Blair

==Blair, Hugh. //Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres// ==

(1783)

 * The first to unite rhetoric and literature as secondary rhetoric – make kids read literature and write about it
 * Key word is TASTE
 * Taste is a metaphor itself – applies to things you have to learn to like and are supposed to like. This is what Blair wants – learn to like what is good for you –and how do you know what is good for you? Art
 * Reading “good” literature will teach you to appreciate good and bad and make you a better person -
 * Education is to teach what to like and why – to develop a sense of judgment of false and true. Taste and judgment is similar to Vico’s sensus communis as standard of eloquence and standard of judgment – Gadamer connects Vico’s sc and British taste
 * Blair’s taste from Hume, but also from Lord Shaftesbury – 1713 //Characteristiks of Men and Manners // – most of which is about taste
 * Metaphor “true metaphor – adds meaning – metaphor is natural/ people do it naturally
 * Enormously influential
 * Lectures on belles lettres – beautiful writing / focus on aesthetics (beginning of aesthetic movement – beginning of romantic)
 * Comes at end of Scottish renaissance and does lectures
 * Goal of rhetoric is language arts – internal transformation, performance
 * For Blair, taste prepares you for virtuous pleasures.
 * 18<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super;">th century explosion of works on criticism to address the question – what is the standard?
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">“Knowledge and science must furnish the materials that form the body and substance of any valuable composition. Rhetoric serves to add the polish; and we know that none but firm and solid bodies can be polished well.”
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Blair also defines rhetoric as the art of critical thinking. He writes that “the study of arranging and expressing our thoughts with propriety, teaches to think, as well as to speak, accurately. By putting our sentiments into words, we always conceive them more distinctly.”
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">As with Campbell, Blair returns to the Baconian argument that both wisdom and science play a role in the realm of rhetoric and that a student who excels in knowledge and science will be an excellent orator if the art of rhetoric is taught with these bodies of study.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Blair also goes on to say that too many orators and writers focus too much on their style and not enough on their content. This was another argument Bacon had with rhetorical education during the Renaissance. (It doesn’t seem to have changed with the Enlightenment.)
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Blair sees only three steps to creating an argument: invention (which includes “profound” meditation on the topic), disposition and arrangement, and finally style and manner. **
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Rhetoric is the act of persuading through appeals to reason and the passions **
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Criticism evaluates aesthetic objects on the basis of their appeals to reason and the passions
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Good taste is at the root of both and human nature is the foundation of taste. Cultivation of taste leads one to the higher intellectual pleasures, including the pleasure of virtuous behavior **
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Figures of speech are necessary to adequately describe an object or idea. Everything happens in a context we associate through figures of speech. Blair argues that there are four ways tropes and figures contribute to the beauty of style:
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">enrich language and render it more copious
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">bestow dignity upon the style
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">provide the audience a pleasure of enjoying two objects presented together without confusion
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">provide a much clearer and striking view of the the principal object and heightens the emotion
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Blair defines eloquence as the “art of speaking in such a manner as to attain the end for which we speak.” He argues that eloquence is not for the ornamentation of speech, but for the speaker to influence the conduct of the audience and persuade them to his cause. ** This definition is in opposition to Campbell’s definition of eloquence. Campbell defines eloquence as “discourse adapted to its end.” For Campbell, the several factors are considered as he develops his discourse. Blair, on the other hand shows that the discourse is developed first and then the orator considers how he will develop the eloquence
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Blair also creates a hierarchy of the degrees of eloquence working from lowest to highest.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">The lowest form of eloquence requires understanding and acquaintance with human nature only. This style is ornamental and the goal is to please the audience
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">The middle form is bar law and requires higher education. This style is not as ornamental and has many goals. The middle form is designed to inform, instruct, and convince a jury.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">The highest form requires a strong sensibility of mind, a warm imagination, correctness of judgment, command of the power of language, and a high skill at pronunciation and delivery. This form of eloquence is specifically for the pulpit or the debates and is based entirely on the passions