Rhetorician
As James Jasinski explains, "the range of rhetoric began to be narrowed during the 16th century, thanks in part to the works of Peter Ramus." In using the word "narrowed," Jasinski is referring to Ramus argument for divorcing rhetoric from dialectic (logic), a move that had far reaching implications for rhetorical studies and for popular conceptions of public persuasion. Contemporary rhetoricians have tended to reject Ramus's view in favor of a more wide ranging (and in many respects, Aristotelian) understanding of the rhetorical arts as encompassing "a range of ordinary language practices." Rhetoric, traditionally, had had five parts, of which inventio (invention) was the first. Two others were dispositio (arrangement) and memoria (memory). Ramus proposed transferring those back to the realm of dialectic (logic); and merging them under a new heading, renaming them as iudicium (judgment). Brian Vickers said that the Ramist influence here did add to rhetoric: it concentrated more on the remaining aspect of elocutio or effective use of language, and emphasised the role of vernacular European languages (rather than Latin). The effect was that rhetoric was applied in literature.
His rhetorical leaning is seen in the definition of logic as the ars disserendi; he maintains that the rules of logic may be better learned from observation of the way in which Cicero persuaded his hearers than from a study of Aristotle's works on logic (the Organon).
Logic falls, according to Ramus, into two parts: invention (treating of the notion and definition) and judgment (comprising the judgment proper, syllogism and method). Here he was influenced by Rodolphus Agricola. This division gave rise to the jocular designation of judgment or mother-wit as the "secunda Petri". But what Ramus does here in fact redefines rhetoric. There is a new configuration, with logic and rhetoric each having two parts: rhetoric was to cover elocutio and pronuntiatio. In general, Ramism liked to deal with binary trees as method for organising knowledge.
Read more about this topic: Petrus Ramus
Famous quotes containing the word rhetorician:
“The rhetorician would deceive his neighbours,
The sentimentalist himself; while art
Is but a vision of reality.
What portion in the world can the artist have
Who has awakened from the common dream
But dissipation and despair?”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician demonstrative proofs.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)