The History of Rhetoric The History of Rhetoric
The ancient Greeks wondered about language. And what caused their wonderment was the realization, coming from collective political arrangements, that language spoken or written at certain times and in certain circumstances had very real effects on the polis, or the city-state of ancient Greece.
Tradition holds that the formal study of rhetoric began around 467 B.C. in the Greek city of Syracuse on the island of Sicily after an aristocrat name Thrasybulus seized control of the government and set himself up as a tyrant.
A teacher name Corax, after observing several trials, noticed that successful litgants used certain techniques in speaking that their adversaries did not. He used his observations to develop a system of rhetorical study and began teaching classes on how to win in court.
Greeks who could pay for it sought education to help them speak with authority. The first teachers of rhetoric in the Greek world were the itinerant lecturers of the fifth century known as the Sophists, or wise men.
Little is known about the Sophists because they didn't produce much writing and because what survived the centuries consists largely of fragments embedded in the works of others.
Under the Sophists' influence, the exclusive focus on forensic and deliberative rhetoric broadened to include examinations of the nature of truth, virtue, and knowledge. They were criticized for makng money and successfully defending people who did not deserve to win in court. To the dismay of many Athenians, Sophists had the ability to make even ridiculous claims seem reasonable.
Sophists argue that truth is relative, a disturbing notion to the ancient Greeks that still has the power to upset people today.
The Sophists believed that by understanding multiple aspect of truth, or rather by understanding all sides of an issue, one acquires wisdom. To the Sophists, the person who mastered rhetoric also mastered knowledge and could view reality more clearly than someone limited by a single perspective. Some scholars have suggested that this view provides the foundation for Western Education, which seeks to examine topics from multiple perspectives as a means to developing an objective understanding.
Who's who among the ancient Greek rhetoricians:
Isocrates:
Isocrates proposed that three necessary factors make a good rhetorician: talent, instruction, and practice. Of these three, talent was the most important.
This view dominated Western schools until modern times, resulting in higher education that was primarily for the intellectual elite.
Socrates and Plato:
Rather than give public speeches and lectures like the Sophists, Socrates used a question-and-answer approach--or dialectic--that has come to be known as the Socractic method.
No actual writings of Socrates survive, but we know about him through the writings of his most famous student--Plato.
Unlike the Sophists, Socrates and Plato proposed that everything was absolute and that change occured only at a superficial and ultimately trivial level. In their view, there was an absolute truth. Rhetoric, and the use of the dialectic, was a way of uncovering the "real" truth.
Aristotle:
Aristotle exerted more influence on rhetoric than any other person in history. He was born in 384 B.C. and in 367 he traveled to Athens to study with Plato. His most famous work is titled The Art of Rhetoric. Aristotle called rhetoric an art because it can be systemized and because it results in a specific product.
In Aristotle's rhetoric, proof does not consist of factual evidence that leads to an incontrovertible conclusion. Instead, it consists of the reasons that speakers give their audiences for accepting a claim.
Aristotle's three types of proof were:
ethos: refers to credibility (refering to experts or celebrities)
pathos: emotional appeal
logos: use of facts, statistics, or logical fallacies