Seriously, Petrus Ramus! That was quite harsh. Honestly, I find Ramus’s critique of Quintilian, Cicero, and Aristotle unreasonable. He does not mince his words at all when he declares, “I have a single argument, a single subject matter, that the arts of dialectic and rhetoric have been confused by Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian.” Reading him didn’t feel engaging with a scholar; instead, it felt like watching an angry person walk into a room and flip the table over just to gain everyone’s attention. There is no diplomatic hedging, no acknowledgment of what these thinkers got right before tearing into what they got wrong. Ramus arrives already decided, and the rest of his argument is simply the execution of a verdict he reached before he started writing.
His treatment of Aristotle is particularly striking. He accuses him of creating “unfathomable darkness” in his works and being completely silent about method. These are not just scholarly disagreements; they are dismissals, and fairly aggressive ones at that. What I find interesting is that Aristotle’s work on rhetoric and logic has endured for centuries precisely because it gave thinkers a framework for understanding argument, persuasion, and reason. To reduce all of that to darkness and silence feels like Ramus is more interested in clearing the field for his own ideas than in honestly engaging with what came before him.
His critique of Quintilian bothered me even more, probably because I came to Ramus already partial to Quintilian’s ideas on rhetoric, virtue, and education. Quintilian’s position that the orator cannot be perfect unless he is a good man is one I find genuinely compelling. The idea that how you speak and persuade is tied to who you are as a person feels important, especially in a world where we see daily examples of skilled communicators using their abilities to mislead, manipulate, and harm. Ramus calls that view “useless and stupid,” which is a remarkable thing to say about one of the most respected rhetoricians in the classical tradition. For Ramus, a definition of any artist that goes beyond the strict rules of the art itself is superfluous and defective. In other words, an orator’s character, morality, and lived experience have no place in the definition of what it means to practice rhetoric well. The craft is the craft, and everything else is noise.
That is where I part ways with him most. Ramus sees rhetoric as a virtue of the mind and intelligence, something that can be mastered by people of what he himself calls “the utmost moral depravity.” For him, rhetoric is a purely intellectual exercise, fully detached from ethical concerns. I find that not just incomplete but genuinely troubling. Rhetoric influences behavior and decision-making in ways that carry real consequences for real people. A persuasive speaker who lacks any moral grounding is not just a neutral technician. They are a potential instrument of harm. Separating persuasive skill from any sense of moral responsibility ignores the very real damage that skillful but unethical communication can do, and has done, throughout history.
Maybe I am reading with a bias. My affection for Quintilian is probably showing, and I will own that. But even setting that aside, Ramus’s complete rejection of the link between rhetoric and virtue raises questions he never fully answers. If the morality of the speaker is irrelevant to the definition of the art, then what stops rhetoric from becoming simply a tool for whoever is most skilled at wielding it, regardless of their intentions? Ramus does not seem particularly concerned with those questions, and that gap in his thinking is, for me, the most significant weakness in his argument.
Reference
Bizzell, P., & Herzberg, B. (Eds.). (2001). The rhetorical tradition: Readings from classical times to the present (2nd ed.). Bedford/St. Martin’s.