Mythos & Logos

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The rise of modernity, among other momentous events, saw both the demise of rhetoric and the emergence of psychology as a natural science. In this paper, I will develop a brief sketch of the historical movements of each discipline, show how they are deeply related to one another, and, finally, how they are also needful of one another. It would seem most logical to begin with the early Greeks if we are to provide a historical sketch of the rhetorical tradition. Yet, the Greeks are too far from our modern minds. Let us begin, instead, at the Medieval period as antecedent to the Enlightenment. If we look to the curriculum of the medieval university, we find it segregated into two spheres of learning, the trivium and the quadrivium. The former was concerned with the disciplines of grammar, logic and rhetoric, while the latter enveloped the scientific enterprises of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy (Murray, 1984). Momentarily putting aside the disciplines of the quadrivium, the disciplines of the trivium did not have equal priority. While grammar, "having to do with the good order of signs and their relationship to one another," was seen as somewhat superficial, logic and rhetoric were seen as holding a priority over it (Garver, 1973). Yet debates existed at the time which quarreled over the priority of one of these disciplines over the other. Generally, however, the order of priority became more rigidly identified as belonging to logic: "In the history of Western philosophy," Murray (1984) writes, "the philosophy of language was invariably based on logic rather than rhetoric." While some exceptions to this rule have included Vico , Rousseau, Nietzsche , and possibly even Kant, the dominant academic paradigm grew more closely aligned with Locke's (1959) disparaging attitude toward rhetoric: Since wit and fancy find easier entertainment in the world than dry truth and real knowledge, figurative speech and allusion in language will hardly be admitted as an imperception or abuse of it. I confess, in discourses where we seek rather pleasure and delight, than information and improvement, such ornaments as are borrowed from them can scarce pass for faults. But yet if we would speak of things as they are, we must allow that all the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness; all the artificial and figurative application of words eloquence hath invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment; and so indeed are perfect cheats: and therefore, however laudable or allowable oratory may render them in harangues and popular addresses, they are certainly, in all discourses that pretend to inform or instruct, wholly to be avoided; and where truth and knowledge are concerned, cannot but be thought a great fault, either of the language or person that makes use of them (Locke, 1959, p. 146). While the 19th century Romantic poets attempted to preserve the virtues of figurative, rhetorical discourse, logic reigned supreme into the beginning of the 20th century.

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