"RHETORIC" WITHOUT DIALECTIC

Thursday, January 22, 2015

http://www.classicalliberalarts.com/Courses/TRIVIUM/ClassicalDialectic/index.htm

There's talk about Rhetoric, but you can't study Rhetoric without learning Dialectic first.  For proof of this we need look no further than the first line of Aristotle's The Art of Rhetoric.  He says explicitly that:

"Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic."
The art of Dialectic (as well as Grammar) is assumed knowledge in any classical book on Rhetoric, yet students are offered courses in Rhetoric without every studying Dialectic.  How can this be?

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I teach them all the good I can, and recommend them to others from whom I think they will get some moral benefit. And the treasures that the wise men of old have left us in their writings I open and explore with my friends. If we come on any good thing, we extract it, and we set much store on being useful to one another. - Socrates, Memorabilia
 
 
 
What we maintain is that in none of the problems of life can men afford to lose sight of the storehouse bequeathed to them by the ancients. In the complexus of everything which differentiates man from the brute creation, the voice of antiquity must be heard...

-H. Browne, quoted in "Classics and Citizenship" The Classical Quarterly, 1920