Hutchins on EVIDENCE: Education for Freedom 10-12.
Booth on the Idea of a University as seen by a rhetorician
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Bits and Pieces
Handlin, Oscar, The Americans (Boston: Little, Brown, 1963): "Down to the 1730's the churches and their ministers steadily lost influence....the minister...became but one among many expounders of ideas, attempting to persuade rather than simply reveal the truth to others. Furthermore, the old pattern of persuasion was not as effective as it had once been. Eighteenth-century audiences did not listen patiently to long sermons delivered in a plain style and setting forth accepted propositions based on recognized authorities" (120). "Students...were not isolated and they were in a position to address the whole population, which listened to them through new media of communications. Newspapers, for instance, were rapidly becoming the most important purveyors of information and molders of opinion in the colonies" (122). [They also] became a means of communicating instruction....Imperceptibly the newspaperman became the rival of the minister and the essay competed successfully with the sermon" (123).
Franklin: "In delivering a Discourse in Publick, design'd to persuade, the Manner, perhaps, contributes more to Success, than either the Matter or Method. Yet the two latter seem to engross the Attention of most Preachers and other Publick Speakers, and the former to be almost totally neglected" (Lemay 334n.). "History will show the wonderful Effects of ORATORY, in governing, turning and leading great Bodies of Mankind…When the Minds of Youth are struck with Admiration at this, then is the Time [to study oratory]. Modern Political Oratory being chiefly performed by the Pen and Press, its Advantages over the Antient in some Respects are to be shown..." (Lemay 336). Franklin quoting Locke (Lemay 336): "I have seldom or never observed any one to get the Skill of Speaking handsomely, by Studying the Rules which pretend to teach Rhetoric." Franklin quoting Walker (Lemay 338): "the Answerer defends himself sometimes with the Force of Truth, sometimes with the Subtility of his Wit; and sometimes also he escapes in a Mist of Words." A public orator who also writes well "might be heard throughout a Nation...as if they stood within the Reach of his Voice" (Lemay 350). Letter to Richard Price June 1782, p. 1049: "The facility, with which the same truths may be repeatedly enforced by placing them daily in different lights in newspapers, which are everywhere read, gives a great chance of establishing them."
Franklin, Autobiography: 1. "the chief Ends of Conversation are to inform, or to be informed, to please or to persuade" (Lemay 1322). 2. Inclination wins over Principle when reason "enables one to find or make a Reason for every thing one has a mind to do" (1339). Cf. "lawful meaning in unlawful act" et al. in All's Well and Measure.
Gutmann and Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement: "deliberative democracy" and "reciprocity" in part involve citizens persuading each other within spaces of reasons. Cf. Franklin "On a Pertinacious Obstinacy in Opinion"--we must be open to having our minds changed.
Linda Charnes on Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida: "As conviction wanes, persuasion takes over as the dominant way of evaluating and justifying the activities of war. But persuasion and conviction engage people at different levels. Contingent and perspectival, persuasion depends upon the martialing of visual evidence to confirm rhetorical assertion [footnote, Franco Moretti]. We can see how viction devoles into persuasion in the play's two major ideological scenes: the dissertation on order in the Greek council (Act 1, scene 3), and that on value in the Trojan council (Act 2, scene 2)" (Notorious Identity 80).