Classical Rhetoric and Neoclassical Education (Jan. 11 Lecture))

Cicero

-Roman philosopher and politician, 106-43 BC
-Built on Greek rhetoric
-Believed in liberal education for all free men
-Broad scope of erudition – studying many natural and human sciences, as well as arts, rhetoric, law, spirituality
-Looked to Aristotelian rhetoric as a model for good arguments, and classical Greek literature philosophy as models of virtue

Cicero's Canons of Rhetoric

-Five separate arts or skills comprising the art of rhetoric
-Processes that a successful rhetor must engage in
-Mastered by practice + imitation of virtuous models

-Inventio
-Invention, planning
-Brainstorming for ideas, coming up with major points, developing and refining arguments
-Thinking about your goals, audience, strenghts and weaknesses as speaker

-Dispositio
-Arrangement, organization (“disposition”)
-Organizing your arguments logically to achieve maximum impact (e.g. ordering main points of an argument or order of thesis/antithesis in dialectic)

-Elocutio
-Style, language (“elocution”)
-Choosing your tone, words, metaphors, and other language devices to suit the needs of your argument

-Memoria
-Memorization, preparation
-Learning how to deliver your speech without relying on notes, building up a general erudition (facts, quotes, and useful references that you could bring up in any situation); learning how to prepare effectively but also to think on the spot

-Actio
-Delivery, expression (“action”)
-Learning how to use your voice, body language, speech setting to deliver your speech persuasively, confidently, dynamically – mastering your nerves, your body and the space around it

(Neo-)Classical Rhetoric

-Continues to be taught, nearly 2400 years since Aristotle formalized it
-Was a significant part of liberal education, particularly popular in ancient times (Greece and Rome) and from the Renaissance onwards in modern Europe (thus “Renaissance Man” as someone of very broad knowledge and many talents)

-Frequently criticized by scholars and philosophers as deceptive, but also praised as a means of spreading and stabilizing truth and virtueby others (e.g. St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas)
-Never managed to successfully shake off suspicion towards it as an imprecise science

-Reached its height during the Enlightenment (17th-19^th centuries), when the Neoclassical movement looked back to Greek and Roman culture as a model for how civilization should be, and sought to create an scientific community, intellectual culture, and social institutions that imitated the ancients (or, more accurately, their own ideal of the ancients)

-From the late 19^th century onward, rhetoric fell into decline along with liberal education – scientific progress (which was presented as the real vehicle of truth) and the Industrial Revolution led to increasingly specialized education which produced specialists in narrow fields of knowledge rather than liberal thinkers of broad erudition

-Interest in rhetoric was revived significantly by the 1960s – while the Neo-Aristotelian perspective remained a potent one, many new schools of thought emerged