12 Matching Annotations
  1. Apr 2017
    1. turning"

      Though not in the Burke we read, he does make a point that between Cicero and Augustine, there's a meaningful shift in Rhetoric from "to move" (movere) to "to bend" (flectere). Muckelbauer adding the Presocratic "to turn" makes for an interesting track between the three. Turning and bending both leave the subject in the same "place," but a bent subject is changed while a turned one pivots. Although, I am also open to the possibility that translation from Ancient Greek and Latin to English might be leading me down a less-than-useful path.

    1. Vatzreads"TheRhetoricalSituation"asitselfasituationwithanexigencethatinvitesaresponse

      Continuing the noble tradition allegedly started by Corax and Tisias of rhetorical arguments being proved by making them.

  2. Mar 2017
    1. Evidence and reason are evidence and reason only if one lives in the narrative that creates and regards them.

      Very relevant for the 1900 class, explaining to students that you can't just drop a study or a pile of numbers on an opponent--logos is an artistic appeal, you have to go to what seems rational.

    1. There is no reason at all not to steal that discourse from men .... Besides, that doesn't mean anything; we don't steal anything at all-we are within the same cultural system.

      Clément's making a move similar to St. Augustine and the Spoils of Egypt, which allows Christians to make use of Pagan rhetorical traditions, because there's no reason not to take them, but more importantly, Rhetoric doesn't belong to them.

    1. making them known to persons who are absent" (I underscore this value of ab-sence, which, if submitted to renewed question-ing, will risk introducing a certain break in the ho-mogeneity of the system)

      Connection from my very first micro-response, this notion of absence and distance is interesting with writing that is intended to reflect back at you, as with Athanasius' journals or the shaman walls of Rickert

    1. And since the effective politician is a "spell-sonal designs. One thus confronts a flat choice binder," it seems to follow by elimination that between a civilized vocabulary of scientific de- the hortatory use of speech for political ends can scription and a savage vocabulary of magical in- be called "magic," in the discredited sense of that cantation. term.

      This makes me think of figures like Väinämöinen, the epic hero of the Finnish Kalevala, who defeats his enemies via song and sings castles into being. We can do that today, only more in the way of "I speak today on behalf of H.R. 1070, the 'Seriously, Let's Build a Castle Act'" instead of commanding the rocks through song. But the concept is one and the same.

    1. make seri-ous what appears insignificant to a man, and triv-ial what is to him important.

      The sophists were accused of making small things seem great and vice versa, which seems particularly relevant for this. Hearing great language for small things might be trickery, or it might be that the speaker has a perspective that sees the subject as itself a great thing

    2. Why, we ask at once, was there no continuous writing done by women before the eighteenth century?

      Point raised by Fr. Ong in The Presence of the Word "With the appearance of what we have called the sound-sight split in Latin, that stream of the language which developed into the modern romance vernaculars remained in use in the home, but the other stream known as Learned Latin, which moved only in artificially controlled channels through the male world of the schools was no longer anyone's mother tongue, in a quite literal sense." There was an active language-world for women in ancient Rome, but its one that was not recorded, and is now lost to time.

  3. Feb 2017
    1. he could hardly foresee the end of a sen-tence by the time it was half delivered: yet this constantly happens

      This is coming from memories of High School Latin, but I recall that Cicero used to use this sort of rhetoric all the time. Since Latin puts the verb at the end of the sentence, he'd have long sentences with extensive clauses that built intensity while keeping you guessing as to what he's calling for. It was really annoying to translate.

    1. Thus liberty and independence will ever be prevalent motives with republicans, pomp and splendour with those attached to monarchy. In mercantile states, such as Carthage among the ancients, or Holland among the moderns, interest will always prove the most cogent argument; in stales solely or chiefly composed of soldiers, such as Sparta and Ancient Rome, no inducement will be found a counterpoise to glory.

      Reminiscent of Aristotle's classification of constitutions by their ends. Though I note he grants Monarch's "pomp and splendor" while Aristotle gave them "self-preservation."

  4. Jan 2017