Monthly Archives: March 2010

Ramus & His Ad-Hominem

Hello MaryAnn, Although I am late in responding to your questions (I was out of town in a conference), I hope it is not too late. I’d like to focus on the  ad hominem attacks on Quintilian because I think often times…

Philosopher on Attack Week 3

After reading the Ramus article, I feel many of the rhetoricians we have read share one quality, attack. Ramus’ approach on arguing his ideas is charged with insulting words and persuasive appeal to the audience to hate Quintilian’s ideas.  He…

Bain

Alex I like your response on the Bain reading, I would like to elaborate on your ideas with some examples. Bain requires a specific structure to argument, which I feel is contradictory to many of the philosophers we have read.…

Perfect does not mean Virtuous

When speaking of Quintilian’s assessment that a perfect orator must necessarily be a good man, Ramus uses the comparisons that “the grammarian is…not defined as skilled in speaking, writing, and singing” and “the geometrician is not defined as skilled in…

Easier to Tell a Lie

“It frequently occurs, in fact, that orators in a law court have greater difficulty with a case which is based on truth, but does not seem so, than with a case that is false but plausible” (Vico 13). Do you…

Commentary 3

As I was reading Ramus for this week, I felt a little bit like I do when I get e-mail messages from friends and I can’t hear their tone of voice. Those messages that say things like, “I can’t believe…

ramus and vico

Ramus sets out to debunk Quintillian’s claims by dissecting his work into more precise categories. He maintains that Quintillian intermingles rhetoric with other disciplines thus confusing its definition. For Ramus, an artist is defined only by the rules of his…

Medieval Response

I am not sure I totally agree with Ramus’s point that scholars of rhetoric do not need a well balanced background in order to be good orators.  In everyday life, I find that people who are smart in many areas…