Hi, everyone.
If they (now) work, here are links to some of our Google Docs projects, created to help synthesize our work from Brereton to this week:
Brereton grid
Assumptions
-Tarez
03 December 2009
24 November 2009
Mary and Carina's trace
Looking at question #3, tracing Genung, Young, Manly/Rickert, Strunk.
Textbooks showed either a strong lean toward correctness, grammar, arrangement (Strunk) OR toward invention and personal/self-expression (M/R). We saw both of these tendencies as present in Genung: "The study of rhetoric contemplates presentation: in pursuing it the student's mind, though equally occupied with facts, principles, discipline, is set predominantly in the attitude of construction, creation" (BR 135).
This narrative, then, presents Genung as a bridge, both as in Brereton between German and American models of academic rhetorical instruction, and between the practical/personal rhetorical pedagogies that developed in the American model during the early twentieth century.
If Genung is a theoretical bridge between these two models, Young is a contemporary bridge based in practice. Young, as an administrator, is trying to get as many students as possible through the university. He suggests that students need more training in oratory and interdisciplinary writing, but we wonder if he was also concerned with workload in a valuation of highly structural pedagogy.
Textbooks showed either a strong lean toward correctness, grammar, arrangement (Strunk) OR toward invention and personal/self-expression (M/R). We saw both of these tendencies as present in Genung: "The study of rhetoric contemplates presentation: in pursuing it the student's mind, though equally occupied with facts, principles, discipline, is set predominantly in the attitude of construction, creation" (BR 135).
This narrative, then, presents Genung as a bridge, both as in Brereton between German and American models of academic rhetorical instruction, and between the practical/personal rhetorical pedagogies that developed in the American model during the early twentieth century.
If Genung is a theoretical bridge between these two models, Young is a contemporary bridge based in practice. Young, as an administrator, is trying to get as many students as possible through the university. He suggests that students need more training in oratory and interdisciplinary writing, but we wonder if he was also concerned with workload in a valuation of highly structural pedagogy.
Lavinia - Jeff - Q. 4
The primary focus of our texts was on the writing course content: assignments, samples and syllabi that set up the mass-production model of Freshman composition. What lacks from the picture and from Brereton's account as well is a more elaborate discussion of the following issues:
- relationship of writing to audience. Students seem to write just to accomplish a writing task, instead of envisioning a larger purpose/rationale/context
- relationship of writing to truth/knowledge/reality. Students seem to approach the tasks in a closed circle, i.e., they get through the task in a rather arbitrary way (topics seem randomly selected, e.g., sample on art, Thanksgiving, church attendance, the value of intercollegiate athletics)
The samples and course descriptions oftentimes reveal mechanical presentation.
- relationship of writing to audience. Students seem to write just to accomplish a writing task, instead of envisioning a larger purpose/rationale/context
- relationship of writing to truth/knowledge/reality. Students seem to approach the tasks in a closed circle, i.e., they get through the task in a rather arbitrary way (topics seem randomly selected, e.g., sample on art, Thanksgiving, church attendance, the value of intercollegiate athletics)
The samples and course descriptions oftentimes reveal mechanical presentation.
Harvard Tradition
Question 1: These texts, from the Harvard tradition, focus primarily on adherence to certain rules of style. Style is not something independent of the writer, but rather the writer must depend upon the set rules and traditions. One of the complications of this simple understanding is that what the Harvard tradition wants is to build off of early adherence to rules. As Wooley says, "the student, in order to progress in the art, must for a certain time treat the rules as stringent and invariable; the variations and exceptions are studied only at a later state of progress" (360).
Emphasis on valuation of student-writing: "more practice, more daily drill, and severe discipline are required" (113). This should happen in preparatory schools. Blame is clearly shifted from universities to preparatory schools, as the Harvard committee attempts to unpack the problems of the teaching of composition.
3. Rhetoric as tied to the rising-middle class. Mostly preparing for office work and other non-academic disciplines. For example, Carson puts a heavy emphasis on using the right kind of paper, ink, how to address an envelope, etc. Thus, composition in these texts is often seen as preparing and developing members of this rising middle-class.
Emphasis on valuation of student-writing: "more practice, more daily drill, and severe discipline are required" (113). This should happen in preparatory schools. Blame is clearly shifted from universities to preparatory schools, as the Harvard committee attempts to unpack the problems of the teaching of composition.
3. Rhetoric as tied to the rising-middle class. Mostly preparing for office work and other non-academic disciplines. For example, Carson puts a heavy emphasis on using the right kind of paper, ink, how to address an envelope, etc. Thus, composition in these texts is often seen as preparing and developing members of this rising middle-class.
the Brereton post
So that we can realize (together) the reason we are in class today, please compose a collaborative post on the following questions, based on your grid work with the Brereton excerpts:
1) (How) do your excerpts support and/or complicate the stories about texts of this era?
2) (How) are your excerpts useful for testing Carr, Carr, and Schultz's "watersheds" (pp. 202-203)?
3) If only your texts survived from this era, how would you view the teaching of writing in late 19th-century American colleges? What stories would you construct, or did you construct in your grid, that might get taken up?
4) What questions do your excerpts raise, complicate, or not take up according to how Brereton employs them in his book?
Good luck and have fun,
Tarez
1) (How) do your excerpts support and/or complicate the stories about texts of this era?
2) (How) are your excerpts useful for testing Carr, Carr, and Schultz's "watersheds" (pp. 202-203)?
3) If only your texts survived from this era, how would you view the teaching of writing in late 19th-century American colleges? What stories would you construct, or did you construct in your grid, that might get taken up?
4) What questions do your excerpts raise, complicate, or not take up according to how Brereton employs them in his book?
Good luck and have fun,
Tarez
05 November 2009
Ida B. Wells and Female Faculty 1888
Hi, everyone. If this works, you can link to Jeff's and Jerrell's google maps project, which starts to landscape Ida B. Wells' writing activity and concurrent geographical locations of female faculty in English or rhetoric in 1888.
-Tarez
-Tarez
22 October 2009
Wollstonecraft's Belletrism?
Laura, thank you for getting us started. I'll chime in by way of offering a few passages that inspired me to wonder about this question in the first place.
Based on class discussion today, I think we see Wollstonecraft's principal claim as the following: women's education heightens moral agency (257). Equalizing rank and educating male and female students together will provide fewer opportunities for "rancorous striving" and lead to a culture of modesty rather than of sexual distinction (238).
How can we have one without the other (cultural modesty without sexual distinction)? Here is how she seems to argue for this:
--she appeals principally for the education of middle-class women (as opposed to gentleladies) (xxxiii)
--women need this right so as to help lift themselves and each other out of poverty, which is the real source of societal degradation (207)
--without coercion, sexes will naturally fall into their places (xxix)
--"the sympathies of our nature are strengthened by pondering cogitations, and deadened by thoughtless use" (248)
--private virtue can work towards a common center of public happiness (204)
--reason helps us to avoid tyranny, which undermines civility and morality (xxviii)
--who made man the exclusive judge, if woman partake with him of the gift of reason? (xxviii)
--excluding one-half of the human race from all governmental participation is perplexing and illogical (xxvii)
--elegance is inferior to virtue (xxxiv)
--we say masculine women are unnatural, but where are we to actually find a woman who is too masculine? (xxxiii)
(Jon, does any of this line up with Wollstonecraft's appropriation of Blair's "masculine style" in Allen's article?)
Could we say that for Wollstonecraft, reason is meant to accommodate nature? What could be her noetic field?
-Tarez
Based on class discussion today, I think we see Wollstonecraft's principal claim as the following: women's education heightens moral agency (257). Equalizing rank and educating male and female students together will provide fewer opportunities for "rancorous striving" and lead to a culture of modesty rather than of sexual distinction (238).
How can we have one without the other (cultural modesty without sexual distinction)? Here is how she seems to argue for this:
--she appeals principally for the education of middle-class women (as opposed to gentleladies) (xxxiii)
--women need this right so as to help lift themselves and each other out of poverty, which is the real source of societal degradation (207)
--without coercion, sexes will naturally fall into their places (xxix)
--"the sympathies of our nature are strengthened by pondering cogitations, and deadened by thoughtless use" (248)
--private virtue can work towards a common center of public happiness (204)
--reason helps us to avoid tyranny, which undermines civility and morality (xxviii)
--who made man the exclusive judge, if woman partake with him of the gift of reason? (xxviii)
--excluding one-half of the human race from all governmental participation is perplexing and illogical (xxvii)
--elegance is inferior to virtue (xxxiv)
--we say masculine women are unnatural, but where are we to actually find a woman who is too masculine? (xxxiii)
(Jon, does any of this line up with Wollstonecraft's appropriation of Blair's "masculine style" in Allen's article?)
Could we say that for Wollstonecraft, reason is meant to accommodate nature? What could be her noetic field?
-Tarez
On Wollstonecraft - Continuation from Class
A few thoughts: I had difficulty plugging her in to either of these, based on Berlin's descriptions of the two. In some sense, however, I see Wollstonecraft in keeping with a form of Scottish Common Sense Realism, given her explicit emphasis on using reasoned arguments supported by her own knowledge. Berlin explains that, for Common Sense Realists, "The world of sense data exists independently of us and can be apprehended by the use of our sense and our faculties. Reliance on the observations of others, especially those from the past, leads to distortion" (6). As the last bit of class discussion brought to the fore, Wollstonecraft does not rely heavily on earlier texts to bolster her call for the education of women - we would likely not go so far as to say she recalls "traditional wisdom" (7) even as she writes with clear attention to the social order and an audience of educated men. She relies on her own observations re: the world and the ways in which society operates and seems to suggest that this kind of access to the truth of things can be available to all.
13 October 2009
Carina and Jeff's Post (In Reduced Form)
Sorry this is a little late, it's been a hectic weekend/beginning of the week:
- Language is a signifier of truth, not truth itself. Vico writes that eternal truths stand above nature, but within nature all is mutable (872). Sign systems are a human implement for navigating knowledge, and thus are subject to human fallibility (865).
-In Vico, the mind arises with (and through) language. Various languages using variable vocabularies and grammars change the nature of the philosophy of those people who speak them: French thought is ardently emotional, Latin elegaic, Greek pure, Roman heterogenous (874-875).
-Following from the last conclusion, language would then reveal “real” cultural and sociological information about a nation. The idiosyncrasies of each language demonstrate the national character of their speakers. Vico says that the famous topic of debate, as to whether “genuis is a product of language, not language of genius,” is answered as the former by the national character of French intellectualism (874).
-Rhetoric is a help to probability and a guide to inquiry. Vico names common sense as essential to eloquence/rhetoric, and he also states that common sense is necessary in good philosophical critique (868). Philosophical critique supplies “fundamental verity” (866). Since man must deal with probabilities common sense, eloquence, and dialectic are necessary to determine the truth of things.
-Ingenuity is seen in imagination, not in metaphor. Bacon, on the other hand, sees topoi as a strong background to which one can apply imagination (740). Vico names the imagination as “a most favorable omen of future development,” and insists that it not be dulled in students (868); but the imagination under discussion is not rhetorical invention but rather based in memory and oblique access to abstract truth.
-Youth should be trained for civic action and insists on politics as a fundamental field of education. Vico regards the study of human nature and civic matters both as more complex than the sciences, and as a necessary pursuit. Bacon again diverges here from Vico – his concern is for the way that social institutions incorporate and distort knowledge.
ALEX concordance results: Answering the question “What are ideas? And how are they reached?”
From our search of the ALEX concordance, we discovered that Locke sees ideas as perceived stimuli. One observes the exterior worl d and draws conclusions from perception and sensation. By extension, one uses Reason to come to extrapolate further and more complex knowledge. Language is used afterwards in order to communicate percieved and reasoned knowledge to other people.
Logic: 31 hits
Language: 114 hits “The use of Language is, by short Sounds to Names of mixed Modes to signify with ease and dispatch general Conceptions; wherein not only abundance of particulars may be contained, but also a great Variety of independent Ideas collected into one complex one.”
Reason: 84 hits Locke claims that humans alone possess the capacity for both Reason and Language. “
Perception: 20 hits “The whole extent of our Knowledg, or Imagination, reaches not beyond our own Ideas, limited to our ways of Perception.”
Sensation: 26 hits
- Language is a signifier of truth, not truth itself. Vico writes that eternal truths stand above nature, but within nature all is mutable (872). Sign systems are a human implement for navigating knowledge, and thus are subject to human fallibility (865).
-In Vico, the mind arises with (and through) language. Various languages using variable vocabularies and grammars change the nature of the philosophy of those people who speak them: French thought is ardently emotional, Latin elegaic, Greek pure, Roman heterogenous (874-875).
-Following from the last conclusion, language would then reveal “real” cultural and sociological information about a nation. The idiosyncrasies of each language demonstrate the national character of their speakers. Vico says that the famous topic of debate, as to whether “genuis is a product of language, not language of genius,” is answered as the former by the national character of French intellectualism (874).
-Rhetoric is a help to probability and a guide to inquiry. Vico names common sense as essential to eloquence/rhetoric, and he also states that common sense is necessary in good philosophical critique (868). Philosophical critique supplies “fundamental verity” (866). Since man must deal with probabilities common sense, eloquence, and dialectic are necessary to determine the truth of things.
-Ingenuity is seen in imagination, not in metaphor. Bacon, on the other hand, sees topoi as a strong background to which one can apply imagination (740). Vico names the imagination as “a most favorable omen of future development,” and insists that it not be dulled in students (868); but the imagination under discussion is not rhetorical invention but rather based in memory and oblique access to abstract truth.
-Youth should be trained for civic action and insists on politics as a fundamental field of education. Vico regards the study of human nature and civic matters both as more complex than the sciences, and as a necessary pursuit. Bacon again diverges here from Vico – his concern is for the way that social institutions incorporate and distort knowledge.
ALEX concordance results: Answering the question “What are ideas? And how are they reached?”
From our search of the ALEX concordance, we discovered that Locke sees ideas as perceived stimuli. One observes the exterior worl d and draws conclusions from perception and sensation. By extension, one uses Reason to come to extrapolate further and more complex knowledge. Language is used afterwards in order to communicate percieved and reasoned knowledge to other people.
Logic: 31 hits
Language: 114 hits “The use of Language is, by short Sounds to Names of mixed Modes to signify with ease and dispatch general Conceptions; wherein not only abundance of particulars may be contained, but also a great Variety of independent Ideas collected into one complex one.”
Reason: 84 hits Locke claims that humans alone possess the capacity for both Reason and Language. “
Perception: 20 hits “The whole extent of our Knowledg, or Imagination, reaches not beyond our own Ideas, limited to our ways of Perception.”
Sensation: 26 hits
09 October 2009
Chris and Jon
(Sorry, I originally had this posted in the comments section)
Vico, Question no. 2:Vico does not seem to believe that we can go to language to find cultural and sociological theories. In his mind, these are cannot be contained within reason. He argues that "young men, because of their training, which is focused on these studies, are unable to engage in the life of the community, to conduct themselves with sufficient wisdom and prudence; nor can they infuse speech with a familiarity with human psychology or permeate their utterances with passion" (871). This suggests that language is limited. He suggests, in saying they cannot "permeate their utterances with passion," that language alone is not capable of representing truths. Instead, truths come from the people; truths are not established by the language of the rhetor, but rather adopted to the audience.
Vico seems to feel that language does not create truths, but adapts itself to truth. "He argues that it is "impossible to assess human affairs by the inflexible standard of abstract right; we must rather gauge them by the pliant Lesbic rule, which does not conform bodies to itself, but adjusts itself to their contours" (871). Thus sign systems are abitrary in the sense that they can never be stable of fixed; sign systems must be adapted to different means.
In a respect, Vico does see eloquence and rhetoric as a threat to probability and inquiry. He claims that "eloquence does not address itself to the rational part of our nature, but almost entirely to our passions" (873). But unlike Bacon, I don't believe that this a bad thing, for language alone cannot completely affect persausion, as the above discussion shows.
[Jon Booth to continue this discourse]
Locke, Language is imperfect:
Learning (29)
Perception (20)
Sensation (26)
"There were philosophers who had LEARNING and subtility enough to prove. . . that White was Black."
Here Locke suggests that learning can act to manipulate language. Language is thus imperfect in the sense that learning allows it to be used to distort the truth.
"We may define the term whiteness as the power of exciting in us the sensation of white. We cannot define the name of the simple feeling itself."
Language has the power to signify a sensation, but it is powerless to truly represent that feeling. What we feel and what we use to express are, in this respect, arbitrary and futile. Language is imperfect in that true feelings and sensations cannot be captured in language. As he says in Chapter IX, "sounds have no natural connection with our ideas, but have all their signfication from the abitrary imposition of men."
Learning (29)
Perception (20)
Sensation (26)
"There were philosophers who had LEARNING and subtility enough to prove. . . that White was Black."
Here Locke suggests that learning can act to manipulate language. Language is thus imperfect in the sense that learning allows it to be used to distort the truth.
"We may define the term whiteness as the power of exciting in us the sensation of white. We cannot define the name of the simple feeling itself."
Language has the power to signify a sensation, but it is powerless to truly represent that feeling. What we feel and what we use to express are, in this respect, arbitrary and futile. Language is imperfect in that true feelings and sensations cannot be captured in language. As he says in Chapter IX, "sounds have no natural connection with our ideas, but have all their signfication from the abitrary imposition of men."
08 October 2009
Carina and Jeff's Post
-Sign systems are arbitrary. Language is a signifier of truth, not truth itself. Vico writes that eternal truths stand above nature, but within nature all is mutable(872). Sign systems are a human implement for navigating knowledge, and thus are subject to human fallibility (865). Vico proposes that a speaker should always give their words “the appearance of truth” (873); the implication is that words resemble truth, but are not in an of themselves truth.
-In Vico, the mind arises with (and through) language. Various languages using variable vocabularies and grammars change the nature of the philosophy of those people who speak them: French thought is ardently emotional, Latin elegaic, Greek pure, Roman heterogenous (874-875).
-Following from the last conclusion, language would then reveal “real” cultural and sociological information about a nation. The idiosyncrasies of each language demonstrate the national character of their speakers. Vico says that the famous topic of debate, as to whether “genuis is a product of language, not language of genuis,” is answered as the former by the national character of French intellectualism (874). Conversely, Bacon was deeply concerned with the way that language and oratory warped truth and reason (737).
-Rhetoric is a help to probability and a guide to inquiry. Vico names common sense as essential to eloquence/rhetoric, and he also states that common sense is necessary in good philosophical critique (868). Philosophical critique supplies “fundamental verity” (866). Since man must deal with probabilities as opposed to concrete Truths, common sense, eloquence, and dialectic are necessary to determine the truth of things.
-Ingenuity is seen in imagination, not in metaphor. For Vico, ingenuity is based in applying the ars topica to argument (869). Bacon, on the other hand, sees topoi as a strong background to which one can apply imagination (740). Vico names the imagination as “a most favorable omen of future development,” and insists that it not be dulled in students (868); but the imagination under discussion is not rhetorical invention but rather based in memory and oblique access to abstract truth.
-Youth should be trained for civic action. Vico laments academic focus on the sciences to the exclusion of a study of ethics (871), and insists on politics as a fundamental field of education. He writes that, while physical phenomena are unambiguous, human nature is dificult to determine and deal with, due to free will and human variability (871). Vico regards the study of human nature and civic matters both as more complex than the sciences, and as a necessary pursuit. Bacon again diverges here from Vico – his concern is for the way that social institutions incorporate and distort knowledge.
-Vico believes that the rhetor is a scientist. The rhetor can approach any topic by imposing the appropriate topos upon it (869), whereas Bacon posits that a rhetor can apply the topoi to oratory. He acknowledges that the topoi can be used as a point of departure for a more creative approach (740).
ALEX concordance results:
Answering the question “What are ideas? And how are they reached?”
From our search of the ALEX concordance, we discovered that Locke sees ideas as perceived stimuli. One observes the exterior worl d and draws conclusions from perception and sensation. By extension, one uses Reason to come to extrapolate further and more complex knowledge. Language is used afterwards in order to communicate percieved and reasoned knowledge to other people.
Logic: 31 hits
All of these hits were either, in a few cases, from introductory material. Most of them were notes directing towards JS Mill or the Port Royal Logic. “Logic” does not seem to be Locke’s chosen term; he demonstrably prefers “reason.”
Language: 114 hits
“The use of Language is, by short Sounds to Names of mixed Modes to signify with ease and dispatch general Conceptions; wherein not only abundance of particulars may be contained, but also a great Variety of independent Ideas collected into one complex one.”
“But Men, in making their general Ideas, seeing more the convenience of Language and quick dispatch, by short and comprehensive Signs, than the true and precise Nature of Things, as they exist, have, in the framing their abstract Ideas, chiefly pursued that end, which was to be furnished with store of general, and variously comprehensive Names.”
Reason: 84 hits
Locke claims that humans alone possess the capacity for both Reason and Language.
“But if that particular Being be to be counted of the Sort Man, and to have the Name Man given it, then Reason is essential to it, supposing Reason to be a part of the complex Idea, the Name Man stands for : as it is essential to this thing I write on to contain Words, if I will give it the Name Treatise, and rank it under that Species. So that essential, and not essential, relate only to our abstract Ideas, and the Names annexed to them...”
“There are Creatures in the World that have Shapes like ours, but are hairy, and Our abstract want Language, and Reason.”
Perception: 20 hits
“…yet the Idea of the cause of Light, if we had it ever so exact, would no more give us the Idea of Light it self, as it is such a particular Perception in us, than the Idea of the Figure and Motion of a sharp piece of Steel, would give us the Idea of that Pain which it is able to cause in us. For the cause of any Sensation, and the Sensation it self, in all the Simple Ideas of one Sense, are two Ideas ; and two Ideas so different, and distant one from another, that, no two can be more so.”
“The whole extent of our Knowledg, or Imagination, reaches not beyond our own Ideas, limited to our ways of Perception.”
Sensation: 26 Hits
“…to give Names, that might make known to others any Operations they felt in themselves, or any other Ideas, that came not under their Senses, they were fain to borrow Words from ordinary known Ideas of Sensation, by that means to make others the more easily to conceive those Operations they experi-mented in themselves…all their other Ideas ; since they could consist of nothing, but either of outward sensible Perceptions, or of the inward Operations of their Minds about them ;
Response--Jerrell and Mary (edited)
Vico, Question 2: Vico’s importance as a rhetorical player
Vico separates knowledge into two categories: Scientific, or “exact” knowledge, which is gained through observation, and “probable” knowledge, which is carried through words.
Vico argues that the differences in rhetorical knowledge of respective languages is purely stylistic, and as such it would not be a threat to the distortion of truth (which is “probable” or “rhetorical” truth here) as much as it is an opportunity to understand how speakers of different languages may be appealed to. “While we Italians praise our orators for fluency, lucidity, and eloquence, the French praise theirs for reasoning truly” (874).
He also differs from Bacon in his theory of the relation of language to truth. Whereas Bacon claims that communication would be possible without language (through gestures), Vico says that language is indispensable for the spread of some types of knowledge—especially those that deal with “human nature” (742, 871).
The primary concern of Vico indeed seems to be understanding how language relates to the formation of knowledge, the primary goal of his work is an examination of the way his contemporaries had began to view rhetorical knowledge as insufficient in the age of hard truth and exact knowledge.
Locke, Question 2: What are the shortcomings of language?
Language (114 hits), Rhetoric (2 hits), Logic (31), Education (5), Perception (20)
Language is imperfect because ideas conveyed through language are entirely dependent on the experience of individuals. Hence, different people will define a word differently.
“I shall imagine I have done some Service to Truth, Peace, and Learning, if, by an enlargement on this Subject, I can make Men reflect on their own Use of Language ; and give them Reason to suspect, that since it is frequent for others, it may also be possible for them, to have sometimes very good and approved Words in their Mouths, and Writings, with very un-certain, little, or no Signification. And therefore it is not unreasonable for them to be wary herein themselves, and not to be unwilling to have them examined by others.” (Chapter 4—“Of the Names of Substances)
The imperfection of language can be overcome to some degree through the process of education. He only specifically refers to the idea once, but he makes a case for those who are educated to use language may be able to compensate for its arbitrariness.
“For we see, that other well- meaning and wise Men, whose Education and Parts had not acquir'd that acnteness, could intelligibly express themselves to one another ; and in its plain use, make a benefit of Language.”
Vico separates knowledge into two categories: Scientific, or “exact” knowledge, which is gained through observation, and “probable” knowledge, which is carried through words.
Vico argues that the differences in rhetorical knowledge of respective languages is purely stylistic, and as such it would not be a threat to the distortion of truth (which is “probable” or “rhetorical” truth here) as much as it is an opportunity to understand how speakers of different languages may be appealed to. “While we Italians praise our orators for fluency, lucidity, and eloquence, the French praise theirs for reasoning truly” (874).
He also differs from Bacon in his theory of the relation of language to truth. Whereas Bacon claims that communication would be possible without language (through gestures), Vico says that language is indispensable for the spread of some types of knowledge—especially those that deal with “human nature” (742, 871).
The primary concern of Vico indeed seems to be understanding how language relates to the formation of knowledge, the primary goal of his work is an examination of the way his contemporaries had began to view rhetorical knowledge as insufficient in the age of hard truth and exact knowledge.
Locke, Question 2: What are the shortcomings of language?
Language (114 hits), Rhetoric (2 hits), Logic (31), Education (5), Perception (20)
Language is imperfect because ideas conveyed through language are entirely dependent on the experience of individuals. Hence, different people will define a word differently.
“I shall imagine I have done some Service to Truth, Peace, and Learning, if, by an enlargement on this Subject, I can make Men reflect on their own Use of Language ; and give them Reason to suspect, that since it is frequent for others, it may also be possible for them, to have sometimes very good and approved Words in their Mouths, and Writings, with very un-certain, little, or no Signification. And therefore it is not unreasonable for them to be wary herein themselves, and not to be unwilling to have them examined by others.” (Chapter 4—“Of the Names of Substances)
The imperfection of language can be overcome to some degree through the process of education. He only specifically refers to the idea once, but he makes a case for those who are educated to use language may be able to compensate for its arbitrariness.
“For we see, that other well- meaning and wise Men, whose Education and Parts had not acquir'd that acnteness, could intelligibly express themselves to one another ; and in its plain use, make a benefit of Language.”
Limitations/Possibilities of Language
Part I
Vico believes that there is an original system of universal truths, but in nature we have access to those thruths through language which at times could be unstable and imperfect (872). For Vico, the mind arises with knowledge/language since one should cultivate common sense (874 and 868) and train one’s memory and imagination to reach “eternal truths [that] stand above nature” (872). According to him, language serves us to uncover “common sense” and to provide a link between rhetor and audience, thus establishing communication through shared cultural and sociological issues.Vico has as his starting point the uncovering of TRUTH; yet, he situates this quest in the context of sociological “common sense” where the communication between speaker and listeners is “of the essence” (869).
Bacon seems to argue that Rhetoric links imagination and Reason, which facilitates access to reality through “the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe” (745). More so than Vico, he sees Mind and Language in a dialectical relationship; “Men believe that their reason governs words; but it is also true that words react on the understanding.” (Novum Organum 746) For him, language follows the mind but it also has the power to affect and distort Reason, thus creating false Idols. These false Idols distort our comprehension of reality; therefore, our task would be to untangle them.
Part II
“I cannot but observe how little the preservation and improvement of truth and knowledge is the care and concern of mankind; since the arts of fallacy are endowed and preferred. It is evident how men love to deceive and be deceived, since rhetoric, that powerful instrument of error and deceit, has its established professors, is publicly taught, and has always been had in great reputation” (827)
“To conclude this consideration of the imperfection and abuse of language. The ends of language in our discourse with others being chiefly these three: First, to make known one man’s thoughts or ideas to another; Secondly, to do it with as much ease and quickness as possible; and, Thridly, thereby to convey the knowledge of things: language is either abused or deficient, when it fails of any of these three.” (825)
Perception – 20 , Writing – 5, Language – 114, Passion – 4, Rhetoric -2
John Locke overtly favors clarity in language since he believes that this is the most imperfect mode for conveying knowledge. We gain knowledge of things through our perceptions; yet, when working with complex ideas, direct perceptions of things become remote and the names we use in labelling them are inherently imperfect. Rhetoric amplifies the distortion and imperfections of language, being an instrument of error and deceit.
We also tried to diagram the relationships between perception, passion, knowledge, and language and we came up with the following formulas:
Perception = mind + corporeal passion
Object/Essence à Perception à Idea
06 October 2009
Vico and Locke
WORKING TEAMS:
Lavinia and Laura
Jerrell and Mary
Chris and Jon
Carina and Jeff
DUE DATE:
end of class on Thursday 10/8
PART ONE: What's Up with Vico?
Understanding Vico's On the Study Methods of Our Time
Here's where we are with Bacon: in his desire for a way to generate “new” knowledge, Bacon is helping us to differentiate between scientific inquiry and rhetorical recovery (or between discovery and remembrance), rather than between dialectic and rhetoric. Baconian invention seems to have a logical and rhetorical counterpart, where rhetorical knowledge is still somehow responsible for all four intellectual arts that Chris and Jon schematized for us.
On Vico, I provoked you mercilessly during our last class. We are trying to read On the Study Methods of Our Time as a rhetorical treatise (which it is not). We do understand that Vico is very interested in language in use, i.e., he is like an early discourse theorist. Let's see if we can figure him out. I’m offering you two ways to do this (choose only one):
1) By synthesizing the ideas represented in the passages below, write in your own words how you think Vico is important as a rhetorical player and how his theory diverges from Bacon's.
• Language reveals the processes of reason, passion, and imagination (B/H 862).
• “[Bacon’s] vast demands so exceed the utmost extent of man’s effort that he seems to have indicated how we fall short of achieving an absolutely complete system of sciences rather than how we may remedy our cultural gaps” (865).
• “As for the aim, it should circulate, like a blood-stream, through the entire body of the learning process” (866).
• “Some of the new instruments of science are, themselves, sciences; others are arts; still others, products of either art or nature” (866).
• “I may add that in the art of oratory the relationship between speaker and listeners is of the essence” (869).
• “[W]hereas truth is one, probabilities are many, and falsehoods numberless. Each procedure, then, has its defects. … To avoid both defects, I think, young men should be taught the totality of sciences and arts, and their intellectual powers should be developed to the full; …” (870).
• “Our chief fault is that we disregard that part of ethics which treats of human character, of its dispositions, its passions, and of the manner of adjusting these factors to public life and eloquence” (871).
• “What is eloquence, in effect, but wisdom, ornately and copiously delivered in words appropriate to the common opinion of mankind?” (877).
2) By exercising your right to (multiple) choice, discuss how you think Vico is important as a rhetorical player and how his theory diverges from Bacon's based on the combination of choices you make below.
Does Vico think that:
• sign systems are arbitrary or universal?
• the mind precedes language or arises with language?
• we go to language to discover “real” cultural and sociological theories about a nation or to discover ways that truths are distorted?
• rhetoric is potentially a threat to probability and a harm to inquiry, or a help to probability and a guide to inquiry?
• ingenuity is seen in metaphor or in imagination?
• we should be more concerned with training youth for civic action or with the ways in which knowledge becomes incorporated into social institutions?
• the poet is a scientist or a creationist?
Work collaboratively, and create a "new post" as a team.
PART TWO: ALEX Concordance Search
Language as a Vehicle for Understanding in Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding
We are going to use the concordance in ALEX to explore terms and post results.
GOAL QUESTIONS:
1) What are the relations of ideas and langage?
2) How is language imperfect?
3) How does knowledge relate to ideas and language?
4) What are ideas? And how are they reached?
Preliminary steps
Select one of the "goal" questions above.
Link to the concordance for Locke's Essay.
Note the placement of the search bar, "go" button, and "view phrase in context" button. Thankfully, we are linking to the old platform so all of these tools are located near one another.
Using the search bar and "go" button, search the ALEX concordance of Essay for five of the terms below:
Virtue, civility, rhetoric, grammar, logic, history
Perception, learning, writing, language, philosophy
Science, reason, sensation, passion, education
Note the number of “hits" you get for each of your terms and comment on anything that strikes you. Be sure to “view phrase in context" as you begin to look for patterns or make broader realizations about how (often) your whole set of five terms are used in Locke’s treatise. Feel free to search and draw conclusions based on individual terms, but aim for a more vital realization by considering the whole set.
Find two or three sections in Locke’s treatise that (based on the results of your concordance search) speak to your goal question above, and post the references to those sections along with some ideas you have about what Locke was after in the Essay (in relation to your question).
Work collaboratively, and create a "new post" as a team.
Good luck and have fun with this.
-Tarez
Lavinia and Laura
Jerrell and Mary
Chris and Jon
Carina and Jeff
DUE DATE:
end of class on Thursday 10/8
PART ONE: What's Up with Vico?
Understanding Vico's On the Study Methods of Our Time
Here's where we are with Bacon: in his desire for a way to generate “new” knowledge, Bacon is helping us to differentiate between scientific inquiry and rhetorical recovery (or between discovery and remembrance), rather than between dialectic and rhetoric. Baconian invention seems to have a logical and rhetorical counterpart, where rhetorical knowledge is still somehow responsible for all four intellectual arts that Chris and Jon schematized for us.
On Vico, I provoked you mercilessly during our last class. We are trying to read On the Study Methods of Our Time as a rhetorical treatise (which it is not). We do understand that Vico is very interested in language in use, i.e., he is like an early discourse theorist. Let's see if we can figure him out. I’m offering you two ways to do this (choose only one):
1) By synthesizing the ideas represented in the passages below, write in your own words how you think Vico is important as a rhetorical player and how his theory diverges from Bacon's.
• Language reveals the processes of reason, passion, and imagination (B/H 862).
• “[Bacon’s] vast demands so exceed the utmost extent of man’s effort that he seems to have indicated how we fall short of achieving an absolutely complete system of sciences rather than how we may remedy our cultural gaps” (865).
• “As for the aim, it should circulate, like a blood-stream, through the entire body of the learning process” (866).
• “Some of the new instruments of science are, themselves, sciences; others are arts; still others, products of either art or nature” (866).
• “I may add that in the art of oratory the relationship between speaker and listeners is of the essence” (869).
• “[W]hereas truth is one, probabilities are many, and falsehoods numberless. Each procedure, then, has its defects. … To avoid both defects, I think, young men should be taught the totality of sciences and arts, and their intellectual powers should be developed to the full; …” (870).
• “Our chief fault is that we disregard that part of ethics which treats of human character, of its dispositions, its passions, and of the manner of adjusting these factors to public life and eloquence” (871).
• “What is eloquence, in effect, but wisdom, ornately and copiously delivered in words appropriate to the common opinion of mankind?” (877).
2) By exercising your right to (multiple) choice, discuss how you think Vico is important as a rhetorical player and how his theory diverges from Bacon's based on the combination of choices you make below.
Does Vico think that:
• sign systems are arbitrary or universal?
• the mind precedes language or arises with language?
• we go to language to discover “real” cultural and sociological theories about a nation or to discover ways that truths are distorted?
• rhetoric is potentially a threat to probability and a harm to inquiry, or a help to probability and a guide to inquiry?
• ingenuity is seen in metaphor or in imagination?
• we should be more concerned with training youth for civic action or with the ways in which knowledge becomes incorporated into social institutions?
• the poet is a scientist or a creationist?
Work collaboratively, and create a "new post" as a team.
PART TWO: ALEX Concordance Search
Language as a Vehicle for Understanding in Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding
We are going to use the concordance in ALEX to explore terms and post results.
GOAL QUESTIONS:
1) What are the relations of ideas and langage?
2) How is language imperfect?
3) How does knowledge relate to ideas and language?
4) What are ideas? And how are they reached?
Preliminary steps
Select one of the "goal" questions above.
Link to the concordance for Locke's Essay.
Note the placement of the search bar, "go" button, and "view phrase in context" button. Thankfully, we are linking to the old platform so all of these tools are located near one another.
Using the search bar and "go" button, search the ALEX concordance of Essay for five of the terms below:
Virtue, civility, rhetoric, grammar, logic, history
Perception, learning, writing, language, philosophy
Science, reason, sensation, passion, education
Note the number of “hits" you get for each of your terms and comment on anything that strikes you. Be sure to “view phrase in context" as you begin to look for patterns or make broader realizations about how (often) your whole set of five terms are used in Locke’s treatise. Feel free to search and draw conclusions based on individual terms, but aim for a more vital realization by considering the whole set.
Find two or three sections in Locke’s treatise that (based on the results of your concordance search) speak to your goal question above, and post the references to those sections along with some ideas you have about what Locke was after in the Essay (in relation to your question).
Work collaboratively, and create a "new post" as a team.
Good luck and have fun with this.
-Tarez
01 October 2009
Chris' mini-trace and synthesis
[this is from Chris]
Vives, Ignorance (not knowledge) Fostered Evil:
Vives argues that it is the experience of many people that they fall into the same behavior to which they have been accustomed without their being aware of it, and although at times they struggle against them and try to control them, they slip out and burst forth against their will (56). This is a central argument for Vives, as it constitutes why learning is necessary to combat evil. It is their not being aware of it that leads to evil. Vives consequently argues that women should be edified by chaste tales (56). His idea is thus that learning (a very distinct and proper type of learning) has the double effect of warding off ignorance and consequently evil.
Even Vives' recommendation of the art of cooking follows this logic. He suggests that she will learn the art of cooking, not the vulgar kind associated with low-class eating houses that serve up immoderate amounts of food to great numbers, nor that which caters to gluttony, but a sensible, refined, temperate, and frugal art (64). While this does not directly address evil, the connotations are evident in language of opposition (low-class, immoderate, gluttony against sensible, refined, temperate and frugal. In positing cooking as something learned as an art, Vives suggests that ignorance in this area associates one with evil. This is an example of the broader logic of ignorance and evil.
Of course, for Vives learning must be of a very specific kind. He states that learned women are suspect to many, as if the mental ability acquired by learning increased their natural wickedness and as if men should not also be suspect for the same reason if subtle learning is added to a perverse mind. The learning that I should wish to be made available to the whole human race is sober and chaste; it forms our character and renders us better (64). Vives, instead of seeing learning in women as dangerous argues that the opposite is the case; Vives' learning has a constructive quality, it is used to rid one of vice.
The main concern with Vives' argument is that, for him, learning must only be of a certain kind--it must be sober and chaste. If this is the case, is it fair to assert that his recommendation of limited learning is still a form of ignorance? Vives seems to believe that this type of learning will allow one to recognize evil and false learning. He argues that the study of literature... lifts the mind to the contemplation of beautiful things and rids it of lowly thoughts; and if any such thoughts creep into the mind, fortified by precepts and counsels of good living, either dispels them immediately or does not lend an ear to vile and base things (70). In this statement Vives suggests that once one has the right base of learning, they are capable only of good and chaste thoughts.
But were one ignorant of right and wrong (had they not knowledge) they would not be subject to vices such as reading literature of amorous reveries (74). Learning and knowledge, for women as in men, acts as a safeguard rather than a corrupting factor.
-cjt
Vives, Ignorance (not knowledge) Fostered Evil:
Vives argues that it is the experience of many people that they fall into the same behavior to which they have been accustomed without their being aware of it, and although at times they struggle against them and try to control them, they slip out and burst forth against their will (56). This is a central argument for Vives, as it constitutes why learning is necessary to combat evil. It is their not being aware of it that leads to evil. Vives consequently argues that women should be edified by chaste tales (56). His idea is thus that learning (a very distinct and proper type of learning) has the double effect of warding off ignorance and consequently evil.
Even Vives' recommendation of the art of cooking follows this logic. He suggests that she will learn the art of cooking, not the vulgar kind associated with low-class eating houses that serve up immoderate amounts of food to great numbers, nor that which caters to gluttony, but a sensible, refined, temperate, and frugal art (64). While this does not directly address evil, the connotations are evident in language of opposition (low-class, immoderate, gluttony against sensible, refined, temperate and frugal. In positing cooking as something learned as an art, Vives suggests that ignorance in this area associates one with evil. This is an example of the broader logic of ignorance and evil.
Of course, for Vives learning must be of a very specific kind. He states that learned women are suspect to many, as if the mental ability acquired by learning increased their natural wickedness and as if men should not also be suspect for the same reason if subtle learning is added to a perverse mind. The learning that I should wish to be made available to the whole human race is sober and chaste; it forms our character and renders us better (64). Vives, instead of seeing learning in women as dangerous argues that the opposite is the case; Vives' learning has a constructive quality, it is used to rid one of vice.
The main concern with Vives' argument is that, for him, learning must only be of a certain kind--it must be sober and chaste. If this is the case, is it fair to assert that his recommendation of limited learning is still a form of ignorance? Vives seems to believe that this type of learning will allow one to recognize evil and false learning. He argues that the study of literature... lifts the mind to the contemplation of beautiful things and rids it of lowly thoughts; and if any such thoughts creep into the mind, fortified by precepts and counsels of good living, either dispels them immediately or does not lend an ear to vile and base things (70). In this statement Vives suggests that once one has the right base of learning, they are capable only of good and chaste thoughts.
But were one ignorant of right and wrong (had they not knowledge) they would not be subject to vices such as reading literature of amorous reveries (74). Learning and knowledge, for women as in men, acts as a safeguard rather than a corrupting factor.
-cjt
30 September 2009
Carina's mini-trace and synthesis
[This is from Carina.]
1. The fourth chapter of Vives' discussion of young women's education makes several assertions about the moral character of knowledge--perhaps about the correspondence or lack thereof between language and truth. Vives clearly wishes to argue that knowledge is, in point of fact, a moral force, and to suggest that educating women will moralize them: "It would be to our
advantage to have at least a knowledge of good to protect us from the constant onslaught of evil ... when [your daughter] is assailed by vice, to which she has grow accustomed, what protection will be afforded by moral rectitude, which she never came to know?" (19-20). Vives argues that women need education in goodness to protect them from sin. He writes, "The woman who has learned to make 'reflections' will never bring herself to commit any vile act, for her mind will have been strengthened and imbued with holy counsels" (21).
But the difficulty in this position derives from that fact that it is, in Vives' observation, entirely possible to learn evil and not good. Therefore, learning cannot be said to be an absolutely positive moral force. In order to resolve this dilemma, Vives defines only certain applications of the intellect as knowledge, excluding others. Those that count as learning are: "the study of wisdom," "books that impart instruction in morals," and "that part of philosophy that has assumed as its task the formation and improvement of morals" (28-29). Those that are not included: "idle verses or vain and frivolous ditties," and "eloquence," which in abeyance to Paul his Christian woman will have no need of. By this judgment or division, Vives makes a one-to-one correlation between knowledge and truth--where truth is revealed and is thus also perfectly moral--possible.
2. Religious Humanism strikes me as an attempt to reconcile the issue of where truth comes from. The "religious" part of the movement has to locate truth in scripture, which is divine and above question, or beyond logic. "Humanism" complicates this, because it values individual reason, the kind of knowledge that is discovered. A Religious Humanist work has to walk a tightrope between the two, and I suspect that that tension drives a lot of the philosophy.
Sor Juana defers to scripture as fundamental truth, but she approaches it with more logic than reverence. She's trying to understand it, not merely to accept it, and she finds her reading of the text to be in disagreement at times with the Church. Vives seems to me to be much more reliant on the more image-driven or mythological parts of the bible--note his references to the devil. He goes into discourse with many assumptions as to the universal characteristics of women as a group, and does not reveal his reasoning for accepting them. Several times, as with the Pauline rule against women's speech, he seems to struggle with them. They are, perhaps, pieces of implicit knowledge. Erasmus looks to the learned traditions of both the Church and of the Classics, but he seems to take them not on faith but on persuasion. Erasmus also gives a great deal of power to the listener/reader in their own persuasion through his dominant image of "richness." Could we
say that Erasmus locates truth in the process of discourse?
1. The fourth chapter of Vives' discussion of young women's education makes several assertions about the moral character of knowledge--perhaps about the correspondence or lack thereof between language and truth. Vives clearly wishes to argue that knowledge is, in point of fact, a moral force, and to suggest that educating women will moralize them: "It would be to our
advantage to have at least a knowledge of good to protect us from the constant onslaught of evil ... when [your daughter] is assailed by vice, to which she has grow accustomed, what protection will be afforded by moral rectitude, which she never came to know?" (19-20). Vives argues that women need education in goodness to protect them from sin. He writes, "The woman who has learned to make 'reflections' will never bring herself to commit any vile act, for her mind will have been strengthened and imbued with holy counsels" (21).
But the difficulty in this position derives from that fact that it is, in Vives' observation, entirely possible to learn evil and not good. Therefore, learning cannot be said to be an absolutely positive moral force. In order to resolve this dilemma, Vives defines only certain applications of the intellect as knowledge, excluding others. Those that count as learning are: "the study of wisdom," "books that impart instruction in morals," and "that part of philosophy that has assumed as its task the formation and improvement of morals" (28-29). Those that are not included: "idle verses or vain and frivolous ditties," and "eloquence," which in abeyance to Paul his Christian woman will have no need of. By this judgment or division, Vives makes a one-to-one correlation between knowledge and truth--where truth is revealed and is thus also perfectly moral--possible.
2. Religious Humanism strikes me as an attempt to reconcile the issue of where truth comes from. The "religious" part of the movement has to locate truth in scripture, which is divine and above question, or beyond logic. "Humanism" complicates this, because it values individual reason, the kind of knowledge that is discovered. A Religious Humanist work has to walk a tightrope between the two, and I suspect that that tension drives a lot of the philosophy.
Sor Juana defers to scripture as fundamental truth, but she approaches it with more logic than reverence. She's trying to understand it, not merely to accept it, and she finds her reading of the text to be in disagreement at times with the Church. Vives seems to me to be much more reliant on the more image-driven or mythological parts of the bible--note his references to the devil. He goes into discourse with many assumptions as to the universal characteristics of women as a group, and does not reveal his reasoning for accepting them. Several times, as with the Pauline rule against women's speech, he seems to struggle with them. They are, perhaps, pieces of implicit knowledge. Erasmus looks to the learned traditions of both the Church and of the Classics, but he seems to take them not on faith but on persuasion. Erasmus also gives a great deal of power to the listener/reader in their own persuasion through his dominant image of "richness." Could we
say that Erasmus locates truth in the process of discourse?
On Vives, Cruz, and Pizan
1) From the start of Chapter IV, Vives is clearly arguing for a knowledge of good. He laments: "Would that it were possible to lead our lives in the midst of so many evil people and remain ignorant of evil" (63). So "evil," as he explains earlier, is not something we need bother to teach. Evil will out. It's knowledge of the good, apparently, that deserves our extra attention if we are to be protected from "the constant onslaught of evil" (63). For Vives, education (the right sort, of course) has the capacity to strengthen our minds and "imbue" them with "holy counsels" (65), so as to resist the temptations of evil. Indeed, as he so pointedly remarks, "You will not easily find an evil woman unless she be one who is ignorant..." (65). Let this be a lesson to us, friends.
2) De la Cruz, like Vives, seems to identify a relationship between education and goodness, her primary goal being to "study, so as to become less ignorant" (788). Her writing (and perhaps even her life) suggest a virtuousness to learning, which, were we to use her "Respuesta" to historicize religious humanism, indicates that this movement may be characterized by such a link. Pizan, on the other hand, while certainly identifying the role of morality in courtly life, conflates many of these moral standards with women (e.g. compassion, pity, humility) rather than women's education. While in "City of Ladies" she certainly advocates for the education of women, this opportunity is framed always as having the encouragement and patronage of men (e.g. learned fathers). Many women would certainly have to strive to maintain these mores, as suggested by her recommendation that one avoid gossiping, etc., but one does not seem to need an education to be moral.
2) De la Cruz, like Vives, seems to identify a relationship between education and goodness, her primary goal being to "study, so as to become less ignorant" (788). Her writing (and perhaps even her life) suggest a virtuousness to learning, which, were we to use her "Respuesta" to historicize religious humanism, indicates that this movement may be characterized by such a link. Pizan, on the other hand, while certainly identifying the role of morality in courtly life, conflates many of these moral standards with women (e.g. compassion, pity, humility) rather than women's education. While in "City of Ladies" she certainly advocates for the education of women, this opportunity is framed always as having the encouragement and patronage of men (e.g. learned fathers). Many women would certainly have to strive to maintain these mores, as suggested by her recommendation that one avoid gossiping, etc., but one does not seem to need an education to be moral.
Vives' Concept of Moral Education
Hi All,
I took Vives' concept of moral education and ran with:
“[L]et her begin by learning things that contribute to the cultivation of the mind and the care and management of the home” (58).
Women’s education is vital the well being of the state, since Vives views education more narrowly as “moral education” in two different senses. First, education can be used as a direct moralizing force, teaching women what is right and how to act properly: “The learning that I should wish to be made available to the whole human race is sober and chaste; it forms our character and renders us better” (64.
Second, education can confer skills that contribute to an overall good, mostly in domestic management. The moral health of the state is reflected in the moral health of the household. An example of this is Vives’ stern espousal that women learn to cook well:
“cooking, for it is an art of great necessity” (61)…”And I have come to the conclusion that the principal reason why men here in Belgium spend so much time in inns and taverns is the negligence and laziness of their women in cooking meals, which forces me to avoid their own homes and seek elsewhere what they do not find there” (62).
What we see is that cooking, while itself a skill and not a form of moral instruction, has a moral result of creating a sustainable household by keeping men out of inns and taverns. A “steadfast and chaste” (70) woman must, according to Vives, both be instructed in moral behavior and skilled in tasks with positive moral results.
I took Vives' concept of moral education and ran with:
“[L]et her begin by learning things that contribute to the cultivation of the mind and the care and management of the home” (58).
Women’s education is vital the well being of the state, since Vives views education more narrowly as “moral education” in two different senses. First, education can be used as a direct moralizing force, teaching women what is right and how to act properly: “The learning that I should wish to be made available to the whole human race is sober and chaste; it forms our character and renders us better” (64.
Second, education can confer skills that contribute to an overall good, mostly in domestic management. The moral health of the state is reflected in the moral health of the household. An example of this is Vives’ stern espousal that women learn to cook well:
“cooking, for it is an art of great necessity” (61)…”And I have come to the conclusion that the principal reason why men here in Belgium spend so much time in inns and taverns is the negligence and laziness of their women in cooking meals, which forces me to avoid their own homes and seek elsewhere what they do not find there” (62).
What we see is that cooking, while itself a skill and not a form of moral instruction, has a moral result of creating a sustainable household by keeping men out of inns and taverns. A “steadfast and chaste” (70) woman must, according to Vives, both be instructed in moral behavior and skilled in tasks with positive moral results.
29 September 2009
Mary's Mini-trace
Here are my responses to Vives, de la Cruz, and Pizan.
#1 In the third chapter of Vives' book, I see several passages that suggest that women's education is beneficial to the State and that education ought to be available to women of all social classes:
a)Vives praises several well-known women, ancient and contemporary, for their diligence and skill in spinning, weaving, and needlework: Hannah (Samuel's mother), Penelope, the Macedonian queens, Queen Isabella of Spain, and Catherine of Aragon. By commending these aristocratic women for mastering an accomplishment that some might consider plebian, Vives implies that education (in textile work, at least) should be available to both upper and lower-class women.
b)In advocating the study of cooking, Vives blames Belgian men's fondness for taverns on the "negligence and laziness of their women in cooking meals." Hence, Vives suggests that women's ignorance of cooking can contribute to men's laziness and neglect of their families, and, indirectly, to the instability of the nation.
#2 In the writings of Pizan and de la Cruz, much of the speaker's authority comes from repeated appeals to scriptural passages and to prominent church authorities--both well-known figures such as Jerome (B/H 786) and the generic "mistress's confessor" (B/H 550). The salient difference is in the uses the two authors make of the evidence. While Pizan uses Biblical evidence unquestioningly to reinforce truths widely accepted ("By long forbearing is a prince persuaded"; "Love thy neighbor as thyself,") de la Cruz encourages her readers to approach the Scriptures more critically--not to challenge the infallibility of the Bible itself, but to inquire into the cultural contexts in which its authors wrote, and, if necessary, to challenge common interpretations.
#1 In the third chapter of Vives' book, I see several passages that suggest that women's education is beneficial to the State and that education ought to be available to women of all social classes:
a)Vives praises several well-known women, ancient and contemporary, for their diligence and skill in spinning, weaving, and needlework: Hannah (Samuel's mother), Penelope, the Macedonian queens, Queen Isabella of Spain, and Catherine of Aragon. By commending these aristocratic women for mastering an accomplishment that some might consider plebian, Vives implies that education (in textile work, at least) should be available to both upper and lower-class women.
b)In advocating the study of cooking, Vives blames Belgian men's fondness for taverns on the "negligence and laziness of their women in cooking meals." Hence, Vives suggests that women's ignorance of cooking can contribute to men's laziness and neglect of their families, and, indirectly, to the instability of the nation.
#2 In the writings of Pizan and de la Cruz, much of the speaker's authority comes from repeated appeals to scriptural passages and to prominent church authorities--both well-known figures such as Jerome (B/H 786) and the generic "mistress's confessor" (B/H 550). The salient difference is in the uses the two authors make of the evidence. While Pizan uses Biblical evidence unquestioningly to reinforce truths widely accepted ("By long forbearing is a prince persuaded"; "Love thy neighbor as thyself,") de la Cruz encourages her readers to approach the Scriptures more critically--not to challenge the infallibility of the Bible itself, but to inquire into the cultural contexts in which its authors wrote, and, if necessary, to challenge common interpretations.
Religious Humanism: a mini-trace and a synthesis
Hello, everyone.
Here are the two activities we did not get to during Thursday's class discussion (9/24) on Vives and de la Cruz. I'd say, tackle them as if you would have tackled them while we were in class--focusedly, but briefly. You need not write a lengthy exposition in response to each question; just get yourself to a point of realization, and share that realization with us.
1) This is how Fantazzi--the editor of Vives' Education of a Christian Woman--generally characterizes this rhetorical treatise and some of Vives' other training manuals for women pupils (Fantazzi, "Introduction" 1-40):
--advocated education for all women regardless of social class and ability
--argued that women were intellectually equal if not superior to men
--promoted universal education of women, even those who showed no natural aptitude for learning
--argued that women's proper education was essential to the well-being of the state
--distinguished between real “learning” and superficial belletristic knowledge
--argued that ignorance (not knowledge) fostered evil
What evidence can you find for one or more of these arguments in the following? (Select only one option below for your mini-trace.) How consistently is it argued?
Chapters I-III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
2) Let's say we had only two ways to historicize and understand "religious humanism" as a movement:
--noting differences between Pizan and de la Cruz in terms of textual features, how writers establish authority, key claims and assumptions, and what counts as evidence
--taking Erasmus, Vives, and de la Cruz as a collective and explaining how they could represent the same tradition in terms of the above
Pick one of these two ways and offer a brief historicization of your own.
Good luck and have fun with this.
-Tarez
Here are the two activities we did not get to during Thursday's class discussion (9/24) on Vives and de la Cruz. I'd say, tackle them as if you would have tackled them while we were in class--focusedly, but briefly. You need not write a lengthy exposition in response to each question; just get yourself to a point of realization, and share that realization with us.
1) This is how Fantazzi--the editor of Vives' Education of a Christian Woman--generally characterizes this rhetorical treatise and some of Vives' other training manuals for women pupils (Fantazzi, "Introduction" 1-40):
--advocated education for all women regardless of social class and ability
--argued that women were intellectually equal if not superior to men
--promoted universal education of women, even those who showed no natural aptitude for learning
--argued that women's proper education was essential to the well-being of the state
--distinguished between real “learning” and superficial belletristic knowledge
--argued that ignorance (not knowledge) fostered evil
What evidence can you find for one or more of these arguments in the following? (Select only one option below for your mini-trace.) How consistently is it argued?
Chapters I-III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
2) Let's say we had only two ways to historicize and understand "religious humanism" as a movement:
--noting differences between Pizan and de la Cruz in terms of textual features, how writers establish authority, key claims and assumptions, and what counts as evidence
--taking Erasmus, Vives, and de la Cruz as a collective and explaining how they could represent the same tradition in terms of the above
Pick one of these two ways and offer a brief historicization of your own.
Good luck and have fun with this.
-Tarez
27 September 2009
Promised quasi-etymology from Augustine Bk. IV
Jeff and others, here is the etymology I promised.
I was at first inclined to post this in response to Jeff's question about the role of predestination in Augustine's Book IV, but it would have made a lengthy and insufficient response; as well, I didn't want to steer that conversation in a direction unintended by Jeff.
Circuitus
In Sister Sullivan's translation in B/H this appears simply as "period", which offers a somewhat misleading interpretation of Greek periodos. What I'll show below is a quasi-development of two terms simultaneously: periodos and ambitus, since both had in some way influenced Augustine's use of circuitus in Book IV.
1) Greek peri-hodos (“around”-“a going, way, journey”)
2) Greek periodos
3) Latin circuit / ambit ("going around")
3) Latin periodos "complete cycle"
5) Augustine circuitus (via Quintilian)
For Augustine: two or more membra where the rhythm is suspended/held at the end of each phrase except on the last phrase. The introduction to D.W. Robertson's translation helped me discern this. Robertson notes that Sullivan's translation tends to replace the oral convention (for which we have no modern-day equivalent in English) with the closest equivalent in written punctuation. This is not altogether inaccurate, given that we will likely see some conventions from medieval oral delivery as having been transferred onto the punctuation mark that denotes them in written discourse.
Membra
For Augustine: a membrum contains a complete meaning and complete rhythm by itself, but not when it is considered in relation to the whole sentence (Robertson xix). Again, the introduction to Robertson's translation helped me discern this. Previously, I had equated membrum with something like "independent clause," probably because I was always looking to the written translation of Augustine's examples to try to understand the convention. (Duh.) Sullivan notes the Greek kola as membra's earliest origin.
Caesa
As above, I'll try to show a quasi-development of two terms, kommata and caesellum, since both had in some way influenced Augustine's use of caesa in Book IV, although this is by no means an authoritative trace! Sullivan and Robertson note the Greek kommata as caesa's earliest origin.
1) Greek kommata ("pieces which are cut off")
2) Latin caesellum (dim. of caesus "to have cut")
3) Latin cisellum (vernacular use for "cutting tool")
4) Augustine caesum / incisum (via Quintilian)
For Augustine, this was an expression that contains a complete meaning but is delivered with a suspended rhythm (perhaps to denote exchange, invite completion, suggest reciprocity?).
-Tarez
I was at first inclined to post this in response to Jeff's question about the role of predestination in Augustine's Book IV, but it would have made a lengthy and insufficient response; as well, I didn't want to steer that conversation in a direction unintended by Jeff.
Circuitus
In Sister Sullivan's translation in B/H this appears simply as "period", which offers a somewhat misleading interpretation of Greek periodos. What I'll show below is a quasi-development of two terms simultaneously: periodos and ambitus, since both had in some way influenced Augustine's use of circuitus in Book IV.
1) Greek peri-hodos (“around”-“a going, way, journey”)
2) Greek periodos
3) Latin circuit / ambit ("going around")
3) Latin periodos "complete cycle"
5) Augustine circuitus (via Quintilian)
For Augustine: two or more membra where the rhythm is suspended/held at the end of each phrase except on the last phrase. The introduction to D.W. Robertson's translation helped me discern this. Robertson notes that Sullivan's translation tends to replace the oral convention (for which we have no modern-day equivalent in English) with the closest equivalent in written punctuation. This is not altogether inaccurate, given that we will likely see some conventions from medieval oral delivery as having been transferred onto the punctuation mark that denotes them in written discourse.
Membra
For Augustine: a membrum contains a complete meaning and complete rhythm by itself, but not when it is considered in relation to the whole sentence (Robertson xix). Again, the introduction to Robertson's translation helped me discern this. Previously, I had equated membrum with something like "independent clause," probably because I was always looking to the written translation of Augustine's examples to try to understand the convention. (Duh.) Sullivan notes the Greek kola as membra's earliest origin.
Caesa
As above, I'll try to show a quasi-development of two terms, kommata and caesellum, since both had in some way influenced Augustine's use of caesa in Book IV, although this is by no means an authoritative trace! Sullivan and Robertson note the Greek kommata as caesa's earliest origin.
1) Greek kommata ("pieces which are cut off")
2) Latin caesellum (dim. of caesus "to have cut")
3) Latin cisellum (vernacular use for "cutting tool")
4) Augustine caesum / incisum (via Quintilian)
For Augustine, this was an expression that contains a complete meaning but is delivered with a suspended rhythm (perhaps to denote exchange, invite completion, suggest reciprocity?).
-Tarez
22 September 2009
City of Ladies and Other Cities
Just a few thoughts: It recently (as in 2 minutes ago) came to my attention that Augustine wrote "The City of God," in which there are two opposing cities, the City of God and the City of Man (City of the World?). While I know virtually none of the specifics, it seems clear that Christine de Pizan was echoing and responding to a kind of conversation here, or even echoing a textual/rhetorical tradition. Apparently de Pizan's City of Ladies is construed as a more redemptive, restorative site, as opposed the depraved and sinful City of Man posed by Augustine, but it does make me wonder what we've missed in our BH-selected Augustinian readings... And while I know we've moved on to Erasmus and others, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to continue considering the extent to which these rhetors (the women, especially) are complicating and re-appropriating dominant discourses and formations.
16 September 2009
Augustine and Predestination
Greetings all. This post is more of a continued conversation that started with Prof. Graban after class on Tuesday, wandered into my bookshelf at my apartment, was emailed around and has now ended up here:
Augustine states that even a good sermon may not reach an audience. In pedagogical terms it boils down to: "Some people will just never get it." In a Christian context, I immediately thought that this might imply the concept of Predestination. For the sake of brevity, here's a quick sketch:
Only certain people predetermined by God to be considered good will be granted entrance into heaven. Everyone else is, well, damned to hell and (sometimes) purgatory.
Predestination had a major foothold among Calvinists (16th c. and on). Though it gained popularity much later, Predestination among a plethora of other beliefs pervaded early Christianity in the time of Augustine (including Manicheanish, Gnosticism, etc). These many beliefs persisted even for a time after the Council of Nicea (325 AD), which unified a lot of basic Christian beliefs.
Referring to the Oxford Illustrated Guide to Christianity, it states that Augustine propounded extreme ideas of predestination late in life. Since the last chapter of De Doctrina was written only 4 years before his death, I surmise that Augustine really could be implying Predestination here, which in my opinion greatly complicates the idea of "pleasing, informing, and enlightening the audience."
Sorry this got a little long, but I would love some more thoughts on this.
Augustine states that even a good sermon may not reach an audience. In pedagogical terms it boils down to: "Some people will just never get it." In a Christian context, I immediately thought that this might imply the concept of Predestination. For the sake of brevity, here's a quick sketch:
Only certain people predetermined by God to be considered good will be granted entrance into heaven. Everyone else is, well, damned to hell and (sometimes) purgatory.
Predestination had a major foothold among Calvinists (16th c. and on). Though it gained popularity much later, Predestination among a plethora of other beliefs pervaded early Christianity in the time of Augustine (including Manicheanish, Gnosticism, etc). These many beliefs persisted even for a time after the Council of Nicea (325 AD), which unified a lot of basic Christian beliefs.
Referring to the Oxford Illustrated Guide to Christianity, it states that Augustine propounded extreme ideas of predestination late in life. Since the last chapter of De Doctrina was written only 4 years before his death, I surmise that Augustine really could be implying Predestination here, which in my opinion greatly complicates the idea of "pleasing, informing, and enlightening the audience."
Sorry this got a little long, but I would love some more thoughts on this.
07 September 2009
Fish, Turpin, B/H, and historiography--how it all ties in.
For my first post, I'd like to return to the discussion we started to have in class on 9/3, just before diving into our "practice trace" of dissoi logoi. Jon and Jerrell, this is mainly for you, inspired by my guilty feelings for speeding too quickly through the discussion. But of course, this has bearing on the whole class.
If you remember, I brought up Jerrell's e-mail about Stanley Fish on the tails of responding to one of Jeff's discussion questions, in which he expressed a desire to see Bizzell/Herzberg more explicitly note the glossing of rhetoric's relationship to other disciplines that seems to occur in their anthology (i.e., these relationships aren't capitalized upon enough in their anthology, although the texts span ~2000 years). I think we agreed. In response to Jeff, I suggested that we think about some potential benefits of B/H's actual project, which is to highlight the complexities that occur even within a tradition that presents itself as more revisions of Aristotle's system. In other words, B/H have made it their project to "expand" what they admit is a problematic rhetorical tradition--how can this benefit us?
One benefit may be in recognizing the implausibility of arriving at any clear resolution to arguments like Stanley Fish's, unless and until we recognize the paradoxical nature of certain historical perspectives even as they are "expanded" or "revised". It is possible that B/H want us to grasp the following:
--the simultaneous benefits and challenges of historicizing rhetoric as a powerful public force (B/H 1, 8, 16)
--the difficulties of discerning a "universal" rhetorical situation in spite of its historical coherence and fluidity (B/H 1, 7)
--how the history of rhetoric can be seen as more than a succession of reformulations of the classical system, in spite of the fact that many primary texts are positioned as revising or speaking back first to Aristotle, then to Cicero, then to Quintilian, etc. (B/H 7).
Another benefit may be in helping us to assess Fish's positioning in the debate. If you remember again, I read an excerpt from Paul Turpin's response to Fish, in which Turpin says that by separating out and valuating "specific content" from other things, Fish is rejecting Aristotle's rhetoric/dialectic counterparts. According to Turpin, while Fish claims to argue for teaching "composition and rhetoric and nothing else," his argument actually results in an a-rhetorical stance--a limited set of skills becomes relegated to what Aristotle referred to as a "definite science" that is separate from disciplinary subject matter, exigency, discourse communities, genre, etc. (Fish seems to have recanted slightly on this point.)
Jon raised a very good point about the excerpt I read from Turpin's response. If Turpin were in fact making the assertion that "bad syntax comes from bad ideas" in order to argue for this non-separation, we wouldn't be any better off. But I think Turpin is responding in kind to Fish's assertion that syntax has purpose, value, and pedagogical basis as a language system (in a writing class) when viewed as separate from ideas. (Turpin disagrees.)
It might behoove Fish to take up more complex theoretical perspectives to engage his point about grammar instruction more convincingly, rather than fall back on what represents an unreflective way of doing history. It might behoove Fish to undertake a longer study of the context and initiation of discourse, of genre/style, or of rhetorical reasoning, not necessarily to position himself historically in the debate, but rather to demonstrate that he understands that the terms of the debate stem as much from how we have transmitted and transcribed our own history as they do from actual beliefs about what students can do in the classroom. Turpin's critique seems to be that Fish is unwilling to do that.
A final benefit may be in realizing that B/H use their classification to point out “continuing themes” or “continuing problems,” such as the nature of the rhetorician’s activities with respect to knowledge (5, 8). Perhaps we should view them more actively as ongoing problems, not only in our contemporary debates about how to teach writing, but also in our contemporary debates about how to historicize how writing has been taught.
It certainly behooves all of us to note that B/H and CCS both present what are, essentially, collections of corpora. The difference is that one relies on and implies a "stability" of periods (based on what they found in primary texts), while the other presents and argues for a "flexibility" of genres (based on how they think that 19th century texts invite the classification of rhetoric, reader, and composition book). But let’s test these claims: which classification is truly more stable or more flexible than the other? If both classifications have stemmed from (or "emerged from") the corpora, then aren't they useful to our efforts to understand how historians are in relationship with the histories they re-present?
-Tarez
Here are some links to provide essential context:
--Stanley Fish's column in the NYT on "what should colleges teach?"
--Part Two of the same column (in which Fish responds to the zealous responses to his column)
--Mark Richardson's article in the Chronicle that deals critically in some depth with the kinds of issues Fish takes up (this originally ran in November 2008 and reran last month)
--Paul Turpin's response to Fish's Part Two (on the WPA-L listserv)
If you remember, I brought up Jerrell's e-mail about Stanley Fish on the tails of responding to one of Jeff's discussion questions, in which he expressed a desire to see Bizzell/Herzberg more explicitly note the glossing of rhetoric's relationship to other disciplines that seems to occur in their anthology (i.e., these relationships aren't capitalized upon enough in their anthology, although the texts span ~2000 years). I think we agreed. In response to Jeff, I suggested that we think about some potential benefits of B/H's actual project, which is to highlight the complexities that occur even within a tradition that presents itself as more revisions of Aristotle's system. In other words, B/H have made it their project to "expand" what they admit is a problematic rhetorical tradition--how can this benefit us?
One benefit may be in recognizing the implausibility of arriving at any clear resolution to arguments like Stanley Fish's, unless and until we recognize the paradoxical nature of certain historical perspectives even as they are "expanded" or "revised". It is possible that B/H want us to grasp the following:
--the simultaneous benefits and challenges of historicizing rhetoric as a powerful public force (B/H 1, 8, 16)
--the difficulties of discerning a "universal" rhetorical situation in spite of its historical coherence and fluidity (B/H 1, 7)
--how the history of rhetoric can be seen as more than a succession of reformulations of the classical system, in spite of the fact that many primary texts are positioned as revising or speaking back first to Aristotle, then to Cicero, then to Quintilian, etc. (B/H 7).
Another benefit may be in helping us to assess Fish's positioning in the debate. If you remember again, I read an excerpt from Paul Turpin's response to Fish, in which Turpin says that by separating out and valuating "specific content" from other things, Fish is rejecting Aristotle's rhetoric/dialectic counterparts. According to Turpin, while Fish claims to argue for teaching "composition and rhetoric and nothing else," his argument actually results in an a-rhetorical stance--a limited set of skills becomes relegated to what Aristotle referred to as a "definite science" that is separate from disciplinary subject matter, exigency, discourse communities, genre, etc. (Fish seems to have recanted slightly on this point.)
Jon raised a very good point about the excerpt I read from Turpin's response. If Turpin were in fact making the assertion that "bad syntax comes from bad ideas" in order to argue for this non-separation, we wouldn't be any better off. But I think Turpin is responding in kind to Fish's assertion that syntax has purpose, value, and pedagogical basis as a language system (in a writing class) when viewed as separate from ideas. (Turpin disagrees.)
It might behoove Fish to take up more complex theoretical perspectives to engage his point about grammar instruction more convincingly, rather than fall back on what represents an unreflective way of doing history. It might behoove Fish to undertake a longer study of the context and initiation of discourse, of genre/style, or of rhetorical reasoning, not necessarily to position himself historically in the debate, but rather to demonstrate that he understands that the terms of the debate stem as much from how we have transmitted and transcribed our own history as they do from actual beliefs about what students can do in the classroom. Turpin's critique seems to be that Fish is unwilling to do that.
A final benefit may be in realizing that B/H use their classification to point out “continuing themes” or “continuing problems,” such as the nature of the rhetorician’s activities with respect to knowledge (5, 8). Perhaps we should view them more actively as ongoing problems, not only in our contemporary debates about how to teach writing, but also in our contemporary debates about how to historicize how writing has been taught.
It certainly behooves all of us to note that B/H and CCS both present what are, essentially, collections of corpora. The difference is that one relies on and implies a "stability" of periods (based on what they found in primary texts), while the other presents and argues for a "flexibility" of genres (based on how they think that 19th century texts invite the classification of rhetoric, reader, and composition book). But let’s test these claims: which classification is truly more stable or more flexible than the other? If both classifications have stemmed from (or "emerged from") the corpora, then aren't they useful to our efforts to understand how historians are in relationship with the histories they re-present?
-Tarez
Here are some links to provide essential context:
--Stanley Fish's column in the NYT on "what should colleges teach?"
--Part Two of the same column (in which Fish responds to the zealous responses to his column)
--Mark Richardson's article in the Chronicle that deals critically in some depth with the kinds of issues Fish takes up (this originally ran in November 2008 and reran last month)
--Paul Turpin's response to Fish's Part Two (on the WPA-L listserv)
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