Quintilian's Theory of Certainty and Its Afterlife in Early Modern Italy

Quintilian’s Theory of Certainty and Its Afterlife in Early Modern Italy Charles J. McNamara Submitted in partial fulfillment ofthe requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2016 © 2016 Charles J. McNamara All rights reserved ABSTRACT Quintilian’s Theory of Certainty and Its Afterlife in Early Modern Italy Charles J. McNamara This dissertation explores how antiquity and some of its early modern admirers understand the notion of certainty, especially as it is theorized in Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria, a first-century educational manual for the aspiring orator that defines certainty interms of consensus. As part of a larger discussion of argumentative strategies, Quintilian turns to the “nature of all arguments,” which he defines as “reasoning which lends credence to what is doubtful by means of what is certain” (ratio per ea quae certa sunt fidem dubiis adferens: quae natura est omnium argumentorum, V.10.8). These certainties, he later spec- ifies, include not matters of scientific demonstration or objective fact, but the agreements of various communities: the laws of cities, local customs, and other forms of consensus. As the foundation of persuasive rhetoric, these consensus-based certainties situate argumentation as the practice of crafting agreements rather than demonstrating necessary conclusions. Taking as its point of departure Quintilian’s novel understanding of certainty, this study looks to some of Quintilian’s intellectual forebears as well as his later readers to show how his work is both a nexus of earlier intellectual developments as well as an important inspiration for later accounts of certainty, even into the early modern period. After illustrating in the first chapters of this dissertation how Quintilian’s manual incor- porates elements from Aristotelian notions of dialectic and rhetoric as well as from Ci- ceronian skeptical approaches to epistemology, I show how Quintilian’s curriculum for the orator shapes the thought of Italian humanists, especially that of Lorenzo Valla (1406– 1457), a reformer of scholastic logic and dialectic, and Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), an influential Neapolitan jurist. Adopting Quintilian’s rendering of certainty as amatterof agreements and conventions, these later authors elaborate their own novel approaches to various fields—including law, language, and logic—through this ancient understanding of certum. Contrary to modern notions of certainty as objective or scientific fact, Quintilian’s humanist readers continue to root this concept in consensus, both within the courtroom and without. Contents Acknowledgments ii Introduction 1 1 Aristotle’s Enthymeme and the Role of Agreement in Rhetoric 13 2 Skepticism and Property in Ciceronian Certainty 55 3 The Status of Skepticism in Quintilian’s Theory of Certainty 89 4 Certum atque Confessum: Valla on the Forensics of Certainty 118 5 A Vichian Coda: The End of Humanist Certainty 143 Conclusion 174 Bibliography 179 i Acknowledgments My utmost gratitude goes to Kathy Eden, not only for her careful and generously given academic advice while I wrote this dissertation but also for her years of intellectual friend- ship during my graduate education. I thank also Katja Vogt for her insightful guidance from the earliest stages of my research and through its final revisions. The other members of my committee—Gareth Williams, Elliot Paul, and Matthew McGowan—deserve thanks for their attentive reading of my work and their thoughtful suggestions for improving it. I am grateful to Elizabeth Irwin and Elizabeth Scharffenberger, too, for facilitating my research and teaching while I wrote this dissertation. Special thanks is due to Joe Sheppard, who read parts of this dissertation and offered helpful suggestions for both style and argument. Molly Allen, Kate Brassel, Claire Cate- naccio, and Mathias Hanses all provided crucial moral support as compatriots while teaching in Columbia’s Core Curriculum over the past two years. And Caleb Dance, a limitless source of comic fraternity, can never be thanked sufficiently for his companionship during my graduate studies. Several others among the graduate students at Columbia have been helpful while working on this project: Colin, James, Zoë, Sarah, Sam, and others have provided in- dispensable levity and intellectual stimulation over these several years. ii My parents, Michael and Beverly, have my eternal gratitude not only for support- ing my many years of education but also for modeling the joys of learning and reading throughout my life. My brother John, too, has been a much-needed source of laughter, as have my aunt Mary Liz and uncle Rick. Finally, I thank all my students. From my English students at Central High School in Helena-West Helena, Arkansas, to my sophomore interlocutors in Contemporary Civ- ilization at Columbia, the inquisitive minds in my classroom have always propelled my own studies. To them, I will always be grateful. iii For my grandmother Maureen, who taught me to love words iv Introduction In his 1689 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the English philosopher John Locke insists that “the highest probability, amounts not to certainty; without which, there can be no true knowledge.”¹ At least for Locke and his like-minded contemporaries, the notion of certainty is identified with unassailable knowledge: what is certain is invari- able and assured. And as Locke explains later in his essay, his understanding of certainty extends to matters within ethics and politics as well as to other matters, for heinsists that “moral knowledge is as capable of real certainty, as mathematics.”² This notion of certainty in the English language as empirically verified knowledge persists throughout the thinking and writing of later philosophers as well, a tradition that continues within contemporary discussions of science and politics alike. From Benjamin Franklin’s maxim that “nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes” to Werner Heisenberg’s contributions to quantum physics, in which “uncertainty” points to the instability and imprecision of laboratory measurements, the status of certainty in modern English intellectual discourse—whether in matters of taxes or physics—is closely tied to notions of predictability, immutability, and so-called scientific objectivity. ¹IV.12. Citations of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding are taken from Kenneth Win- kler, ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996). ²IV.7. 1 But this notion of certainty—what is certum—has not always carried this valence of stable, objective knowledge, especially as it was understood by the Roman rhetorical tradition. While empiricist reformers of the seventeenth century like Locke will claim that “impartiality [should be] expected of judges as much as of scientists,” several earlier authors view the rhetorical certainty of the ancient orator and the demonstrative certainty of the modern physicist as essentially separate categories of knowledge.³ Particularly within one influential thread of rhetorical thinking, the ancient understanding of certainty does not point to unimpeachable fact but instead toward matters of consensus. This more un- stable conceptualization of certainty likely motivates Francis Bacon’s remarks in his 1605 Advancement of Learning that caution, “if a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts.”⁴ Only a few decades before Locke writes of his utmost confidence in the epis- temic value of certainty as “true knowledge,” Bacon shows an anxiety about its reliability for grounding scientific discovery. While Bacon cautions against using certainties as the foundation for proofs, one prominent tradition within ancient rhetorical thought advocates for certainty’s indis- pensable role in argumentation. At the center of this tradition sits Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria, a first-century rhetorical manual whose twelve books aim to educate the ideal rhetorician: the “good man skilled in speaking.”⁵ As part of a larger discussion of the nature of rhetorical proof, a discussion that starkly contrasts with Bacon’s warning about ³Shapiro (1983, p. 190). ⁴V.8. Citations of Francis Bacon are taken from The Works of Francis Bacon, James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath, eds. (New York: Garrett Press, 1968). ⁵Sit ergo nobis orator quem constituimus is qui a M. Catone finitur vir bonus dicendi peritus, XII.1.1. Translations of Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria are adapted from D.A. Russell, ed. and trans. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). 2 certainty’s reliability, Quintilian remarks that it is “the nature of all arguments” tobegin with certainties, not truths, and that these arguments “lend credence to what is doubtful by means of what is certain (certum).”⁶ Not leaving the epicenter of his argumentative framework undefined, Quintilian lays out several categories ofsuch certa: Now we regard as certain things perceived by the senses, for example what we see or hear (Signs come under this head); things about which common opinion is unanimous (consensum): the existence of the gods, the duty of re- specting parents; provisions of laws; what has been accepted as moral cus- tom, if not the belief of all mankind, at least in that of the city or nation where the case is being pleaded—many matters of right, for example, involve cus- tom rather than laws; whatever is agreed between both parties; whatever has been proved; lastly, whatever is not contradicted by our opponent.⁷ While Quintilian’s

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