Speaking, Writing, and Morality

Mary Astell argues that both Truth and morality are vital for the speaker/writer. According to Astell, it is "a mistake to think that any Argument can be rightly made, or any Discourse truly Eloquent that does not illustrate and inforce Truth" (852 3.5). She then goes further, arguing that "we can never plead for Error and Vice with true Eloquence. We may trick 'em up in a handsom Garb, adorn 'em with quaint Expressions, and give them such a plausible turn as may enable them to do very much Mischief; but this is only a fulsom Carcass, the substance and Life are not there if Vertue and Truth are wanting" (858 3.5). Without Truth and morality, Astell claims, no speaker/writer can be truly eloquent nor even have their work be truly meaningful. For me, these claims harken back to Quintilian and his discussion of the orator and how "he cannot speak well unless he be a good man" (389 14.34).

Ramus, however, presents us with an opposing argument. Ramus claims that rhetoric "is a virtue of the mind and the intelligence, as in all the true liberal arts, whose followers can still be men of the utmost moral depravity" (685). He also extends his arguments to dialectic when he states that "dialectic is not a moral virtue which can shape a good man" (Ramus 685). For Ramus, at least, rhetoric and dialect are not necessarily connected with morality, which more properly belongs as a subject of inquiry for moral philosophers (683).

I have found the argument concerning the place of morality in speech and writing to be an interesting one mainly because it is one of the many places where the guidance of our different thinkers and theorists diverge. And I find myself agreeing with Ramus as to where the study of morality belongs. I have trouble making morality a condition of good speaking and writing, especially since the idea of morality is an unfixed one. Just look at one aspect of the ideology of the two discussed writers/theorists who claim that morality is a key part of speaking and writing. Quintilian certainly doesn't write from a religious standpoint, and his thoughts on morality are also not based in religious ideals. Astell, on the other hand, speaks quite frequently of God and even asserts that "the way to be good Orators is to be good Christians" (855 3.5). It's pretty doubtful that Quintilian and Astell have the same moral codes, even without considering all the other differences between them (you know, like the passing of a millennia and a half).

The only way that I think morality can even be considered to be a condition of good writing and speaking is if we are speaking from a basis of premodernism or modernism like Quintilian and Astell seem to have been. From a postmodern frame, however, it's difficult for us (or at least me) to connect to the idea that there is one absolute or most likely moral Truth (click here for a very, very frustratingly simplified view of premodernism-postmodernism if necessary, as I couldn't find a better short summary). After all, there are just so many versions of morality to choose from. And we don't want to end up like Javert in the video below, stuck with one view of the just that we cannot let go of even if it won't make sense anymore.

The origami of language

“…Sometimes," posits Astell, "Even an honest and good Writer ... may insensibly fall into (Obscurity of writing), by reason that his Ideas being become familiar to himself by frequent meditation, a long train of 'em are readily excited in his mind, by a word or two he’s us’d to annex to them; but it is not so with his readers who are perhaps strangers to his meditations.” (853)

This theme of the differences we as individually sentient beings have between our own inner languages, and the difficulties in transmitting the ideas we have in those personal languages between each other, seems to be recurring here from Locke. The idea leads to think that with our inner thoughts and words as familiar as breathing to ourselves, the logical solution to achieve (or attempt to achieve) that same clarity in others would be to resort to using a lot of words to capture or try to contain the same amount of meaning. 

Tangling horns with the idea that we need a lot of words to correctly or clearly articulate things to others, Astell recommends instead “we shou’d fold up our Thoughts so closely and neatly, expressing them in such significant tho few words, as that the Readers Mind may easily open and enlarge them.” (853)

            What gave me a particularly pleasurable pause here was her wording of ‘signifigant tho few words’. Here she seems not to mean just ‘general’ words, which, though few, don’t strike specific enough chords to be significant. And conversely, she also seems to be avoiding long, tedious amounts of inanely specific words; such strategies, as we all know, are agonizing as a reader and, as a writer or speaker, ineffective anyway. Call me mad, but what she seems be referring to instead is metaphor. Not buying it? Metaphors are the perfect combination of general and specific—very personal images, associations, or thoughts folded up as little origami planes to carry whatever is actually written on the page inside across the windy gulf of the wide world, under the protection of a new form, to another person somewhere. That person, snatching it from the air, can unfold it in her own way, and through its unfolding can't help but contribute to its new, slightly creased but ultimately legible form. I believe it is this contribution to its creation—the collaboration of creation between the folder of language and its unfolder, that is key to the ultimate form of clarity Astell forwards as so important. 

            Astell proposes this ‘folding up of our thoughts’ as the means for achieving clarity, but says that “nothing conduces more to clearness, the great Beauty of writing, than Exactness of Method.” Her descriptions of successful style and grammar that follow were a timely and pertinent reminder that though language is a versatile piece of paper, and can be folded up in an infinite number of ways, there is a structure to the underlying demand for understanding that we cannot ignore. The metaphors of language—language itself as a metaphor—can’t be successful without this essential structure.

Astell Through a Classical Lens

Mary Astell can be considered strongly anti-sophist.  On page 852 she claims, “It is an abuse of both of reason and Address to press ‘em into the Service of a Trifle or an Untruth; and a mistake to think that any Argument can be rightly made…the design of Rhetoric is to remove those Prejudices that lie in the way of Truth...” At this point I envisioned Astell reading Gorgias’ Encomium and going red in the face with rage.  Further, in claiming, “when we pretend to teach others what we do not understand our selves, no wonder that we do it at a sorry rate,” she seems to be making a direct dispute of frivolous sophistic rhetoric (853). She sounds very Platonic on page 851, claiming a true Christian understands the “notion of the Nothingness of Material things and of the reality and substantialness of immaterial…” Even her capitalization of certain abstract notions like Nothingness or Understanding or Rashness or Ignorance, etc., reflect the Platonic notion of Forms.  Her Christian viewpoint of Absolute Truth in the Christian faith mirrors Plato’s view of Absolute Truth that can be discerned through careful observation and logic.

While Plato and Astell see eye to eye on the existence of Absolute Truth, their treatment of it is vastly different.  Plato uses rhetoric as a tool to understand Truth while Astell considers the matter settled by her faith. In addition, Astell claims, “Human Knowledge is at best defective,” leaving little room for the significance of rhetoric.  In fact, it seems that her conception of rhetoric excludes even the flawed logic of Human Truths.  Her realm of rhetoric consists of the expression of those ideas gained through contemplation and meditation; it doesn’t include the invention itself, merely the expression.  If the ideas are true and right, it is the job of rhetoric to express them clearly, and in a way that pleases the reader simply to keep their attention.  To that end, her disdain for eloquence is strikingly anti-sophist.  To her, sophistic rhetoric probably seems closely akin to “rhetoric as the art of lying.”  While Plato’s pursuits are unconstrained by Christian rules, they each understand that good rhetoric can be ascertained through observing truth in nature.

Interestingly, for someone who removed invention from rhetoric, she also pays little attention to style.  While style is perhaps important to her, there is little use for her in writing about it.  Her disdain for “The Rules of Art” stems from an interesting Christian view that good morals lead to good oratory.  This is strikingly influenced by Cicero and Quintilian (i.e. good man speaking well) despite her departure from their affinity for eloquence.  Aristotle’s classifications or the figures and tropes laid out in the Ad Herrenium, which had strong influences on Cicero and Quintilian are discounted by Astell, not necessarily because she considered them erroneous, but because she considered the apprehension of the rules of style most appropriate through observing nature and identifying admirable style in others.  While the highly eloquent Cicero also regarded ethos as an important aspect to rhetoric, he did not feel, like Astell, that good style was automatically connected with good moral value.

"Every Author almost has some beauty"

"For it is to litle purpose to Think well and speak well, unless we Live well this is our Great Affair and truest Excellency, the other are no further to be regarded than as they may assist us in this (p. 858, Col. 1, VI.)

Astell then goes on to explain what it means to "live well." Could we also add, learn well? They seem to go hand-in-hand.  "She who does not draw this Inference from her Studies has Thought in vain, her notions are Erroneous and Mistaken. And all her Eloquence is but an empty noise..."(858, Col. 1, VI). Learning well seems to be what Astell meant, which I find to be interesting. Knowledge has been a common theme throughout many of the texts we have read, but the type of knowledge has not. If I chose to read a fictional fantasy story and someone else chose to read a nonfictional textbook, who is to say one grants knowledge but the other does not? Both contain it, they are simply different from one another. Anything new constitutes learning and, according to Astell, learning well (living well) is what fuels thinking well and speaking well.

I can't help but reflect on certain individuals I know, who are so intellectual it is heard in every word spoken by them. These individuals, in my mind, are those who have truly "lived well". When they offer advice or give a speech, their credibility is immediately through-the-roof. They have the ability to persuade individuals due to the intelligence which radiates from them. Such is the power of knowledge (living well).

Choose your words carefully, for they may be your last...

It was really interesting to see how Locke organized his text: thesis statement; paragraph, thesis statement; paragraph, thesis statement; paragraph...
Locke seems to have a very straightforward idea of looking at communication as a whole He sees value in studying the nature of human beings and the ways we communicate together in general discourse in order to perceive how choice of words may affect our listeners or readers. His approach to dictating appropriate word choice calls me back to The Principles of Letter Writing and the different salutations one may use when writing letters to different people. The concept is essentially the same. I may write a letter to my mother using one style of diction, but when I write a letter to my best friend, the situation, and my choice of words, changes...

Poetry makes an appearance (Woo)

Guys, my day in the sun has finally arrived. Are you as excited as I am?

"The art of persuasion was thus perfectly consonant with the art of poetry" (792).



I haven't gotten entirely through the Locke reading as of right now, but where I'm at right now, I'm jiving with. And yes I'm going to stick with that diction. The words don't matter anyway, right? I particularly like the quote, "one man's complex idea seldom agrees with another's, and often differs from his own - from that which he had yesterday, or will have tomorrow" (818). This is an extremely poetic thought, is it not? If you can't depend on words to convey feeling, you must depend on images and style and sound and how the imagination evolves. And that's poetry.
     The idea corresponds well with the introduction which discusses a new definition, "rhetoric applies reason to the imagination to move the will" (793). The imagination step is the process which muddles the definition of words because it's where personal interpretation can be applied. This same idea coincides again with the new application of rhetoric for literary analysis. Rhetoric as a logic tool is finally being applied to imaginative and creative discourse, and that creative discourse is finally being considered as relevant to logic and persuasion. I AM SO EXCITED. How about that Enlightenment, eh?
     But I'm sorry, I'm getting off track.
     I want to consider something: sort of chicken and the egg. In the Classical section, the existence of writing and its growing popularity seemed to drive its cultural force and thus evolved the idea on writing once we reached Quintilian. Now, is the existence and greater prominence of literature and poetry requiring its consideration in rhetoric? Would it be too much and too blind to continue ignoring poets at a point when they're more visible? But why did they become more visible? Was it because rhetoric considered them or did they come first?
      Or was it, as Locke might assert, simply because words were less reliable? "The very nature of words makes it almost unavoidable for many of them to be doubtful and uncertain in their significance" (817). Perhaps people in this time are less dependent on logic, more inspired by imagination.

Semantic change

There was a lot to think about in John Locke's An Essay on Human Understanding. I was particularly struck by Locke's position on what he deems "the abuse of words". Locke states, "First, Words fail in the first of these ends, and lay not open one man’s ideas to another’s view: 1. When men have names in their mouths without any determinate ideas in their minds, whereof they are the signs: or, 2. When they apply the common received names of any language to ideas, to which the common use of that
language does not apply them: or, 3. When they apply them very unsteadily, making them stand, now for one, and by and by for another idea"(825).

To start with, I love the idea of men speaking with no ideas in their minds. We've all done this - speak first and think later (or worse, don't think at all), so I love that this is perceived not just as a slip of the tongue as we might deem it, but rather as an abuse of language. Locke is not very forgiving in this regard.

Next, I have always been fascinated by word etymology and semantic change, so I am very interested in Locke's supposition that the change in the meaning of a word constitutes abuse of words. I think it is awesome that words like "awesome" have changed meanings so significantly over the course of time. Of course, from a rhetorical stand point, it does make sense to argue for the consistent use of language to effectively persuade an audience...