and individual good. On 885 Sheridan explains that the ear is designed to pick up tones and decipher the intentions of a speech act by the mere intonation of the speaker’s voice. Here, it seems Sheridan is working from Buffier’s ideas about common sense, ie, there are certain self-evident truths about experiential reality and man as a social animal that do not need a rational explanation. What’s important it to work with those truths so as to make audience members malleable and amenable to your proposed course of action. For Sheridan, this means speaking in ways to rouse the emotions, to present one’s self as credible, and to speak in a manner that is affective.
“George Campbell”
Campbell served as a minister for the Church of Scotland before he became the principal of Marischal College, his alma mater. Campbell also served as a professor of divinity at Marischal. Campbell helped to found the Philosophical Society of Aberdeen; the group criticized but also admired the work of Scottish philosopher David Hume (Campbell’s Dissertation on Miracles is an answer to Hume’s attack on religion).
See chart on page 898.
For Campbell, rhetoric must “address all the mind’s facilities–the understanding, the imagination, the passions, and the will–to achieve persuasion” (898) (this is quote is found in Book I of The Philosophy of Rhetoric).
The path to persuasion, in Campbell’s theory, passes through each of the faculties in turn. Therefore, rhetoric must appeal first to the understanding and produce conviction, without which persuasion cannot follow. Convincing arguments are based upon reasoning, of which, says Campbell, there are two kinds: scientific and moral. Scientific reasoning relies on general principles, such as mathematical axioms or inductive generalizations. From these principles, it demonstrates a conclusion by a chain of logical links. But in all human affairs that concern “pleasure and pain, wisdom and folly, beauty and deformity” and in disputes where there is real evidence on both sides of the case, moral reasoning takes precedence over scientific reasoning. (898-899)
It would seem this is the carry over we experience now. Only when it is a question of with more than one possible answer will interlocutors in the current time eschew scientific reasoning; unfortunately they often turn to well-worn arguments based in the value system of the dominant hegemony.
For Campbell, persuasion is more than a casual chain; it’s a bundle of evidence that must be used to convince the audience and then move, through the stages as listed in the chart on 898, to persuasion. “Reasoning thus becomes the a natural part of rhetoric: Rhetoric begins with the search for truth and then proceeds to persuasion, the attempt to move the will to ethical action” (899).
Syllogism and the stages of composition are unnecessary in Campbell’s rhetoric. There are only two stage of persuasion: 1)exciting some desire or passion in the hearers and then 2)satisfying their judgment that there is a connexion between the action to which he would persuade them, and the gratification of the desire or passion which he excites (899).
Book Two deals with grammar and makes the bold claim all grammar should be descriptive, not prescriptive (and descriptive is limited to the educated classes and their conventions). In Book Three he makes a similar argument about style.
syntax: the study of the patterns of formation of sentences and phrases from words.
diction:style of speaking or writing as dependent upon choice of words.
From The Philosophy of Rhetoric
“All the ends of speaking are reducible to four; every speech being intended to enlighten the understanding, to please the imagination, to move the passions, or to influence the will” (902).
Reaching the heart is all important for Campbell. Being affective is the way to gain “consent of the will” (905). According to Campbell, this makes rhetoric akin to a force of nature, or a piece of “heaven’s artillery” (905).
There are three types of intuitive evidence according to Campbell:
- Mathematical Axioms (907)
- Consciousness (908)
- Common Sense (909)
“The first may be denominated metaphysical, the second physical, the third moral; all of them natural, original, and unaccountable” (912).
All rational or deductive evidence is derived from one or other of these two soures: from the invariable properties or relations of general ideas; or from the actual, though perhaps variable connexions subsisting among things. The former we call demonstrative, the latter moral. Demonstration is built on pure intellection, and consisteth in an uninterrupted series of axioms…Moral evidence is founded on the principles we have from consciousness and common sense, improved by experience; and as it proceeds on this general presumption or moral axiom, that the course of nature in time to come will be similar to what it hath been hitherto, it decides, in regard to particulars, concerning the future from the past, and concerning things unknown from things familiar to us. (912)
“The proper province of rhetoric is the second, moral evidence; for to the second belong all decisions concerning fact, and things without us” (912).
Difference between deductive and moral evidence 912-914.
There are four subdivisions of moral reasoning:
- Experience
- Analogy
- Testimony
- Calculations of Chance
The rest of the text continues on in this fashion, ie, listing, teasing out, and explaining how Campbell’s theory of rhetoric works in a way that a speaker can apply them to the everyday speech act. Everyday, it turns out, means the everyday rhetorical situation a minister (religious sense), a lawyer, or a politician would find himself in; Campbell gives these professionals ways to present themselves to an audience and methods so as to read an audience. The reading allows the professinal to develop the most persuasive strategy for that specific kairotic moment. During this section, Campbell places an emphasis on convincing and moving; Campbell makes it clear you can convince without moving, which means no action will come from the speaker’s performance; in the converse moving without convincing an audience of some specific purpose will lead to emotion with no worthwhile outcome (the worst case scenario is to incite some mindless action like violence or immoral/unethical acts).
In the very end Campbell explains the orator with the heaviest burden is the minister (makes sense considering Campbell himself was a man of the cloth).
“Hugh Blair”
Blair, like Campbell, was a minister in the Church of Scotland (hence I suppose all the unitateral, informative, affective theories of rhetoric).
Blair connectcs his rhetori to the leading ideas of the period: to reason, human nature, the need to cultivate,taste, and moral improvement. This scheme clearly links rhetoric and belles lettres. Rhetoric seeks to persuade through appeals to reason and the passions; criticism, in turn, evaluates aesthetic objects on the basis of their appeals to the same faculties. Good taste is thus at the root of both, and human nature is the foundation of taste…In pursuing this model Blair is at pains to reject received notions of eloquence and style and to build instead on modern psychology. (947)
Here I think it means Blair is moving away from the notions found in Renaissance rhetorics–the idea that there are certain modes to follow to endear oneself to the denziens at court or the salon(s). Rhetoric, if I’m reading this correctly, means speaking clearly so as to move the listener without the use of learned ornamentation, and an overall moral improvement through study and understanding of the humanities.
Still, knowing what I know about early pschology from The Mismeasure of Man, the basis of rhetoric on “modern psychology” is troubling. Rhetoric has always been theorized, written about, and knowingly practiced by the powerful (yes, even uni profs are powerful in comparison to the average hoi polloimaking her way through the world), the sciences at this time were making moves to essentialize the socially constructed, racist, classist qualities attributed to the colonized and the working class; these theories also reified the heavy handed institutional racism and political disenfranchisement that existed at that time.
From Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres
“Knowledge and science must furnish the materials that form the body and substance of any valuable composition. Rhetoric serves to add polish; and we know that none but firm and solid bodies can be polished well” (951). It seems it is impossible to use rhetoric to make knowledge through probabilistic reasoning in Blair’s rhetoric.
Articulated split between Rhetoric-Composition and Belle Lettres on the top of the second column on page 951.
“True rhetoric and sound logic are very nearly allied. The study of arranging and expressing our thoughts with propriety, teaches us to think, as well as to speak, accurately” (952). Blair doesn’t say “correctly,” but as the text moves forward his take of accuracy and taste seem to presuppose there is a standard of accuracy that equates to good taste and is built on a transcendental signified of “good” or “bad” writing. I have not, as yet, read a disclaimer that all ideas of good and bad are built on social convention, on cultural episteme like other rhetoricians from this week’s reading.
By 954 good works become products of genius, not the work playing on conventions. Couched in his later (in the final lecture) on “natural,” it would seem that genius is not something that denotes a speaker/writer capable of moving audiences through affective rhetoric, but through some divinely given attribute probably best referred to as “talent.”
Also, on 954 there is talk of rhetoric as a diversion from the hard work of science to discover (not make) knowledge.
“The indirect method of making an impression is likely to be more successful…This can often be accomplished more happily in a few sentences inspired by natural warmth, than in a long and studied address” (976). The problem here is that “natural” is nothing more than the social conventions a speaker/writer has noticed and is leveraging to his advantage. Most likely, there has been a long term of study–even if it’s not methodical, it’s people noticing how to coerce others within their immediate context by observing custom. It’s mundane, something people learn as children without knowing it. What is this “natural” Blair is referring to? Is there only one way?
On 977 Blair intimates that writing, to be natural, should occur in a rush of emotion. There may be some validity to this, but it does paint writing as creative art, not a way to make knowledge. There is no rigor. There is only emotion, and this–except only in specific spheres and situations–subtracts cultural capital from writing.
Lecture II on “taste” appears to argue that there is a universal, undefinable, but real standard that stands outside mundane reality for what is beautiful and good when it comes to art. Blair and Barthes seem closely aligned here; something must move, or “puncture” the beholder. These refined folks in the know are found only “in polished and flourishing nations” (961) since they have the resources available to develop the natural good taste of (and the right living, healthy minds and bodies) of good men.
Lecture XIV is about figurative language, and is much less troubling. It’s a straightforward and clear account of how and why figures and tropes are used. Still, in reading this I notice a difference between Blair and Campbell: Campbell realizes that a speaker is trying to move an audience with emotion after gaining their conviction, and that the source for that conviction–even with science and New Philosophy–is still debateable. Blair seems to forgo that conceit; he seems convinced that common sense is the same as taste, and the educated listener/reader will automatically be moved by someone else who understands the truth of the subject at hand.
Lecture XXV–the interesting part is how Eloquence, or Public Speaking, is made to evolve into Persuasion, and Persuasion takes on a very Campbell-esque quality; moverover, that Persuasion is seen as something that can only occur in free states. This idea is tied to antiquity; Greece had it but Egypt didn’t. Sounds very extreme Aryan model (a la Bernal).
