Who invented rhetoric

Another and more practical reason for this move towards a rational approach to human affairs was generated by the substantial rewards that could be gained from a rational education. Many of this new generation of thinkers, who were mostly from outside Athens, and so had little patrimony and no wealthy patrons, found a source for their income in the education of young Athenians. As Athenian democracy had developed more as a participatory than a representative process, a political career was within reach of all young male citizens of ability.

Also, the Athenian system of democracy lent itself to litigation as a means not only of solving disputes but also of ensuring that those with privilege or in public administration were answerable to the courts. But they needed to be trained in how to persuade large groups of people, and to argue, and the Sophists provided this training.

The better one was at teaching persuasion, the more money one earned. The search for knowledge or truth, although of interest to a minority, was not their top priority. Many of the Sophists, Isocrates, for example, saw nothing wrong with the pursuit of political influence by way of the techniques of persuasion. This group of freelance teachers, who traditionally taught rhetoric, grammar, mathematics, poetry, history and, more especially, virtue in the sense that they taught their pupils how to perform the state functions , began to focus in on the teaching of rhetoric or the art of persuasion.

They were basically seen by many as educators. But what did they believe? They believed that the physical world was controlled by nature, but that the laws of the Polis were man made and therefore they could be influenced by man. Likewise, they rejected the presocratic belief that their cities had received their laws from some deity.

Although the Sophists began life by teaching excellence, they soon fell into questioning the very validity of the concept. How, they asked, could excellence be measured? There was no higher authority to appeal to. They doubted everything. Which argument was correct depended on which side of the argument you stood. For many Sophists, there was no right or wrong answer. If there were no higher authority for morality, then surely it depended on each person to decide.

Protagoras, for example, taught his students to praise and blame the same thing. He boasted that he could turn any weak argument into one of strength. The idea behind phenomenalism is that we can only know ideas present in our own minds and that we cannot make a true statement about anything outside our own minds. He taught that only those practical experiences we know through our senses by way of observation are our source of real knowledge empiricism.

Finally, regarding relativism, he held that truth had no independent existence. This, in my opinion, had the unfortunate result of creating a situation where there were no objective standards to judge by. However, he qualified this by saying that in making judgments we naturally know what is morally correct and that this should be our guide.

This could, in my opinion, have left many pupils with no guideline at all except to follow their self-interest and expediency. However, it must be pointed out that most commentators admit that not all Sophists were skeptics, although apparently a good number were.

Regarding their view of society, there were many viewpoints. One group of Sophists held that man as a natural creature was subject to the laws of nature that he must obey physis.

On the other hand, man was a member of the Polis and the laws under which he lived were governed by convention or custom nomos. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Richard Nordquist. English and Rhetoric Professor. Richard Nordquist is professor emeritus of rhetoric and English at Georgia Southern University and the author of several university-level grammar and composition textbooks.

Updated February 12, Featured Video. In the modern period that followed three trends in rhetoric emerged—the epistemological, belletristic, and elocutionist. While much of the classical rhetorical theories arose from the closely related context of public speaking, much of the theorizing that contributes to contemporary rhetoric comes from outside this context and, to some extent, outside the Communication discipline.

While Aristotle and Augustine were chiefly concerned with questions of persuasive ability, contemporary theorists are concerned with relationships between power, knowledge, and discourse. Hopefully, you can see that this is a much broader set of questions and in turn the scope of rhetoric has also expanded. Below, we will discuss this expansion and the contributors. In addition to the broader set of concerns on the part of contemporary theorists, they specifically challenged certain assumptions and biases of the canon—that of rationalism and voice.

Responding to the rational bias are social constructionism and postmodernism. Social Constructionism often associated with Thomas Kuhn and Richard Rorty, questions the premise that scientific or philosophical knowledge can be assumed as fundamentally true. Rather, the truth is determined by our own personal and cultural experiences and how language is used to understand and explain those experiences.

In any discussion of Postmodernism the difficulty of defining the term is invariably part of the discussion. Part of that problem can be located the etymology of the word itself. Modern refers to just now from modo in Latin and post means after.

How do you, for example, point to or mark the period after just now? Covino and Jolliffe Some qualities that describe postmodernism are that of fragmentation, nonlinearity, and instability. The film, Moulin Rouge, is an excellent example of a postmodern text as it exemplifies these qualities. The story is told not in a traditionally linear or modern form, but instead the dialogue is made up of a patchwork of pop songs from Elton John to Madonna to weave the tale of a 19th century romance.

The second major challenge to the rhetorical canon and to a rational paradigm has been that of voice; who gets to speak and whose rhetoric is considered significant or even gets labeled as rhetoric. Going back to the classical period, you remember that public oratory was considered the scope of rhetoric. And you also know who traditionally hold positions of power that would grant them access to the public speaking contexts—primarily white, wealthy men.

This obviously left out a lot of people: they had no voice. An Afrocentric and feminist perspective offer two responses to this challenge. An Afrocentric position seeks to include linguistic elements from African languages as well as the Black experience in America into the scope and understanding of rhetorical processes.

A feminist perspective looks at the ways in which women and other groups have been similarly left of the scope of rhetorical discourse and attempts to uncover the patriarchal biases in language and restore them with more egalitarian principles.

Here is a list of contemporary theorists who have all challenged the canon in some way. To further your understanding of rhetorical theory explore the works of one or more of these rhetorical scholars to learn about their unique and important contributions. Foss Karen A. Skip to main content. Rhetorical Criticism. Search for:.