Reviews for The Philosophy of Rhetoric

The average rating for The Philosophy of Rhetoric based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-11-23 00:00:00 John Broussard I just wrote a paper comparing Campbell to Giambattista Vico and contrasting Aristotle's ideas to both of them. Fun times in grad school! Campbell understands the social side of rhetoric. He sees the audience as individuals and feels that the orator has to be aware of who the audience is comprised of, unlike Aristotle. Campbell uses Quintilian's ideas to establish the relationship between the rhetor and the audience and he writes about rhetoric in writing and speech. Campbell writes of the varied and unpredictable audience. In order to persuade effectively, Campbell believed that the orator should adapt his or her discourse to the needs of the audience, for as he states: "whatever be the ultimate intention of the orator, to inform, to convince, to please, to move, or to persuade, still he must speak so as to be understood, or he speaks to no purpose." He also writes of the needs of the audience and such needs include enlightened, please, imagination, removed passion, and influence the will. He see these five characteristics as being more important than the three appeals of argument that Aristotle argued for. Campbell recognizes the need for speakers to understand the audience. Campbell writes, "the difference between one audience and another is very great, not only in intellectual but in moral attainments" (240). He continued his argument by saying that a rhetorician needs to speak about different topics according to the audience.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-08-26 00:00:00 Jared Rogers “Testimony of the poet goes for nothing. His object […] is not truth, but likelihood” (89) seems to be the most useful phrase for my own project here, but then again, the time period isn’t quite right. It is interesting to me that Campbell is often seen as an old fuddy-duddy (and those last several chapters on grammatical style and idioms are dauntingly stuffy), but he makes a good point that English can be just as rich a language as Latin. It reeks of empire, of course, but there’s also some right-to-language here, even if that language must be dominated by a certain social class that can be “reputable, national and present” (154). –And that’s another thing, he sure makes a big deal about being present for someone who uses “hath” all the time…!