Erasmus, connecting with Augustine, also had a huge influence on rhetoric through religion. Erasmus believed that a few different things contributed to rhetoric, including arrangement, delivery, emotion, and figures of speech. You can actually see how this connects with Aristotle's idea of logic.
I will focus my blog today on Arrangement. There were 5 steps to making an argument with Arrangement including:
1) Word order
2) Order of propositions
3) Parts of individual arguments
4) Large section
5) Whole sermon
Word order seems like the most logically important aspect of rhetoric. You need to organize your sentences, paragraphs, and thoughts to make sense. Scattered arguments won't get anywhere. Order of propositions is along the same lines, because you need to order your thoughts to make the most sense. He thought they should go in a stepwise order.
Parts of individual arguments breaks off a bit. He thought that you should separate your arguments, and even break up each individual argument. Keep the ideas the separate and join them later.
Large section and whole sermon go together. Since Erasmus was into religious rhetoric (like Augustine), he believed in the whole thing connecting to both religion and sermons. Sermons were his way of rhetorically influencing people. He saved the best arguments for the end of his sermons.
Blog #11 -- Augustine
Augustine, for all intents and purposes, is the Cicero for Christians. He, essentially, took rhetoric and put a Christian (or "ethical") spin on it. He outlined the different "offices" of rhetoric, which were: instructing, pleasing, and persuading. These were the same as Cicero's styles (plain, middle, grand). Interestingly, he believed that it was better for rhetoric to argue a good point badly, than a bad point well.
This has obvious connections with the previous rhetorical figure Quintillian. However, I will not focus this blog on this subject (yet again). Instead, I have decided to connect what Augustine's offices were to Aristotle's components.
Instructing is essentially Aristotle's ethos. In an argument, you need to teach or tell your audience about your subject. You need credibility to properly do this. Instruction is essential for forming background information and setting up an argument, like ethos sets up logic.
Pleasing is essentially Aristotle's pathos. In rhetoric, pleasing emotions are very, very important. The audience responds well to positive emotions. Psychologically, if you try to scare people into doing something, they need to see a solution or they won't change. Simply saying "the world is on a crash course for destruction because of reckless human manipulation" won't get them to change unless you say "reduce your impact on the world," after. They've done studies on it. Emotions and pleasing go hand-in-hand.
Lastly, persuading is essentially Aristotle's logos. Logic and persuasion must go together. Although Aristotle would say that persuasion is the sum of ethos, pathos, and logos, you can definitely see that logos plays a huge role. Even Aristotle thought that logic should be the primary basis for the art of persuasion (or rhetoric). Logic has more credibility than emotions. Emotions are sometimes not even logical!
This has obvious connections with the previous rhetorical figure Quintillian. However, I will not focus this blog on this subject (yet again). Instead, I have decided to connect what Augustine's offices were to Aristotle's components.
Instructing is essentially Aristotle's ethos. In an argument, you need to teach or tell your audience about your subject. You need credibility to properly do this. Instruction is essential for forming background information and setting up an argument, like ethos sets up logic.
Pleasing is essentially Aristotle's pathos. In rhetoric, pleasing emotions are very, very important. The audience responds well to positive emotions. Psychologically, if you try to scare people into doing something, they need to see a solution or they won't change. Simply saying "the world is on a crash course for destruction because of reckless human manipulation" won't get them to change unless you say "reduce your impact on the world," after. They've done studies on it. Emotions and pleasing go hand-in-hand.
Lastly, persuading is essentially Aristotle's logos. Logic and persuasion must go together. Although Aristotle would say that persuasion is the sum of ethos, pathos, and logos, you can definitely see that logos plays a huge role. Even Aristotle thought that logic should be the primary basis for the art of persuasion (or rhetoric). Logic has more credibility than emotions. Emotions are sometimes not even logical!
Blog #10 - Quintillian
After reading and learning about Quintillian, I came to the conclusion that rhetoric is about the virtuous, or the good. He thought that rhetoric was "The good men speaking well." Rhetoric was about the presence of mind, the objectivity to decipher between right and wrong.
I don't know if he would consider rhetoric about evil things as true rhetoric, since it wasn't focused on the good. Was Hitler a good rhetorician? He was able to move an entire nation and change the entire world. He was able to speak to the masses. However, his message was flawed. But, it still begs the question, was he a good rhetorician?
Quintillian would say "no." In order to be effective, you still need the overall good in mind. However, if this were strictly the case, then would advertisements, which we almost all consider "rhetoic", be considered rhetoric? They are after getting customers and maximizing their own profits. They are almost exploiting people. Its more subtle then say, Hitler, but nonetheless, its worth pointing out.
Unfortunately, rhetoric is composed of both the good and bad, the virtuous and the evil. You almost need the bad rhetoric in order to define the good rhetoric. In this sense, I would disagree with Quintillian and his nothing of needing the good in rhetoric.
I don't know if he would consider rhetoric about evil things as true rhetoric, since it wasn't focused on the good. Was Hitler a good rhetorician? He was able to move an entire nation and change the entire world. He was able to speak to the masses. However, his message was flawed. But, it still begs the question, was he a good rhetorician?
Quintillian would say "no." In order to be effective, you still need the overall good in mind. However, if this were strictly the case, then would advertisements, which we almost all consider "rhetoic", be considered rhetoric? They are after getting customers and maximizing their own profits. They are almost exploiting people. Its more subtle then say, Hitler, but nonetheless, its worth pointing out.
Unfortunately, rhetoric is composed of both the good and bad, the virtuous and the evil. You almost need the bad rhetoric in order to define the good rhetoric. In this sense, I would disagree with Quintillian and his nothing of needing the good in rhetoric.
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