The first part of the writing in Ancient Rhetoric’s for Contemporary Students focuses on the idea of logical proofs, “logos”, particularly Aristotle’s classification of them. Aristotle breaks logical proofs into four categories: scientific demonstration, dialectic, rhetoric, and false or contentious reasoning. Reading further about Aristotle’s categories of logical proofs I found that they still made sense in term of modern rhetorics. Scientific demonstration reasoning is defined as coming from premises that are true or that experts believe to be true. Dialetic reasoning defined as coming from premises that are accepted by people who are suppose to be wise; less certain premises. Rhetorical reasoning defined as being drawn from premises of belief that are accepted by all or most members of a community. False/contentious reasoning is defined as coming from premises that only appear to be widely accepted or that are mistakes/lies. All of these ancient categories of logical proofs can still be used in modern rhetoric’s. This chapter of the book was helpful when thinking of how to construct and argument logically.
The second reading in The Rhetorical Tradition was interesting because it talked about more modern rhetor’s: Cicero and Quintilian. Both rhetor’s were regarded as coming from families of money of high class and money and have similar training, yet Quintilian’s rhetoric did not seem to match up to Cicero. In fact Quintilian from the reading appeared to be an amateur rhetor who merrily repeated other rhetor’s idea in a slightly different context. Cicero was credited for setting the standards of the modern categories of speech (deliberative, forensic, ceremonial) and the five canons of rhetorical composing process (invention, arrangement, style, memory, delivery). But Quintilian was only credited for arguing that a good speaker needs to be a good man, an idea that was originally suggested by Plato anyways. Quintilian’s style even focused mainly on other rhetor’s ideas. In a rhetorical argument his known style was to approach a subject with the view of an ancient rhetor and then align his own opinion with that of the ancient author. Personally I did not find Quintilian to be a great asset to rhetoric. I found only his advice of “presence of mind” meaning to keep grace under pressure to be useful in term of rhetoric.
I agree with your opinion on Quintilian. He came off to me as more of an afterthought as a rhetorician, though that's not to discredit his eloquence as a speaker. I thought it was interesting that he was marked as trying to be the next Cicero, and yet he humbly rejected the comparison as though to admit to his own lack of innovation as a speaker. To me, he seemed to practice rhetoric as an homage to the acclaimed rhetoricians of the past, rather than attempt to break new ground.
ReplyDeleteYou broke down the chapter in ARCS very nicely I liked how he broke down the individual forms of logos as well. I found that the way he explained the different forms made it very helpful in drawing conclusions about an argument and in the development of a premise. I also agree that all of the logical proofs apply to rhetoric today as well.
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