Questionable Ethos in Ramus

Ramus’ straightforward attack at Quintilian and his predecessors is shockingly bold and proud.  He begins by creating a sense of ethos based in humility that to me feels really false. In his opening he declares, “Although I have been engaged in the study of rhetoric and dialectic for many years I should not, like other people care to boast about them; rather I feel ashamed to look back upon them due to the very meager results they produced.”  He follows that up with “I have a single argument, a single subject matter, that the arts of dialectic and rhetoric have been confused by Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian.”  Anyone with any knowledge of the history of rhetoric would realize that there is nothing meager about this claim.

Ramus softens the blow of his arrogant posturing by claiming he is not superior to these Classical philosophers, but that he is merely superior in this one area because it is the only one he studies. He observes, “that if they had applied as many months as I have years to judging these precepts accurately and to arranging them in order I certainly do not doubt that they would have left us arts that are far truer and more distinct.”  Despite these feeble attempts, it is easy to see that Ramus thinks highly of himself.  “And so all you dialecticians—that is, whoever can form a judgment about this questioning with truth and constancy--Come here, pay attention, sharpen your wits..”  In modern English: “watch and learn.”

One of the major ways Ramus build his ethos for challenging these rhetorical pillars is by stressing the fact that rhetoric is really his only serious pursuit.  He backs the importance of this by claiming, “ a definition of any artist which covers more than is included in the rules of his art is superfluous and defective.”  It is interesting to see such a distinct division of disciplines in a writer whose period inspired the term “Renaissance Man.”  In truth, Ramus is not against mastering multiple disciplines, he just thinks it important that each be mastered and considered in and of itself. 

His criticism of the Quintilian stems from this.  Quintilian and his predecessors’ were philosophers as much as, if not more than they were rhetoricians.  As a result there rhetoric includes stray ideas like moral philosophy and elements that according to Ramus belong to dialectic.  He argues that invention, arrangement and memory are all part of dialectic and style and delivery only are what make up rhetoric.  Ramus criticizes scholars who “have naively accepted at a first hearing, without ever giving,” proper consideration for the truth in renowned texts.  I must now avoid that flaw while reading Ramus.

Ramus boldly defines what rhetoric and dialectic should be, but he provides little proof for this foundation of his argument.  He claims that Aristotle was the first to confuse these disciplines, and yet if the very definition of these disciplines is under debate Ramus cannot claim the division is in a certain place that nullifies renowned work without clear proofs of why his definition is most worthy.