Richard Whately 1787-1863


  1. Biography
    1. 1787-1863
    2. 50 years after Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric, Whately writes The Elements of Rhetoric
      1. this is an influential, important and popular text.
      2. One of the first European texts to be imported to the United States
    3. Like Campbell, Whately was a devout Christian
      1. Archbishop of the Anglican Church
      2. He engaged in many religio-political debates.
    4. Classically educated
    5. Opinion of The Classics
      1. Thought Aristotle very systematized
      2. Thought Cicero was more interested in practical thought than theory.
      3. Thought Quintilian was very systematic, not very original
      4. He has much to say about Bacon and Campbell
        1. Blair said nothing about argument.
        2. Campbell was good--but he didn't understand argument
        3. Whately couldn't abide the elocutionists
  2. Rhetoric
    1. Whately observes that rhetoric is extraordinarily important
      1. As with Aristotle, we must have good rhetors to fight evil rhetoric.
      2. pugilistic rhetor--boxing [??]
    2. He is concerned with argument. "Inventing and arranging arguments is the only province that rhetoric can claim entirely and exclusively."
    3. Like Campbell, Whately suggests that rhetoric is less concerned with investigation and discovery than with management. "The orator approaches the process of rhetorical invention not as an investigator but as a communicator" who is "already armed with a general proposition he will advance and with a knowledge of the substantive resources, factual and inferred, by which that proposition may be established."
  3. Types of argument
    1. A priori--reasoning from cause to effect which he describes as "an accounting for." A case that will stand unless challenged. prima facie, given, axiomatic.
    2. Sign--effect to cause; a sign that something else is present.
    3. Testimony--a kind of sign
      1. A factual testimony has more impact than opinion; the difference between fact and opinion is verifiability
      2. Kinds of testimony
        1. Undesigned testimony--incidental and unplanned testimony has strength and uniqueness because it appears genuine and simple.
        2. Negative testimony--if you are silent on a question or charge that is widely known, your silence to contradict the claim constitutes negative testimony.
        3. Concurrent testimony--the similar testimony of several unconnected witnesses has greater force.
        4. Character of the witness
        5. Number of witnesses
        6. Testimony of an adversary
    4. Arguments can combine to have progressive force.
  4. Doctrine of Presumption.
    1. Presumption determines the whole character of debate/discussion.
    2. "In like manner, if you have the 'Presumption' on your side, and can but refute all the arguments brought against you, you have, for the present at least, gained a victory: but if you abandon this position, by suffering this Presumption to be forgotten, which is in fact leaving out one of, perhaps, your strongest arguments, you may appear to be making a feeble attack, instead of a triumphant defence."
    3. There are 5 areas that have presumption.
      1. Presumption of innocence for those accused of crimes
      2. The right to hold property is presumed until proven otherwise--possession is 9/10's of the law.
      3. In a policy debate, the status quo has presumption since the status quo is the product of careful, considered analysis.
      4. The prevailing belief is also presumed valid, unless a reason exists to doubt it.
      5. The authors of the Reformation have partial presumption; the prior existing system has presumption.
    4. Deference is presumption in favor authority. "The person, Body, or book in favour of whose decisions there is a certain Presumption, is said to have, so far, 'Authority'; in the strict sense of the word. And a recognition of this kind of Authority,--an habitual Presumption in favour of such a one's decisions or opinions--is usually called 'Deference.'"
    1. Burden of Proof (Onus Probandi) is the Counter-part notion to presumption.
      1. The one who wishes to change the status quo or accuse the innocent must present the proof.
      2. "King of the hill" metaphor
      3. This is a conservative doctrine.
    2. "A Presumption may be rebutted by an opposite Presumption, so as to shift the burden of proof to the other side."
    3. Presumption and Burden of Proof make debate more meaningful and manageable.
    4. Often, the audience determines who has presumption.
  5. Summary of Accomplishments of Blair, Campbell and Whately
    1. Exemplars of eclecticism that has come to characterize rhetorical studies ever since.
    2. They complete what Bacon started--to drive a wedge between rhetoric and philosophy. They did this by the way they spoke of invention and human nature--rationality versus the passions, conviction versus persuasion.
    3. They typify the analytico-philosophical movement in rhetorical theory, esp. in Campbell, and in Whately and Blair to a degree.
    4. All these theorists characterized rhetoric as a managerial art.
    5. They often deferred to other arts; rhetoric was relegated to the bottom rung.
    6. Narrowed scope/nature of rhetoric of rhetoric to composition (style/delivery/arrangement).
    7. By narrowing rhetoric, they cast for rhetoric a role that was to be its undoing. By the end of the century, rhetoric was reduced to the study of public address and composition.
      1. ?? cause for shift to letteraturizazzione
      2. ?? versus stylistic, no longer dangerous
  6. The emphases of the Modern Period: (RWT, p. 182)
    1. Rhetoric should be broadened to include the written genre and criticism.
    2. Communicators should use a variety of ends of discourse rather than limit themselves to persuasion.
    3. The audience, including their general human traits and their particular conditioning forces, should become a starting point in preparation for a rhetorical transaction.
    4. Invention should be treated as a managerial function instead of a discovery process.
    5. Inartistic proof or evidence deserves a place of importance comparable to artistic proof or reasoning.
    6. The canon of delivery, long relegated to a state of "benign neglect," is worthy of scientific analysis.
  7. The Decline of Neo-Classical Rhetoric
    1. Several factors lead to this decline in the 19th century
      1. Campbell and others eroded the authority of the ancient writers on philosophical rhetoric
      2. Blair concluded that oratory as a fine art was foreign to modern circumstances
      3. This resulted in a turn to literary composition and belles lettres instead of rhetoric
      4. This was encouraged by a weakening of the position of classical languages in school and college curricula in the 19th century.
    2. Neoclassical rhetoric was still taught--including in America
      1. Blair's classmate John Witherspoon at Princeton
      2. Timothy Dwight at Yale
      3. John Quincy Adams at Harvard
        1. showed strong classical influence in his 1806 lectures
        2. held the Boylston Professorship
        3. he uses Quintilian
        4. he dismisses Plato as "intellectual chaos"
        5. very classical--even holds to topics, which many others had rejected
    3. By the latter 19th century, rhetoric was studied little.
      1. John McVikar of Columbia complained in 1833, "The present junior class knows nothing of Cicero's De Oratore."
      2. The elocutionary movement and belles lettres gained more attention.
      3. The Boylston Professorship was converted to a chair of belles lettres and ultimately into a professorship of poetry.
      4. In Britain, after Whately's work, rhetoric eventually became part of English composition.
      5. Scholars turned to Aristotle's Rhetoric only for philological and antiquarian interests