Our reading of Ramus’s and Astell’s additions to rhetoric focuses on the Christian angle present in their work, their division of the canons, their definitions of rhetoric and dialectic as they pertain to truth and morality, and their discussion of writing and speech.
First, Ramus, a Protestant, attacks scholasticism—a uniquely Catholic phenomenon, exemplified by people like Thomas Aquinas, who loved Aristotle—and we discussed the possibility that his critique of Aristotle may have been partially attributable to Aristotle’s importance to the scholastics. Astell, an Anglican and a good English woman, is labeled in Bizzell and Herzberg’s introduction as “one of the first feminists” (846), but we find that even as she seeked to advance women’s “True and Greatest Interests,” she did so within confines of the patriarchal system of the Church without necessarily opposing them.
For Ramus, rhetoric is divided into two parts: Style (embellishment) and delivery. Ramus sees invention and arrangement as separate, assigning them instead to dialectic, which Ramus views as a tool for testing truth. According to Ramus, dialectic is “the mentor of speaking with truth and constancy” (683), and while his discussion of rhetoric separates it from moral philosophy, he still seems to see truth as a goal of good rhetoric. Similarly, Astell seems to align with Plato in her view that an orator’s goal should be to lead her audience to the Truth, rather than to outsmart them, best them, or trick them into changing opinions. She writes, “It is an abuse both of Reason and Address to press ‘em both into the Service of a Trifle or an Untruth; and a mistake to think that any Argument can be rightly made, or any Discourse truly Eloquent that does not illustrate and inforce Truth” (852). Furthermore, Astell extends rhetoric not only to women, but to the private sphere, and argues that women have the advantage over men in that their voices are more pleasing and better suited to private conversation.
We find a point of departure or contrast between Ramus and Astell in their discussion of the role of the morality or character of the orator. Ramus argues for the separation of the art of rhetoric from its materials, arguing that moral philosophy is not a part of rhetoric (685). In fact, he has a distinct problem with Quintilian’s “good man speaking well,” arguing that this view of an orator is “useless and stupid” (683), because “a definition of an any artist which covers more than is included in the rules of his art is superfluous and defective” (683). In contrast, Astell’s view of ethos seems at odds with Ramus’s separation of morality and rhetoric; to Astell, an orator must lead a Christian life and her audience must be able to detect her sincerity and piety. She writes that “it is to little purpose to Think well and speak well, unless we Live well” (858).
Another point of contrast between Ramus and Astell is in their treatment of the written and spoken word, and the utility of reading and studying. Reading Classical works (Aristotle, Cicero, Quitilian) is a waste of time to Ramus. He even goes so far as to lament that “I wish I had not known the wretchedness of wasting so much of my youth in this way” (681). While Ramus argues that “the same oration can expound purely, speak ornately, and express thought wisely” (684), he couches these points in a discussion of the separation of the art from the art’s materials. Astell, similarly, argues for clarity of speech and writing (between which she makes no distinction, a point at which she notably diverges from Aristotle), and calls obscurity “one of the greatest faults in Writing” and argues that it is “sometimes design’d, to conceal an erroneous opinion which an Author dares not openly own” (853).
Andrew and David
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