Well, I definitely thought this week was very interesting. First off, I am doing my Imitatios speech based off of one of Cicero's speeches, so I thought it was kind of cool to learn some more facts about him, however, I don't want to spoil my speech, so I will talk about that later!
However, what I found really cool this time was all the crazy reasoning in rhetoric. I am still honestly really amazed all the detail and characteristics behind rhetoric. There is just so much to think about. I really, really enjoyed Quintilian's definition of rhetoric and argument. On page 120 of ARCS book, it stated this. "Quintilian defined arguments in rhetoric and logic as methods 'of proving what is not certain by means of what is certain.' Thus, such arguments enable 'one thing to be inferred from another,'; they also confirm 'facts which are uncertain by reference to facts which are certain.' Without some way of moving from the certain to the uncertain, Quintilian argued, we'd have no way of proving anything." (pg. 120) I thought this was extremely interesting, because I do believe that he is absolutely right. It later states in the following paragraphs this: "The reason for the relative certainty of statements about probable human action is that human behavior in general is predictable to some extent." (pg. 120) This in my mind also struck a cord and made me start thinking crazily about what this means.
I started thinking about whenever I would have discussions (to put it nicely) with my family when I lived back home. It was always the same routine, my brother would want to do something, my dad would agree because he has always hated being the bad guy and my mom would do the whole mom thing and say it wasn't safe (which majority of the time, she was right). By the time I was in college and would come home during break for the holiday's, this stuff was pretty predictable and it always played out the same (I was the bystander about 90% of the time). But after reading about this, it hit me. In hindsight, there behavior is always going to be predictable. If I pointed it out, I bet they would see it too, so it probably isn't a mystery, but it is really interesting how human behavior basically throws itself onto a hamster wheel and will keep going.
Don't get me wrong, I love my family and they are all amazing people, but human behavior is one of the most predictable things. It all becomes habit, which I believe is sort of what Quintilian was saying. The three premises stated at the end of the section perfectly sum up what I was trying to say. "Quintilian regarded three sorts of statements as probable: those that involved what usually happens (children are usually loved by their parents); those that were highly likely (a person who is healthy today will be alive tomorrow); and those which in nothing worked against their probability (a household theft was committed by some resident of the household). These sorts of premises are suitable for use in rhetoric because they are statements about the probable conduct of human beings." (pg. 121).
Human behavior is crazy to me and this reading really started making my mind turn.
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