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Course Description: Aristotle tells us that logic and rhetoric are closely connected, though different. Logic is ordered to scientific demonstration while rhetoric to persuasion. Quintilian broadens the scope of rhetoric to include all instances of speaking well. The student who has been learning advanced grammar and syntax in the Latin cycle, and who has taken Logic will find a completion to our introduction to the mediaeval trivium in this class. Drawing upon Aristotle's Rhetoric and other Greek and Roman works we will explore the three modes of persuasion, the five canons of rhetoric, the steps for apprehending the rhetorical situation, and other elements of the classical approach.
Rather than a "public speaking" course, the class continues the exploration of what language and thought are, that was begun in Formal Logic. It explores first the content of logical thought by considering Material Logic. It then examines the other modes of communication that complete the logos emphasized in logic (pathos and ethos); it introduces us to themes that will find their full explication in philosophy of human nature as it considers the ethical and humane conditions that one must bear in mind when wielding the profound and dangerous thing that is language. In addition, it offers a defense of rhetoric reliant upon beauty and lays out a practical imitative approach to composition, using the five canons.