The "Q" Question, Richard A. Lanham

• question: is the perfect orator also a good man
• vir bonus dicendi peritus - a good man speaking well
• si vis illa dicendi malitiam instruxerit - if oratory only serves to empower evil
• if oratory empowers evil, then language (man's best friend) is any enemy
• Quintilian absolves himself by answering his question in the affirmative
• heē tōne logōn paideia - cultivation of the art of discourse (the education of speech)
• "the Weak Defense" - there are two kinds of rhetoric. (1) Good rhetoric is used for good causes, (2) Bad rhetoric is used for bad causes
• the Weak Defense is adopted by Plato, Isocrates, and humanists ever since
• infra dig - beneath one's dignity
• "the Strong Defense" - truth is created by social dramas. truth, once created, becomes referential (precedent). what happened can be measured against that precedent.
• Ramus quoting Quintilian: "I teach that the orator cannot be perfect unless he is a good man. Consequently I demand from him not only outstanding skill in speaking but all the virtuous qualities of character."
• Ramus on the quote: the definition of an orator is useless and stupid. rhetoric is virtue (of mind and intelligence) but followers can be men of the utmost moral depravity.
• Ramus restrict rhetoric to style and delivery -- thus, bad men could speak well -- "bad girls wear makeup as well as good ones, probably better"
• Arthur F. Kinney gives a defense of rhetoric, arguing the English Renaissance was motivated by rhetoric, not philosophy.
• practice in rhetoric led authors to frame narratives and characters in conflict, "the authentic roots of western fiction"
• but Kinney does not just give a defense of rhetoric, his main purpose is to answer the Q question
• Lanham argues Kinney fails. Kinney gives the Weak Defense, and fails to understand how to construct the Strong Defense.
• Depending on our answer to the Q question, we read western literature differently.
• Grafton and Jardine: "The few intellectual historians who have wokred on early modern education have been more intent on grinding old axes than on testing new hypotheses."
• Possessing the belief of the preeminent value of literary education, and wanting to preserve the canon of classics, they view the rise of classical curriculum and the downfall of scholasticism as the triumph of virtue over vice.
• scholasticism - the system of theology and philosophy taught by medieval European universities, based on Aristotle and early church fathers with a strong emphasis on tradition and dogma
• They had the assumption, same as Quintilian, that rhetorical education, and the literature that evolved, brought moral improvements and civic virtue.
• Educators professed this creed, so theory and practice agreed because it was already decided beforehand.
• Rhetorical education, in practice, educated scoundrels as well as statesmen.
• Education had no connection in producing either scoundrel or statesman.
• Erasmus uses slight-of-hand and repitition, as Quintilian does, that you cannot prove it, using endless tautology as justification.
• Erasmus says the Bible must be read like a classic pagan text, viewing Christ as the incomparable orator and Paul as the imcomparable theologian.
• But Erasmus does not explain how this simple, straightforward reading will produce the guaranteed right doctrine.
• Erasmus's equation: great text + right reading = moral truth
• humanism: liberal education is moral in its essence (Yes to the Q question)
• opposing view: education was to purvey information and skills, not to be morally improving
• Ramist: a good grammarian or good mathematician does not gaurantee that it would make you a good person
• Ramist: you can pursue an education to achieve high government office without worrying about being a vir bonus (a good man)
• This is the secularization of humanist teaching -- transitioning from humanism to humanities
• in the modern industrial society, the teachers have deviated from this original commitment to the liberal arts as "training for life."
• Grafton and Jardine raise this question but evade it, lamenting: we can only live in hope, and practice the humanities.
• Backman's translation of McKeon: "In the curriculum of the schools rhetoric has been assigned a much reduced role when the motives has been to establish discrete disciplines marked by unique subject matters and methods. Conversely, rhetoric has organized the entire course of study when the goal has been to bridge the gap between distinct subject matters."
• McKeon categorizes two kinds of rhetoric: verbal and architectonic.
• Architectonic rhetoric is the overarching paideia (education) Cicero and Quintilian sought to describe.
• If we make Platonic or Ramist assumptions, then the answer to the Q question is tautologically "No!"
• If we make rhetorical assumptions, the answer is tautologically "Yes!"
• Both answers are logically true and useless.
• McKeon attempts to answer the Q question not by waffling or resignation, but by thinking the problem through, and in terms that bear upon contemporary circumstance.
• McCloskey's figures of speech are not mere frills -- they think for us.
• The modernist routine is easy to teach, which is one reason it is taught so widely. Which is a pity, because the way we teach is the way we think.
• Quintilian: Train someone in it, and you have trained that person to be virtuous.
• McCloskey: Toggle between reading rhetorically and reading philosopically. Toggling between virtuous and reasoning begins to give an explanation, or more forcefully, justification, for what humanities can do.
• Lanham clowns Hirsch's What Every American Needs to Know: Hirsch calls for an education of brute facts.
• Hirsch: individual and civic virtue comes from citizens sharing a body of facts from canonical texts
• Hirsch took all of Ramus's assumptions, and answers the question Yes, instead of No like Ramus
• Hirsch: good readers are good citizens
• Hirsch: the rhetorical man is not always good, but the factual man is.
• John Dewey was doing the opposite of Hirsch, trying to reintroduce the full rhetorical paideia (training)
• Whitehead, "The Aims of Education": algebra leads to nothing, geometry leads to nothing, science leads to nothing, history leads to nothing, language is not mastered, literature is given by Shakespeare and a short analysis of plot. None of this represents life. Instead, it's like a table of contents of a clueless diety.
• Gerald Graff: golden age was when humanities flourished and sciences ate dirt. our present age features mass illiteracy and swinish (relating to swine) ignorance
• The heart of the Q question is to demonstrate a connection between specific reading and writing practices and the moral life.
• Ramist answer to the Q question: no part of the curriculum offers any moral education. Choose a specialization for your own particular purpose.
• The opposite answer (education is moral) requires a general education as opposed to the supermarket approach.
• What curriculum is implied if the answer is yes?
• One argument: Great Books. The other: course in methods
• Hirsh falls into the Great Books category.
• Great Books category views the literary text as self-teaching.
• Methods curriculum suggests both good people and bad people could use the same methods.
• etiolated - pale, lost vigor, feeble
• sprezzatura - effortless while performing a complex task, nonchalant and stylish
• ukase - an edict of the Russian government, an arbitrary command
• Lanham clowns on Allan Bloom's support of the Great Books category. Lanham notes the dropout rate at St. John's which uses the Great Books curriculum and does not produce any great minds.
• Bloom arrives at Yes on the Q question from Plato's Dialogues. He argues it communicated absolute truth -- like accepting the word of god with no thought, requiring no interpretation or cultural Protestantism -- just like the Bible, it is self-teaching.
• Bloom answers the Q question in a religious way. Platonic absolutists like Bloom believe all the answers are in the Great Books, and the university exists to spell them out.
• Bloom: theoretical life - university, primal slime - nonuniversity life
• Bloom gives a smug description of life before university, four years during university, and then life after university: "The importance of these years for an American cannot be overstated. They are civilization's only chance to get him."
• Bloom's golden-age of the university: 1950s. Lanham shades.
• Bloom has contempt for his fellow human beings (especially his students).
• Humanists rewrite history into a golden-age Platonic academy putting them centerstage, confusing middle class factual knowledge with moral virtue.
• Hook: "By sophistical argument I could like Plato try to show that someone who was tryly intelligent would also possess moral courage. But I know this to be empirically false..."
• Hook: the university represents the last best of humankind
• Bloom: Society exists to serve the university, not vice versa. The scholar is a perpetual child - pure in heart and motivation... without any social context whatsoever.
• Harold Nicolson walking as a civilian in London in WWII: "I am what you all are fighting for!"
• On the opposite end, Sidney Hook devoted life to political and social activism.
• Bloom was trained by Plato, Hook was trained by John Dewey.
• Hook: Hutchins and Adler led a counterreformation in American education to bring metaphysics and theology back into the curriculum. (Same argument against science and toward religion appears today.)
• Hook (reflecting on his shared experience that others had glorified): no one learned anything in school who was not already self-motivated, and not by virtue of the teaching but despite it.
• execrable - very bad
• odium philologicum - hatred among philosophists about academic questions
• humanist - someone who believes in the value and potential of humans, and who uses reason and compassion to guide their actions
• Humanism is an education in politics and management.
• The Strong Defense argues that since truth comes in many diverse and disagreeing forms, we should not base our society on it. Instead, we need to agree on a series of contigent premises. This is the system rhetoric has devised.
• The best example of this strong defense is the western system of jurisprudence. Opposing sides stage a public drama in front of an empanelled jury, and once the jury makes a decision, a precedence is set, which helps future cases.
• "the magical moment of transmutation" is when a verdict is reached -- which is required -- a decision made by people and not handed down by god
• The strong defense does not apologize for a mix of motives -- it glorifies them.
• Mixture of motives relfects the structure of humankind and holds the greatest promise at enduring effectiveness.
• Plato and Bloom argue baser motives must be purified out. (baser - without moral principles)
• Strong Defense argues purifying out motives is impossible and dangerous. It is dangerous because it has no built in system for error correction.
• Gregory Bateson: pure rational purpose ran out of control, establishing a positive-feedback system with geometrically increasing error.
• Motive balancing provides a means of social control over ourselves.
• Quintilian: rhetorical education trained people in the Strong Defense. It did not just train -- it created a public person. Perfect training for a genuine, open-ended democracy (which Plato hated).
• This training creates a certain kind of humanism -- Hook's kind, not Bloom's kind.
• McCloskey's golden apothegm: "Virtuoisty is some evidence of virtue."
• A theory of reading and writing can become a training in moral judgment.
• Irony about Great Books curriculum: canonical texts of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare are rhetorical through and through. They teach (if you assume they are didactic as Bloom does) the rhetorical kind of civic virtue of the Strong Defense.
• William Bennett (Reagan's Education Secretary) - King Lear should be taught the way I learned it (Bloom style). ...But Bennett is wrong. This style of teaching cuts off the wisdom Western literature provides.
• Grafton, Jardine, Hook: If the university does not serve society, society should not serve the university.
• Ramist rigor of university dividing into separate disciplines caused the effect that nobody talks to anybody else.
• Pepsi is like Bloom -- purely theoretical, Apple is like the Strong Defense -- trying to mix human motives not purify them.
• University is becoming more career orientated -- like Pepsi -- a pure think tank on an idyllic campus -- the golden age Graff descibes and Bloom yearns for.
• University assumes its product is virtuous... but its not, like sugar water from Pepsi.
• The other model for university -- every person can study any subject, however untraditional offers a radical mix of motives like Apple.
• If university is not reincarnated, it will produce Anthony Blunts (academic in England who was a traitor for Russia).