Historical Rhetorics/Should We Read Quintilian?: Difference between revisions
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Quintilian famously echoes Cato's description of the ideal orator as ''vir bonus dicendi peritus.'' While commonly translated as the "good man speaking well," it might also be read as the "good man expressing expertly."
===Rhetoric and Philosophy===
Quintilian is explicit in his opposition to philosophy as the sole ethical art (although later approves of Socrates's martyrdom) and to philosophy's disdain for rhetoric (see preface, paragraph 11). As with Isocrates and Cicero, Quintilian's "perfect orator" is a judge and citizen, one who is equally concerned with his private person and public duties (and recognizes that these are not two distinct things to be taught by different arts). Philosophy, through its disciplinary turf wars, claims sole possession of something that rightly belongs to many disciplines.
See particularly [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Quintilian/Institutio_Oratoria/2C*.html#21 2.21 for Quintilian's portrayal of philosophers as "trespassers."]
===Quintilian's Strong Defense===
:Doctors have been caught using poisons, and those who falsely assume the name of philosopher have occasionally been detected in the gravest of crimes. Let us give up eating, it often makes us ill; let us never go inside houses, for sometimes they collapse on their occupants; let never a sword be forged for a soldier, since it might be used by a robber. And who does not realise that fire adn water, both necessities of life, and, to leave merely earthly things, even the sun and moon, the greatest of heavenly bodies, are occasionally capable of doing harm. (2.16.5)
===Rhetorical Training===
In 2.12, Quintilian is skeptical of hard and fast systems of rhetoric--it is not that easy. Rules are suggestions, but the rhetorician knows when and how to break them. This is echoed in his later critique of Aristotelian ''topoi,'' for Quintilian, the rhetor is s/he who attunes herself to reading the possibilities of a situation, rather than one who memorizes ''a priori'' formulae suitable to any situation (see Byron Hawk's discussion of kairotic techne and specific occasions in ''A Counter History of Composition,'' 206, 258).
Perhaps in response to the Socrates of Plato's ''Gorgias'', Quintilian reminds us that "there is no such thing as eloquence if we only speak with one person" (p55).
===Style===
Quintilian is skeptical of Cicero's "Asiatic" style; I believe this relates to his stern manliness and opposition to anything effeminate (see specifically 1.8.2 and 1.10.3, p175).
Quintilian is also critical of Aristotle's lack of attending to style, or of recognizing style as epistemic. So, we might conclude that he is a goldilocks when it comes to style.
[[/Fall 2011: Richard Lanham's "The Q Question"/]]
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