Peter Ramus’s
Arguments in Rhetoric against Quintilian
was a piece that had a style that I believe that we have not yet encountered
throughout the history of rhetoric in this course. In this piece, Ramus takes a
severe stance against Quintilian and is very critical of Quintilian’s works.
Ramus puts forth several arguments calling for a dismantling of rhetoric as
Quintilian described it and reexamining what was previously held as fact.
I
believe a huge part of Ramus’s dialogue originated from the time period in
which he resided. Ramus lived during the Renaissance period, a period of
history that was known for revolution and the introduction of new ideas. This
period of time saw in interest in the sciences, arts, and literature. This
period of time was also known as a time for challenging old commonplaces, where
Ramus makes his point.
In this
piece, Ramus calls for a dismantling of rhetoric as Quintilian described it,
and discounting some of the requirements or qualifiers that Quintilian put on
rhetoric. Whereas Quintilian states that an orator “cannot be perfect unless he
is a good man”, Ramus asserts that the character of the man that speaks in
irrelevant to his skill in the art. Ramus further asserts that rhetoric does
not have jurisdiction over the character of a man, that it’s up to moral philosophers
to decide who is moral and who is not.
Ramus
goes on to state that he believes that Quintilian was erroneous in the
evaluation of the idea that rhetoric contains five parts, and asserts that
rhetoric should only be comprised of style and delivery; and that the remaining
parts of “rhetoric”: invention, arrangement, and memory, should be stripped
away from classical rhetoric.
I made
a couple of observations about the reading, and the introduction that came
before it. Firstly, Ramus wrote this piece during the Renaissance, which I
mentioned earlier, was a period of innovation and challenging old concepts.
During this time period, there were advances in science and medicine that
challenged old world beliefs held over from the ancient world. Because the Dark
Ages was a period of stagnation in human civilization, where few people were
free to explore concepts such as art, science, and philosophy; the body of
knowledge that existed at the beginning of the Dark Ages was for the most part a
holdover from the ancient world and civilizations such as the Roman Empire. It
was popular during the Renaissance to challenge these beliefs and introduce new
ideas. Because human civilization had been stagnant in development for so long,
the Renaissance became a hotbed for human development.
I
believe that this is why Ramus found it so easy to attack Quintilian in this
piece. People were hungry for new ideas and change, and Ramus was to be the man
to deliver it. I believe that his writings were intentionally provocative on
purpose, in order to provoke response and increase his popularity. To borrow an
analogy from contemporary characters, I would describe Ramus as the “Howard
Stern” of his time, a rhetorical “shock jock” who wrote inflammatory pieces in
order to draw attention to himself, his issues, and to push his agenda.
I also
find his choice of target to be interesting as well. While he targets
Quintilian, a lot of what Ramus criticizes are concepts that came from
Aristotle. I think that because of the target of this inflammatory piece, Ramus
chose carefully whom he was going to be critical of. I suspect that Ramus was
not open to openly criticize Aristotle, quite possibly because he did not want
to be labeled as one who slanders the classics, instead, choosing to attack
Quintilian, who simply acted to try and expand upon Aristotle’s writing.
Overall,
I’m sure that Ramus was well received, and it shows a style of argument that
has not been seen previously; one that is an all-out attack and not one that is
aimed at achieving stasis. All in all, I’m sure that Ramus got his message
across to his intended audience, and did so well enough that we still talk
about him to this day.
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