Poor Quintilian

As I started reading Ramus’ Arguments in Rhetoric against Quintilian it was quite obvious that he had no problem attacking Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian about their views on rhetoric. “Yet now Quintilian follows Aristotle’s and Cicero’s confusion of dialectic and rhetoric. Indeed he makes it worse by fabrications of his won, and by including in his teachings all the disputes concerning all the arts he had read or heard something about…” (p. 681, second column) “Thus, just as I previously attacked the Aristotelian obscurity in Cicero, so now in almost the same way I shall attack it in Quintilian” (p.681, second column). Ramus does not “beat around the bush” towards his disagreements with Cicero, Aristotle, and Quintilian making his approach a little harsh, at least to me, since these men had no way of defending themselves or their ideas on rhetoric.

Even though Ramus could come off as a little harsh, he did make some good points. I was especially drawn to his point where he disagrees with Quintilian’s definition of an ideal orator. Quintilian was all about “a good man skilled in speaking well” whose character was “justice, courage, self-control, prudence, likewise knowledge of the whole philosophy and of law, a thorough acquaintance with history, and many other attributes worthy of praise” (p.683, second column). I remember being frustrated with the term “good man” when we read Quintilian, so to see Ramus think that this definition of an ideal orator was “useless and stupid” was a bit of an eye opener (p.683, second column). Ramus goes on to say, “A definition of any artist which covers more than is included in the rules of his art is superfluous and defective. For the artist must be defined according to the rules of his art…” (p. 683, second column).

In an idea world Quintilian would have been able to support his views on rhetoric and (most likely) challenge the attacks Ramus was making, so even though this reading was one sided I found it to be interesting because of the good points Ramus was making against Quintilian.