Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Cicero on Pompey’s Command: Heuristic Rhetoric and Teaching the Art of Strategic Reasoning

Cicero on Pompey’s Command: Heuristic Rhetoric and Teaching the Art of Strategic Reasoning Through the example of a paradigmatic deliberative speech from classical oratory, the paper addresses two fundamental questions of teaching rhetorical reasoning. First, the paper shows that a speech from ancient Greek and Roman political or judicial oratory could provide effective means to teach a variety of argumentation skills, the recognition of fallacies and an awareness of biases in the target audience. Second, the paper uses the speech to consider an elusive problem of rhetorical or critical reasoning instruction, namely how students may use historical models to adapt their knowledge of a case to real-life situations, where a large number of uncertain variables demands a constant awareness of the conditions affecting the audience`s decision and may require a swift change in the argumentative strategy. The paper will argue that the application of a new model of strategic reasoning called heuristic rhetoric to Cicero`s speech could illustrate a workable solution to both problems. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Topoi Springer Journals

Cicero on Pompey’s Command: Heuristic Rhetoric and Teaching the Art of Strategic Reasoning

Tahin, Gabor
Topoi , Volume 37 (1) – Apr 29, 2016
Download PDF
12 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer_journal/cicero-on-pompey-s-command-heuristic-rhetoric-and-teaching-the-art-of-gg3Pk36kMe

References (47)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Subject
Philosophy; Philosophy, general; Philosophy of Science; Philosophy of Technology
ISSN
0167-7411
eISSN
1572-8749
DOI
10.1007/s11245-016-9384-1
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Through the example of a paradigmatic deliberative speech from classical oratory, the paper addresses two fundamental questions of teaching rhetorical reasoning. First, the paper shows that a speech from ancient Greek and Roman political or judicial oratory could provide effective means to teach a variety of argumentation skills, the recognition of fallacies and an awareness of biases in the target audience. Second, the paper uses the speech to consider an elusive problem of rhetorical or critical reasoning instruction, namely how students may use historical models to adapt their knowledge of a case to real-life situations, where a large number of uncertain variables demands a constant awareness of the conditions affecting the audience`s decision and may require a swift change in the argumentative strategy. The paper will argue that the application of a new model of strategic reasoning called heuristic rhetoric to Cicero`s speech could illustrate a workable solution to both problems.

Journal

Topoi – Springer Journals

Published: Apr 29, 2016

There are no references for this article.