Everything old is new again (?)

It never ceases to annoy me a little when I turn on the radio and a supposedly "new" hit is announced by the DJ, and once I hear the opening chords, I recognize instantly that this "new" smash hit was something I heard when I was twenty something. I have had several arguments with my sons about this, and it isn't until I dust off an old tape or find an oldies site with the original piece that they will believe that their music is more and more a product of remake. They do, however, make a valid point. The music isn't really the same. Sure, some of the words are the same, and there is a related structure in the melody, but there are substantial differences, too. The voices are different; the rhythm is altered, and the instruments are modern; same basic idea maybe, but a different framework for a different audience. This is the image running through my mind with Conley's discussion of the rediscovery of the Greek and Roman texts that had be sent into disuse, or never known after the fall of the Western Empire. An excitement over ideas is always energizing, and even after more than a half a millennium since the Renaissance, I can sense the impact that the discovery and translation of the texts had on the academic and philosophical communities of the day. And they really weren't the same. The "rhythms" changed in response to the times. As Conley points out, global discovery, along string of wars and wars continuing, religious upheaval--not to mention the population-reducing effects of the Black Plague--had altered human perception of some of the basic concepts discussed by the old Greeks and Romans. The voices being lifted in tribute to this new interest in eloquence carried a different pitch, if not a different message. The reinterpretation of a revered text is almost a certainty when it passes through multigenerational filters. The discovery of the unknown texts and the text thought to be lost added the illusion of newness to the discussion. I have a friend who is a Rabbi, and we were discussing the book of Deuteronomy in the Torah. He informed me that there were several written deuteronomies, and this was simply the most ancient of the preserved documents. The basic law and cultural had to be revisited and revised by each generation in order to keep it applicable to the current setting and meaningful to the people living throughout time. The law and the culture had to be "rediscovered" in a modern context. This seems to be what the Renaissance scholars did with the concepts of rhetoric. They seem to have melded some of the Greek fascination with eloquence for its own sake with the Roman (Cicero and Quintilian) recognition that rhetoric must have a practical end as well. Augustine in his discussion of styles for the purpose of "entertainment and delight" as well as for catechises was in harmony with the Greek schools and was true to his background as a classical educator. He does introduce the concept of the importance of the moral character of the speaker in relationship to the persuasive power of his words: "But the life of the speaker has greater force to make him persuasive than the grandeur of his eloquence. . . " (Matsen 376). Erasmus, also an educator, claims that "the end of education was the development of eloquent persons of character" (Conley 121). In Folly
the stress is on wisdom rather than the search for Truth. In this, Erasmus is in line with the other Renaissance scholars. In his refutation of Luther's claims against the existence of free will, Erasmus is Socratic, not stating or arguing facts, but asking questions about what might be reasonable to believe. His admiration of Agricola may be evident here, too. Agricola's claim that dialectic is superior to rhetoric because dialectic deals with invention and rhetoric only deals with delivery is curious, because he also claims that this separation is merely apparent in many ways. "Dialectic is at its heart rhetorical, able to invent arguments that move audiences as well as instruct them--that is, which persuade them" (Conley 127). Erasmus --even though never claiming to be or being recognized as a professional rhetorician-- appears to do both --invent and persuade. The humanistic themes in rhetoric that are found in Folly continue throughout his work, as does the combining of ideas about dialectic/rhetoric which is found in many works even in the 18th century.

Last week another student made a speculative comment about the right of the educated and privileged minority to make decisions about the morality to be practiced by the masses. That was being done throughout the period covered by the readings. The only true shift appears to have been in the population that was considered to be the educated and privileged minority. It shifted from the philosopher and statesman to cleric. Priests and members of various religious orders claimed the right to interpret both wisdom and Truth for the people. As far back as Cicero, the thought that "rhetoric is an alternative to the use of force" (Conley 110) was expressed by those who saw it as a tool to humanize the rather inhumane conditions of the common man. It is interesting that Conley also points out that for the majority of people during the time of the Renaissance, the common occupation was fighting--for conquest or for survival--and not the more productive activities of commerce and agriculture. What difference did all the fine words bandied about under porticoes, from porches and pulpits really make? How significant were men who were perhaps more focused on impressing their cronies than on changing the lot of the world for all those unwashed masses? Who was listening to them amid the burnings and flayings inflicted by both the Catholic and the Protestant communities on their opponents? Who evaluated the fine delivery of lofty phrases while dying on a battlefield in one of the countless wars spanning the centuries? How truly significant are all their theories about form and delivery today when it comes to using "rhetoric as an alternative to force"? "Oh," the argument goes, "without them and their ideas, their endless ponderings, and continual episodes of philosophical bombast, the world would be in much worse shape." And we know this, how? Because someone told us so while we were sitting in a classroom? Because we read about it in a well-documented, scholarly book, and therefore, it must be true? I have always harbored the suspicion that if all the orators, philosophers, and theologians had invested as much time in teaching the common folk how to read learned works for themselves as they did in their good- old - boy BS sessions--well--there might be less BS to deal with. If they had written down the ideas and shared them with those newly literate masses, the social advances attributed to them and their ideas may have occurred more quickly than they did. Treating knowledge as the property of an educated few can only cripple true progress. The Renaissance could have happened five hundred years sooner. Every semester I walk into several classrooms and look out on many faces. It doesn't take long for me to realize that educated old me, going into the 6th comfortable decade of life, has forgotten more than my students may ever know. This is not because I am super smart or because my students are in any way intellectually inferior. It is because so much of their energy is being directed to fighting: fighting against the decline of family structures in which they are either the baby born to babies, or the baby raising babies alone; fighting against the growing violence and abuse that threatens to blow our globe apart; fighting against the temptation to easy money in crime and gangs; fighting against the momentary solace of substances; fighting against the humiliation of having to wait for 10 hours in an emergency room and then facing the contemptuous attitudes of health care providers who simply see them as "the uninsured. What use will all my fine words and well-turned phrases be to them? Looking through the rosy colored lens of my humanistic cosmology, I would like to believe that their presence in my classroom means that they are on the ladder up and out of all of that. I do not know if that will really happen or not. All I know for a certainty about my students is that they will surely keep on fighting. Everything that is old is new again. Such is my soapbox.