The Renaissance & Peter Ramus

The renaissance was a time of war, violence and evolution. According to the reading, the Catholic Church had been in power as the religious and political head of state. This changed in the renaissance however. The middle class grew, and governments started to base power on monarchs and those in professional lifestyles. Humanism came about in the renaissance and “emphasized human powers to know and change the world and insisted on scholar’s rights to pursue knowledge without being constrained by church dogma” (Herzberg 555). Humanism started in northern Italy where people weren’t as effected by war and disease, even though they did see the Black Death. Being a center of philosophy and law when the rest of the world is in turmoil allows for a people to have a much greater influence over time.

With all of this change came some change in thinking among the youth in the region. Peter Ramus in specific was one of these different thinkers. He gained his Master of Arts degree using a thesis ridiculing Aristotle and other classical philosophers. Once graduated he began to teach students in colleges and gained quite a following. The reason this made such an impact was based on his ideas. Ramus attacked Aristotle and scholasticism according to the reading and “since scholasticism and the Paris facility were still strongly associated in people’s minds with the catholic church, Ramus`s academic arguments took on overtones of religious reform” (Herzberg 675).  His ideas however took flight as he gained a following. His claim was that “the ability to reason was innate in normal humans. One did not need to learn from Aristotle or any other classical source” (Herzberg 675).he said it was a waste of time to study the classical readings and texts because a person’s own thought process and pursuit of knowledge is what’s important. This seemed to take the idea of rhetoric capability and open it to the masses. He claimed that the only two aspects of rhetoric that mattered were style and delivery. He composed a list of topics which dialectical invention comes from in his proposed method. He was arguably making a “universal method of inquiry” which he thought was what people wanted. He seemed to have quite an impact in his time that he was alive, and historians argue that he changed humanism into humanities because of this universal method.

Bizzell, Patricia, and Bruce Herzberg. "Against the Sophists." The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical times to the Present. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001. 72-74. Print.

Essay 1 Final

Imitatio Reflection:

Against the Lobbyists: Our Modern Day Sophists

Isocrates’s Against the Sophists was quite a speech to imitate. This speech was intended to set Isocrates apart from many of the other rhetoricians of his time, specifically the Sophists. He singled out the Sophists because he felt that they were not being true to the art and study of rhetoric. The status quo he felt had become one of deceit and lies. Isocrates claimed “although they say that they do not want money and speak contemptuously of wealth as ‘filthy lucre’, they hold their hands out for a trifling gain and promise to make their disciples all but immortal” (Bizzell 72). He attacks the quality and validity of their work and seems to feel a degree of anger towards these Sophists because he argues that the field is being degraded for mere monetary gains. There is no drive for the greater good and advancement of knowledge here, rather just greed.

            Finding a speech from an ancient rhetorician was very difficult for me, but after jumping around from speech to speech I finally fell upon Against the Sophists. Though it may not have seemed appealing, after reading it about two or three times I noticed how much this seemed familiar. It was heavily reflective of political races today. The connotation of rhetoric follows that of politics, and many consider them to be closely related. I am specifically referring to the parallels between this speech and that of a slur campaign or a breakaway stance in a politician’s campaign. However, analyzing the relations between the two seemed almost too simple. After writing a short rough draft of my speech, I noticed a blaring difference between Against the Sophists and a political slur campaign. Isocrates conveyed a love for teaching and a passion for the greater good of his students in his speech, whereas a political slur campaign ad has a more selfish feel about it. This is because a political candidate’s goal is to further their career and win elections arguably for the good of the public, but what is good for part of the public is not good for the whole. Isocrates on the other hand seemed to care about the good of his students more than his own prosper. If he was concerned about “winning” or being ahead of the competition he could have stayed with the Sophists and reaped the benefits however he didn’t do that.

            At this point I tried to think of a current issue where people were the people with more money get what they want and those with true promise and capabilities can get shut out. Of course politics came to my mind again. However, lots of political issues seem very self-centered and Isocrates was giving a speech to inform people of the issue at hand, not for his own benefit, but for theirs. If I was going to use politics as my topic, I needed a topic where I could empathize with the people and make a call to action against whatever political issue I picked in order to replicate the motive of Isocrates. I noticed that the exact scenario that I was thinking of was political lobbying by conglomerates and corporations to further their own interests. As the conveyor of this speech I would stand as Isocrates would against the unfair bias in political lobbying towards the wealthy and their interests.

The issue of lobbying in politics fit nicely with Isocrates`s Against the Sophists. However, making my speech sound at all like one written centuries ago was not simple and though I may not have fully evoked an Isocratic feel, I feel it mirrored his structure and use of rhetorical conventions. Isocrates seems to use this speech as  a public service announcement and as such I tried to make my speech mimic that tone. Through this process I learned a lot about how Isocrates formed his speeches and what forms of rhetoric he actually employed. Much of his rhetorical issues can be seen in modern times as well.

            Isocrates for one employs a great amount of ethos when he basically stakes his personal character on the issue. He suggests that he is willing to act in the best interest of the student rather than reap the benefits from taking advantage of the public and only tailoring to the rich. Isocrates does this not by blatantly saying these things but rather, he attacks the other side’s character and in doing so he separates himself as opposite from that group. According to Isocrates, the Sophists “distrust those from whom they are to get this money, they distrust, that is to say, the very men to whom they are about to deliver the sciences of just dealing” (Bizzell 72). He basically calls the other side a bunch of frauds. This mimics the stance that many anti-lobbying and anti-oil groups take.

            After attacking the credibility and character of the Sophists, Isocrates backs up his accusations using logical proofs. He shows that the Sophists are taking advantage of their students by explaining the fact that these teachers promise success as long as the students pay. However, Isocrates points out that success in this field isn’t something that can be guaranteed or bought and logically it should follow that if these Sophists are lying about one aspect of their services, they are more than likely lying about other parts.  This can be translated into modern times just as my speech showed when referring to BP oil and lobbyist funding.

            From a holistic point of view this project seemed very difficult. However, when broken down and thought out it was actually a very valuable learning experience. Being given loose guidelines and very general prompts seemed to me at first to be the product of a difficult class, but in hindsight this project actually allowed me to learn the material and synthesize it in a manner unique to myself. The reason it was hard I figured out was because in the past teachers did half of the work for you by providing a specific prompt and details. However as we have learned from relevant readings, class discussion , and especially this project, forming the questions and guidelines for ones work is just as important as the actual product itself.

Against the Sophists Imitation

Energy is something that we as a society are extremely reliant upon. Those who control energy control the world. I would ask, what responsibility does the energy industry have to work towards “the greater good”? Is it wrong for oil and gas companies to use their vast fortunes to influence politics and legislation? Even if it risks deteriorating our environment and economic independence?. Gas and oil are positive for our economy, but when “about 50% of the crude oil processed in U.S. imported” in 2013 according to the Energy Information Administration we see a dependency begin to form. This dependency as we have seen can lead to war, and can cause complications in international politics.

All this while there are promising benefits from clean energy. These benefits would include less foreign dependency, and a cleaner environment.   It is important to remember though that politics and legislation is all very influenced by money. By that I mean that having a limitless supply of money can guarantee that a company’s political interests are met. For example, the top 54 oil and gas companies in the world share a market value of over 4 trillion dollars. Since 2011 alone 105 million has been spent of lobbying for oil and gas in the United States and another 150 million has been spent on TV ads promoting fossil fuel interests.

The people in our country are being taken advantage of and these companies are only interested in financial gain. Time and time again we hear about these oil spills and oil wars, all because our dependency forces us to act on our fossil fuel interests in certain countries.

            I’m sure many of you remember the BP oil spill. In this case there was an offshore drilling incident where 200 million gallons of crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. The leak was capped and closed after 87 days of spilling into the ocean and devastating much of the coastlines. The officials at BP immediately started creating TV ads and organizing cleanup efforts, however their primary goal throughout the whole situation was salvaging their reputation. President Obama even created a 20 billion dollar response fund for relief. This was money that could have been spent in other places if this disaster had never occurred, but offshore drilling is heavily supported by companies that lobby to the U.S. Government.

            These companies play on the weakness of society based on our energy dependency. We don’t care how we get the energy as long as we get it. If money were spent on clean energy like it is on gas and oil there would be no shortage of clean energy which would reduce the impact to the environment.  These gas and oil companies are simply taking advantage of society’s dependency without any interest in the future. They look at the issue from a why fix it if it isn’t broken point of view.  And sure, these companies invest in some clean energy, but nowhere near what they could be investing. The question must be asked, do these companies owe any degree of responsibility to the public? People pour money into these conglomerates and in turn those conglomerates lobby in their own interest rather than the interests of the people, taking advantage and reaping the benefits. Capitalism is a great thing, but I feel that there should be a higher level of accountability for these companies as a whole.

References

Bizzell, Patricia, and Bruce Herzberg. "Against the Sophists." The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical times to the Present. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001. 72-74. Print.

Brenner, Noah, Anthony Guegel, Tan Hwee Hwee, and Anthea Pitt. "Coast Guard confirms Horizon sinks." Upstreamonline. Accessed February 25, 2014, http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article1188900.ece

Hoch, Maureen. "New Estimate Puts Gulf Oil Leak at 205 Million Gallons." PBS Newshour. Accessed February 25, 2014, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/new-estimate-puts-oil-leak-at-49-million-barrels/.

"How Dependent Is the United States on Foreign Oil?" U.S. Energy Information Administration. E.I.A., 1 Jan. 2011. Web. 19 Sept. 2014.

Leber, Rebecca. "Three Ways Big Oil Spends Its Profits To Defend Oil Subsidies And Defeat Clean Energy." ThinkProgress Three Ways Big Oil Spends Its Profits To Defend Oil Subsidies And Defeat Clean Energy Comments. 24 Oct. 2012. Web. 17 Sept. 2014.

Searles, Chris. "Oil & Gas, the World's Wealthiest Industry." 2 Feb. 2012. Web. 18 Sept. 2014.

Effects of Writing and Print on Rhetoric

The reading this week focused on the effects of writing and print on rhetoric and how our society uses rhetoric. Additionally if focused on the transformation from an oral based society to a literature based society. According to Ong, literacy is different from orality in that it involves writing and print. This difference he says is causing us to become much more reliant upon literacy and text rather than orality. He even attempted to discover more about orality by observing areas where literacy has not become a large part of the culture yet and observing the differences between the oral society and the literate one. He claimed writing is like technology that we must learn and it requires a shift in society’s thinking along with their practices. I find this even more fascinating since this piece was written in 1982 and as such seems to give a bit of a societal timeline. When Ong wrote this society was already text based, however this has only grown since then. People in our society are externalizing their information at an ever increasing rate and the medium for this is text and literacy. The phone in ones pocket now has a vast aray of accessible information both personal and public all in the form of literacy. If you ask someone in their twenties a question that they don’t know the answer too, instead of consulting a scholar on the issue they would consult the almighty Google in search for your answer.

Wolf in addition focuses on the understanding of peoples interpretation of said literacy. Basically, Wolf tried to understand the complexity and workings of reading and how society adopted it. According to her, society changed rapidly with the occurrence of reading and writing. The reading became less symbol based and more abstract. This requires our brains to change and rewire themselves she says. I would wonder however, is the transition over yet? Obviously our society if text based now, and was fully oral based at one point in history. However, I wonder if our society will one day be fully text based? Though it seems like it may be already, there is still a large portion of society based upon orality such as teaching and the legal system and such. Though these systems rely heavily upon text to be affective, are we fully text based already? Is there more of a transition to come? I would say that in my opinion, just seeing the extenede reliance upon text from when Ong wrote his piece until now, there is still rome to change and grow more text based.

            

Pathetic Proofs (Pathos)

This chapter focused on pathetic proofs, also known as Pathos. I found a great amount of the material interesting, but what really caught my eye was when the reading mentioned that “people tend to think of emotions as belonging to individuals” (Crowley 171) and therefore do not always trust them. There was also talk of the phenomena when people can experience emotions together as a group and how this can intensify the emotions felt. This is something that is drawn upon by many rhetors and can be a useful tool when using a pathetic appeal to an audience. This got me thinking about the group instance of emotional appeal though. The book mentions 9/11 and how it brought our country together, which is fine and dandy, but why did something that affected so many individuals on a personal level strike a national chord of emotion? It was because the attack on the twin towers could be seen as an attack to every single person in our country. Coincidentally while writing this I received an amber alert on my phone which got me to thinking about why something as random as an amber alert for someone one does not know can trigger an emotional reaction. The answer I came to was that its just like 9/11, hearing news like that makes one think what if it was me or my family that this happened to. This is something that ancient rhetors used to rely upon, for example in modern times when the president addressed the country after 9/11 there was a great emotional appeal that drove the idea of going to war because the country felt vulnerable.

Aristotle also made many contributions to the understanding of pathetic appeal, in fact, “he defined emotions as those things through which, by undergoing change, people come to differ in their judgments” (Crowley 175). This is interesting because it seems simple, but what it seems to me that he’s saying is that peoples emotions are based on their different experiences. So how then does a rhetor make an emotional appeal to a large audience? This is where the 9/11 example comes in, the rhetor must find something, some emotion that the audience can all share. This is also why when using emotional appeal many speakers pair it with either ethos or logos in addition. Pathos in many cases seems to be used merely as an additive in my opinion.

Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. 5th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2012. Print.

Boethius

Boethius a Roman philosopher held that rhetoric is just a means of using methods to apply arguments. He felt that philosophy and rhetoric differed in that, philosophy (dialect) “deals with general questions, whereas rhetorical argument deals with specific instances (hypotheses)” (Herzberg 486). The reading pointed to the ironic nature of Boethius’s lack of interest in rhetoric since he was so important to the rhetorical theory. His importance in part came in the form of his work The Consolation of Philosophy which he wrote in prison explaining philosophy’s ability to help one cope with preparing for death. He supposed that rhetoric was just applying general rules of argumentation and that it had merely a form based structure.

The reading continues by moving onto this structure in discussing the structure of rhetoric. If the text wasn’t confusing enough already it surely does not get any more understandable here. Though it may be a bit much to rephrase and analyze every one of the listed steps, I feel that much of the substance itself is based on the fact that one was able to put “rhetoric” and its theory into steps for one to learn and it merely solidifies Boethius’s claim that rhetoric was just applying general rules of argumentation and that it had merely a form based structure. The steps aren’t so much steps however as they are sections of rhetoric breaking down all of the different aspects and parts of rhetoric for one to understand.

                         

Ethos

Ethos as discussed in chapter 6 is ethical proof, or ethos. Ethical proof is based on a person’s character and as the reading suggested, is either invented or situated. Though when we think of someone’s character as their traits based on personal experiences, this is not how things worked in ancient times. The reason is that “we tend to identify character with personality, and hence someone’s character is fairly stable” (Crowley 149). Though this is how people understand it today I found it interesting that in ancient time peoples character was based more on their moral values and practices. I asked myself which of these interpretations of one character lends to creating a greater ethical appeal to the audience.  On the one hand, using ones personality to determine their credit and ethical standing can be a useful method. However, this method usually involves situated ethical proofs, at least in the manner that I understood it. This is because a person’s personality is seen as mostly set and permanent. Whereas when character is determined based on ones practices it is ultimately more able to change and open to influence by the person.

When inventing ethos or a character a rhetor can do many things. The reading states that the speaker does not often know the people he is talking to and vice versa, thus he must sometimes invent ethos. He can create credibility with his character by “doing his homework” and proving that they understand the issue to the audience, also he can highlight his traits worthy of mentioning to gain ethical understanding and merit. Additionally, he can generate trust from his audience by providing them with the information they need without smothering them. In other words, avoid patronizing them and create a sense of an almost two way understanding of one another. By that I mean making the audience feel like they aren’t being treated like an audience but rather equals in the issue. When dealing with situated ethos audiences assumingly already know who the rhetor is in that they understand and usually accept their ethical appeal and credibility due to a usually preexisting social standing in the community or other such social structure.  

Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. 5th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2012. Print.

Chapter 5: Logical Proof :LOGOS

Chapter 5 focuses on Logical proof and reasoning also known as logos.  Aristotle actually created four methods of logic that can break down how to argue on issues. Scientific demonstration was the first method which came from true premises and demanded that the premises be scientifically accepted as a common truth. Dialectical reasoning being the second method does not guarantee that the premises are common truths, rather the “premises are accepted by people who are supposed to be especially wise” (Crowley 119). The third is rhetorical reasoning which draws upon truths that are accepted by a whole community and the fourth is contentious reasoning which only uses premises that are very widely accepted. However, in terms of comparing one to another, these four methods differ in their degree to which those arguing about them accept them as true.

            When using logic as with logos, there are different methods for using the premises to provide a logical argument. Deduction is one of these methods and it involves starting with general premises and moving on to more specific premises. For example: 1 all people have a heart, 2 Saul is a person 3 therefore Saul has a heart. Induction on the other hand uses the opposite method starting narrow and moving onto broader topics. An example of this could be: “if the skilled pilot is the best pilot, and if the skilled charioteer the best charioteer, then the skilled person is the best person in any particular sphere” (Crowley 124). The last of these methods mentioned is enthymemes. Enthymemes are arguments where one premise is not explicitly stated. An example of this that the book gives is apples “think different advertising campaign. In fact, “the slogan ‘think different’, is a highly truncated enthymeme in which only the conclusion is stated” (Crowley 127). Apple uses the rest of the advertisement to provide the premises such as how historical figures have been able to think different and such. These kinds of methods are actually employed a lot in what would be the use of abstract advertisement. Not to say that the advertisement would be random, however it is usually the ads like car commercials and such. They will show a series of shots and images which can be seen as premises and then the end will flash a slogan or something and the conclusion is drawn out. I was aware of deduction and induction  before however enthymeme methods were interesting to learn about.

Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. 5th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2012. Print.