Revolutions of Virtues: Revisiting the Underpinnings of Rhetorical Education
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Clemson University TigerPrints All Dissertations Dissertations May 2021 Revolutions of Virtues: Revisiting the Underpinnings of Rhetorical Education Eric Reid Hamilton Clemson University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_dissertations Recommended Citation Hamilton, Eric Reid, "Revolutions of Virtues: Revisiting the Underpinnings of Rhetorical Education" (2021). All Dissertations. 2794. https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/2794 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations at TigerPrints. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TigerPrints. For more information, please contact [email protected]. REVOLUTIONS OF VIRTUES: REVISITING THE UNDERPINNINGS OF RHETORICAL EDUCATION A Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of Clemson University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design by Eric Reid Hamilton May 2021 Accepted by: Dr. David Blakesley, Committee Chair Dr. Cynthia Haynes Dr. Kelly Smith Dr. Brygg Ullmer i ABSTRACT This dissertation concerns the prevalent disconnect between writing instruction and moral education in modern university settings. The project calls for integrating the progymnasmata as informed through Aristotelian virtue ethics to enable rhetorical flourishing. I examine the need for explicit ethical frameworks in writing instruction, evaluating multiple approaches and advocating virtue ethics. All fourteen exercises of the progymnasmata, according to the system popularized by Aphthonius of Antioch, will be detailed and updated for the contemporary classroom. Quintilian’s pedagogical scholarship and practice will serve as a model for application. The specific virtues of adaptability, experimentation, and mindfulness will be promoted as central values of the rhetorical tradition uniquely suited for bridging the gap between composition training and ethical development. ii DEDICATION To the Logos. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am eternally grateful for all those who have taught me both inside and outside the classroom the past four years of this program. I would like to thank Dr. Kelly Smith and Dr. Brygg Ullmer for serving on my committee. I would like to thank Dr. Cynthia Haynes for keeping me inspired and motivated to tackle the ‘Q Question,’ for going above and beyond with support, and for serving on my committee as well. I would like to thank Dr. David Blakesley for serving as chair, always providing invaluable and brilliant guidance, and keeping me motivated to accomplish this task. A big thanks goes to my cohort for putting up with me during countless hours of coursework and study. I’d like to thank Dr. Victor Vitanza for creating such a stimulating program and offering me the opportunity to grow as a scholar in a unique way. I’d also like to thank Diane Beltran for engaging in innumerable discussions, offering brilliant insights, and always encouraging me throughout the program. A special thanks goes to my parents as well for always helping me along as I find my own way. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page TITLE PAGE .................................................................................................................... i ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... ii DEDICATION ................................................................................................................ iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .............................................................................................. iv LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER I. BEGGING THE QUESTION: AN INTRODUCTION TO DISCIPLINARY FISSURES ............................................................ 1 II. SURVEYING VIRTUE: A DEFENSE OF ETHICS IN COMPOSITION ............................................................................... 16 III. DEVELOPING VIRTUE: QUINTILIAN’S MODEL OF COMPOSITION .............................................................................. 54 IV. CRAFTING A COURSE: APPLYING THE PROGYMNASMATA IN THE MODERN WRITING CLASSROOM .................................. 103 V. PERPETUAL REVOLUTIONS: CIRCLING BACK TO FUNDAMENTAL INQUIRIES .................................................... 148 WORKS CITED .......................................................................................................... 162 v LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1 Attributes/Actions of the Vir Bonus ............................................................ 92 vi CHAPTER ONE BEGGING THE QUESTION: AN INTRODUCTION TO DISCIPLINARY FISSURES The most important and compelling academic articles are those that inspire further inquiry. That article for me is Richard Lanham’s “Q Question,” serving as the impetus for the entirety of this endeavor. The ‘Q’ refers to the ancient Roman orator Quintilian, whose famous description of rhetoric as “the good man speaking well” is founded on the premise that to be a good speaker, one must also be a good person (Institutio Oratoria, bk. 12, ch. 1, sec. 1). Lanham asserts that this premise has “underwritten, and plagued, Western humanism from first to last” since “no one has ever been able to prove that” the teaching of communication “does conduce to virtue more than to vice” (654). If persuaded by Lanham’s depiction of the field(s), one is urged to grapple with the controversy of whether or not writing studies—and the entire humanities endeavor, for that matter—has been successful in shaping virtuous students. Providing an adequate and universally agreed upon answer to this question is a burdensome task, even for the most ambitious of dissertations. Nevertheless, we can begin to respond to this call by peeling back the foundational layers of our pedagogical enterprises, dissecting and re-examining the guiding principles that have led us to where we are, as a field, discipline, and mode of instruction. While Quintilian will play an important role in this investigation, I have also treated Lanham’s article as a playful heuristic with the pun ‘Queue Question,’ in the sense of it being an inquiry that has promoted a line of further questions in the queue. If Lanham is correct regarding the 1 current disconnect between teaching communication and developing virtue, how might we go about bridging these two aspects? The seeds of our current disconnect have been planted by the competing standards of the Athenian versus the German approaches to teaching, and Gerard Hauser has offered an invaluable and focused overview of their differences spanning history. Building from David Kelsey’s theoretical foundation, which takes an explicitly theological approach in Between Athens and Berlin, Hauser extends these insights to a wider and secular audience by applying this lens explicitly to rhetorical pedagogy. In “Teaching Rhetoric: Or Why Rhetoric Isn’t Just Another Kind of Philosophy or Literary Criticism,” he distinguishes the Athenian paideia in which “The teacher’s efforts were focused on ‘capacitating’ the individual student to lead the life of an active and responsible citizen” from the now prevalent German model of Wissenschaft that emphasizes “orderly, disciplined critical research...and professional education” (40). The Wissenschaft model resulted in a shift from instructors as well as instruction being concerned with the students’ “personal growth” to that of focusing solely on “discovering new knowledge” (40). He reiterates this distinction in his chapter from the collection Rhetoric and Writing Studies in the New Century, by articulating the paideia as being concerned with “the formation of young students by developing their capacity to function as responsible citizens” whereas the Berlin model “establishes a relationship of the student to knowledge and to the teacher based on an apprenticeship that is not focused on the student’s personal growth but on the discovery of knowledge” (139). In essence, the 2 pedagogical imperative of the modern university has had a complete paradigm shift from that of its ancient forebears. Despite this trend, these competing prioritizations do not need to be mutually exclusive. As Hauser posits, “The dilemma is not one of displacing Berlin within the framework of Berlin, but to restore Athenian values in a way that they can survive in Berlin” (140). Therefore, the next questions in the ‘queue’ for my research include: how might we remain true to the Athenian ideals within the modern university? In what ways might we have our cake and ‘teach’ it too, in the sense of making rhetoric palatable for research institutions while preserving the ancient ingredients that have been experimented with throughout the centuries to form thoughtful and virtuous students? Ancient conceptions of rhetorical education can illuminate contemporary composition pedagogy. Two meta-critiques of that pedagogy form the foundation for the review and critique of writing studies in Chapter Two. These surveys demonstrate how the discipline of composition studies, from its modern inception, has remained in a state of constant dialogue regarding what it is exactly that it seeks to do and teach. In the 1982 article, “Contemporary Composition: The Major Pedagogical Theories,” James Berlin takes a rhetorical theory perspective to provide a meta-analysis on the evolution of composition studies