Enlightenment Rhetoric

The Enlightenment era during the seventeenth and eighteenth century was a time of great change for Europe. During the Enlightenment era the focus was primarily on science and religion and finding truth. In this search for truth, rhetoric under went many changes. During the Renaissance, rhetoric focused on style and delivery. Peter Ramus’s ideas were among the most popular during the Renaissance. The Enlightenment era threw away Ramus’s ideas and returned to the Ciceronian traditional conception of rhetoric that focuses on the five cannon’s of rhetoric.  With this return to Cicero’s ideas of rhetoric, rhetoric became closely associated with genres of history, poetry and literary criticism. Those who focuses their rhetorical arguments on literary judgment were known as belletrists.

Since Ramus’s stylistic approaches to rhetoric were dismissed, a new style was called for. Science attacked rhetoric, saying that rhetoric obscured the truth. This notion was popular during the Enlightenment era, which caused rhetoric to form a plainer, simpler style. This was known as the elocution movement, that offered many instructions including correct pronunciation.

The Enlightenment era searched for truth primarily within the government and the church. Since science deemed traditional rhetoric has an obscurity from the truth many began to think of rhetoric differently. John Locke was one rhetor who explored new philosophies of rhetoric. Locke attempted to search for truth in the physical world and understand knowledge as a psychological phenomenon. Locke focused on the idea of reflection, which means to relate ideas together. He also focused on the power of words, thinking of them as arbitrary signs for our sensations and ideas.

The Enlightenment era was a great time of change for rhetoric. The primarily fact based rhetoric we have today began during the Enlightenment era as people attempted to understand how things worked scientifically.