The Future of Thinking

The Future of Thinking
Learning to think is a complex process made up of reading, writing, listening,

speaking and remembering textual materials. The humanities subjects are based
on texts and their interpretation, analysis and evaluation. The aim of this topical
book is to encourage practical educational reform by shifting the emphasis from
the reception to the production of texts. The authors show how to adapt
rhetorical skills to give students a versatile range of strategies for making sense of
texts. By learning to work with language, students learn to think, a process which
requires the active participation of the students themselves. The authors argue
that this approach encourages the development of practical and transferable
critical skills in a wide range of humanities students: short written and spoken
exercises are given as much weight as the formal essay, and the emphasis is
always on the learning activities of the students themselves, rather than on the
passive reception of information.
These methods have been employed successfully in trial runs, and the book
includes the first exercise used, plus student feedback on this method of learning.
Jeff Mason is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Middlesex Polytechnic and the
author of Philosophical Rhetoric.
Peter Washington is Senior Lecturer in English at Middlesex Polytechnic and
the author of Fraud: Literary Theory and the End of English.
The Future of Thinking
Rhetoric and Liberal Arts Teaching
Jeff Mason and Peter Washington
London and New York

First published in 1992
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of
thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall Inc.
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
© 1992 Jeff Mason and Peter Washington
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Mason, Jeff
Future of Thinking: Rhetoric and Liberal
Arts Teaching
I. Title II. Washington, Peter
808
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Mason, Jeff
The future of thinking: rhetoric and liberal arts teaching/Jeff
Mason and Peter Washington.
p. cm.
Includes index
1. English language—Rhetoric—Study and
teaching. 2. Education, Humanistic. 3. Critical
thinking. I. Washington, Peter.
II. Title.
PE1404.M36 1992
808 .042–dc20 92–7668
ISBN 0-203-97540-5 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-07318-9 (Print Edition)—ISBN 0-415-07319-7 (paperback)

Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Aspects of thought 11
3 Rhetoric and composition 26
4 Philosophical and literary exercises 43
5 Samples and preliminary results 65
6 The future of thinking 87
Bibliography 100
Index 101
Chapter 1
Introduction
Each age selectively forgets the past in its drive towards self-definition. This fact
is clearly displayed by current attempts to rethink the purpose and value of
teaching the liberal arts to future generations of students. The familiar disciplines
of history, philosophy and literature survive, but their raison d’être is largely
forgotten. Subjects which evolved from traditions of humane study going back to
the ancients are taught without reference to the rational curriculum they devised.
Little remains of that training in rhetoric which informed western pedagogy until
the end of the last century. Now cut off from that training, the standard
humanities disciplines seem increasingly out of date and irrelevant to political
and economic pressures very different from those which brought them into being.
They are beginning to seem remote and educationally incoherent. Distance is
increased again by the recent blossoming of theory in all the liberal arts, which
questions the assumptions of standard teaching methods and curricula.
This puts traditional teachers of the old subjects in a different position. Many
fondly cultivate and transmit traditions to which they owe everything, but often
are unable to recognize what has brought them to the present situation. This
ignorance makes it difficult for them to see the way through to a worthwhile
future for their disciplines. Struggling on in an increasingly painful present, unable
to look back and fearful to look forward, many teachers, not surprisingly, cling to
the attitudes and methods that moulded their own outlook, even though they are
pessimistic about the future.
The liberal arts are attacked from within the university by theorizing radicals
and from without by those who cannot see the practical use, public service or
personal pleasure of the ancient disciplines and their modern descendants.
Traditional liberal arts teachers either retreat ever further into an ivory tower
under the banner of ‘Standards’ and ‘Tradition’, or they lapse into weary
cynicism. Everyone is familiar with the figure of the beleaguered humanities
teacher moving to a position of offended virtue or ironic resignation. In recent
years these painful alternatives have come to look inevitable as teachers face the
dismal prospect of becoming part of an antiquarian minority or a branch of
service teaching for other, apparently more important, studies including science,
technology, business and job training.
2 THE FUTURE OF THINKING
To some extent, liberal arts teachers have only themselves and their
pretensions to blame for this situation. Blinded by their own supposed intellectual
and moral superiority, they ignored the rising prestige of the natural sciences
throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Even when classical
literatures went into eclipse at the beginning of the present century, taking the
traditions of rhetorical training with them, vernacular languages took up the claim
to supremacy, most famously in the work of F.R.Leavis, who for a short time
almost succeeded in asserting the claim of English literature to dominate the
curriculum of the liberal arts.
Literary theorists have recently renewed such claims to moral and political
insight and authority, but without much impact outside the more rarefied
research universities. For the most part, teachers of the liberal arts have resigned
themselves to the bleak alternatives outlined above: resentful marginality or
service teaching.
The writers of this book, however, contend that this dilemma is a false one.
We are not compelled to cling to an idealized past or to reject it in favour of an
inferior role in the pedagogical hierarchy. There is instead a third option of
creatively reviving past practices, and in particular the rhetorical tradition which
gave that past its meaning. In this book we propose to diagnose the unease
visibly infesting liberal arts faculties on both sides of the Atlantic and to suggest
a way to put them back on to a secure footing with a valuable job to do for the
foreseeable future.
By the liberal arts we mean primarily philosophy, history and literature. All
three have suffered in recent years from over-specialization and excessive
professional inbreeding, becoming ‘academic’ in the bad sense. At the same time
there is public disquiet about their ultimate value. Ironically, the inbreeding is a
result of trying to turn what looked like amateurish enterprises into serious
disciplines, but it has had the effect of raising more and more questions in the
world outside higher education about the relevance and usefulness of liberal arts
courses at the higher levels. The special knowledge of teachers is perceived to be
more and more divorced from students’ interests or abilities. Intellectuals are
seen to wrangle about logocentrism, the canon and other abstruse topics, while
uncomprehending or hostile taxpayers increasingly wonder whether they are
getting value for money.
They have a point, and it is time for liberal arts teachers to respond to it. We
argue that a justification in terms of intrinsic value or social utility is not
sufficient to secure the future of the study of the humanities. Both of these
justifications have merit, but neither alone is sufficient.
In this book we propose to revive the best spirit, if not the letter, of the ancient
rhetorical education. We eschew the old reliance on mechanical learning and rote
memorization enforced by punishment, which eventually helped to discredit
traditional pedagogy. However, we retain, augment and adapt many rhetorical
precepts and methods. In this way it is possible to revitalize liberal arts teaching
and to restore to it a value beyond the technical arena of scholarly discourses on
INTRODUCTION 3
the one hand, and the demands for advanced literacy built into a mass education
on the other.
We explain how to go about this task in the following chapters, but first
something needs to be said about the relationship between humanistic pedagogy
and the rhetorical tradition. The story of this relationship is effectively the story
of western education. Our version of the story begins in Athens in the fifth
century BC, at a time when educational controversies were curiously similar to
our own.
Our narrative begins with two opposing camps: the traditionalists or pietists
and the sophists or technicians. The first taught reverence for tradition and the
gods. The second emphasized the transmission of effective communication
skills. There were, of course, many variations and combinations of these positions,
as there are today, but it is striking how clearly one can trace their distinctive
evolution through the centuries, right down to our own time, when the war
between the traditionalists and the sophists is still waged as fiercely as ever, this
time between traditional humanists and theoreticians versus the advocates of
skills training.
The reputation of rhetoric has varied during its long history, according to the
dominance of one or other of these parties. Each of them has a different theory of
rhetoric and a self-image partly shaped by attitudes toward and conceptions of it.
Traditionalists, emphasizing ‘content’, tend to minimize the importance of
rhetoric, relegating it to the domain of grammar, while technicians, indifferent to
content, tend to exalt its powers.
Both of these approaches were rightly criticized by Socrates, and these
criticisms still have force. Socrates stands for free enquiry and expression, a
position we advocate in this book. A vital point is that both traditionalists and
sophists regard rhetoric as a mere adjunct, decoration or support, something
which is added on to the substance of what we write and say to make it more
attractive or persuasive. This has the effect of devaluing the very means we use
to think and express ourselves. In both cases we are left with a paradox. If
content is of no importance, then nothing is worth saying. If content is all-
important, then expression is trivialized. In practice these extremes are rare, but
the attitudes of cynicism and literalism they engender are not.
A significant force in western education, however, is one which conceives and
wills an alliance between humanism and rhetoric, between tradition and technique.
This middle way is well formulated by Socrates. In reaction to traditionalism and
sophistry, Socrates argues that a proper education takes as its topic human being
itself. Yet this topic can be investigated properly only if it is accompanied by a
rhetorical training which promotes the aims of the study and the investigation of
its great subject.
This was the founding impulse of the best educational conventions of the next
two and a half millennia. It was the basis of the liberal arts as we understand
them, and it explains why their future is so intimately bound up with the future
of rhetoric in education. This education aims to produce capable speakers and
writers who can find the right words to address the right audience persuasively
and well at the right time and in the right place. The ancient motive of this
education was to produce citizen orators, capable of acting effectively in public
life.
Roman education, for example, was largely directed to public life, to the
production of statesmen and administrators who could manage the expanding
empire and create a civilized order within it. In a world governed equally by
force and by words, the pedagogic emphasis was placed on linguistic skills useful
in the public domain. Some teachers, like the sophists, taught language skills on
the basis of utility or expediency alone. But there were others, among them
Cicero and Quintilian, who insisted on the moral worth of rhetorical training.
They cultivated a myth of human nature and development which remained (and
perhaps remains) the fundamental assumption of all liberal education, namely,
that an education in the liberal arts plays a crucial role in forming the well-
rounded characters who will be able to participate effectively in political life.
The epistemological and pedagogical assumptions behind this myth are that
training and practice can improve and even perfect nature. This is the
fundamental principle of rhetorical pedagogy. Left alone, potential can be
wasted. Training is necessary to shape and sharpen the greatest natural ability.
In the ancient educational dispensation, students learnt to express and become
themselves by imitating others and taking up alien forms of expression. They
attempted to do what others had done before them, not to attain a unique style so
much as typicality, conformity to a model of the ideal. However, it is
acknowledged in the best rhetorical handbooks that no amount of slavish
imitation can make up for natural ability, and that individuality will emerge from
rigorous practice in the most able students. Good teaching takes these students
beyond the rules they assimilate through memory and training, and brings them
to the threshold of competence and their own distinctive styles. The rest is left up
to the individual.
At the same time, pupils learn to become effective citizens. Good citizenship
and rhetorical competence are intimately connected, for nature requires that it be
improved or perfected not only in the technical, but also in the moral sphere.
Furthermore, the two go together. Without the acquisition of fairly sophisticated
linguistic skills we cannot become either full citizens or fully developed moral
human beings.
Rousseauesque and Romantic notions about natural goodness, individuality
and self-expression have bedevilled pedagogy in the present century. They were
absent among the ancients, who valued the social and communal virtues above
all. The moral and political value of rhetorical education was to promote social
good. The greatest of the rhetorical teachers in antiquity rejected the cultivation
of mere technique. They rejected the strategy of winning arguments at whatever
cost to the truth. They did not view language as a neutral instrument which can
be turned legitimately to any end by the skilful orator. On the contrary, they
insisted on the crucial importance of rhetorical training precisely because
INTRODUCTION 5
language must be treated with the greatest circumspection and respect as the
means by which we articulate our ideas of truth, justice and goodness. This, too,
is a fundamental principle of humanist education.
The old paidaeia, or system of education, was based upon learning classical
languages and texts through memorization, imitation and exercise in the use of
language. It lasted until the advent of science, the ‘scientific method’, and the
powerful influence of developing technologies. The consequences of this
upheaval put the balanced, coherent and integrated classical curriculum under the
enormous strains which have nearly effaced it, and by which it is still affected.
The rise of science in the seventeenth century saw a split in the rhetoric of
education itself into literary and scientific camps. The literary camp extolled
tradition and the transmission of culture. The scientific camp viewed the study of
languages, rooted in a hidebound and traditional past, as something to be
replaced with the enlightenment of scientific study. This new force in education
had its own rhetoric, whose principal figure involved a complex tangle of
hierarchically organized binary oppositions expounding the superiority of free
enquiry over authority, of reason and experiment over feeling and tradition, of
progress over reaction, and so on.
These oppositions have become so deeply embedded in the debate about
education that it is extremely difficult to dislodge them. Their broad effect is to
polarize the debate in terms of arts versus sciences, the past versus the present, with
the effect of falsely identifying humanist education with the party of piety and
tradition, thereby marginalizing the liberal arts in general, as they are squeezed
between the contemporary demand for ‘relevance’ and social accountability.
Three recent developments have begun to modify this sharp polarity: the
reappearance of ‘skills’ teaching, the decline in the prestige of science, and the
rapidly blurring disciplinary boundaries both within and between the arts and
sciences. Furthermore, with the revival of interest in tropes and in the rhetorical
status of language, we have become more alert to the ways in which the binary
oppositions outlined above affect our thinking. Nevertheless, the educational crisis
in which we find ourselves is still effectively the product of a confrontation
between the needs of a new scientific, technological, political and economic
order, and the old humanist system of education, many of whose principles
remain in place, however shaky and misunderstood.
In recent years this argument has taken on familiar forms. The debate turns on
rival conceptions of ‘human nature’ and the place of the education system within
the political and economic direction of society. The traditionalists wish to
continue teaching the old things in the old ways, governed by loyalty to
traditional disciplines and values. In their view, manners change but human
nature does not. At its best, education should be concerned with this ‘nature’.
Radicals, on the other hand, emphasize the historical evolution of human nature
operating in a landscape of changing social and material forces. They object to
fixed notions of the self and human nature, viewing them as the fictions of ruling
ideologies. The purpose of higher education is not to reinforce these fictions but
to subvert them.
Fierce though these arguments often are within the institutions of higher
education, they do not substantially affect the argument of this book. Seen from
outside, the parties look remarkably similar. Both the antagonists in this debate
unite against the whole-hearted advocate of vocational education and skills
training. Both want no such irresponsible distractions from the main function of
education, which is to prepare students for their moral and political life in
society, whether as solid citizens or as radical reformers.
The problem as we see it is that the parties to these arguments insist upon
creating false dilemmas: either skills or knowledge, tradition or innovation.
These are precisely the dilemmas the old rhetorical paidaeia was designed to
avoid, in its emphasis on the integral relationship between a subject and its
articulation, or a discourse and its rhetoric. This is a very good reason to return to
the ancient methods, not in a spirit of reaction or antiquarianism, but as part of the
search for a new pedagogy that will see the great disciplines of western thought
into the next century and beyond.
The liberal arts have lost their way. To find it we must think again about the
learning process and what we expect from students. Our method is based on the
ancient principle that we learn by doing, by imitating, and by making mistakes.
Cognitive skills of interpretation, analysis and evaluation are acquired through
trial and error. The same may be said for expressive skills as well, which involve
far more than simply finding the right words.
The pedagogy advanced in this book begins with the proposition that training
and practice are propaedeutic in the full sense: they enable us to learn how to
learn. Along the way many other things are learnt, many texts remembered, but
the process itself is crucial. This is not an abrogation of responsibility on our
part. We recognize the importance of the syllabus, but understand that there are
inevitable differences and disputes about what it is best to read. However, these
differences and disputes should not be allowed to inhibit the intellectual growth
of our students. Unless we fully subscribe to the view that education is
indoctrination, in which case the liberal arts are redundant, we must assume that
we are in the business of developing in our students the ability to reject rationally
what we tell them. Our whole aim as teachers is to render ourselves obsolete as
each generation of students comes to intellectual maturity.
We emphasize this point because there seems to be a curious assumption that
teachers are already obsolete, and that students are intellectually, if not
emotionally, autonomous, when just the reverse is probably true. On this
assumption the teacher’s task is merely to supply information and direct
discussion. This approach has something to recommend it when we know for a
fact that our students have attained cognitive and expressive competence, but
how often is this the case, even at the postgraduate level?
The purpose of a liberal education is neither to transmit dogmas and
undigested information nor to focus exclusively on individual self-development,
INTRODUCTION 7
but to enable students from any background to grasp the complexities of

contemporary life and to become more articulate about them, whether in public or
private. It is not a substitute for religion, political commitment, psychoanalysis,
or any other route to personal or social fulfilment. Nevertheless, by developing
expressive and cognitive skills through the teaching of specific disciplines, an
education in the humanities may provide a means to understand these things
better. What the skills are, how they are transmitted, and what sort of thinkers are
produced by them, will emerge in the course of the book.
The ancient pedagogy had its longest run training members of a small ruling
class to share in oligarchic or imperial power. The mass of the people had no
share in this and spent their time as labourers in mainly agrarian societies. This
education system eventually failed to serve the needs of large democracies and
therefore failed to survive. The demands of individual development, mass
education and vocational training have imposed severe strains on the liberal arts,
which until recently were secure in the service of elite education.
The question before us is whether there is anything of value in the old
curriculum for contemporary society or whether something entirely new is now
needed. We take the first view. The ancient teaching methods can still provide for
the intellectual, moral and political development of individuals capable of
making democracy work. Our system of education is designed with this in mind.
The fate of large democracies is intimately involved with their systems of
education. The rhetorical education in this book is democratic and designed to
meet the needs of a democratic society. The choice of educational goals is
always a political one, and the authors’ position must be clear on this point.
The citizens of a democracy must be able to sustain open and informed debate
on many difficult and possibly intractable questions and topics. They need to be
able to think for themselves, to reach their own conclusions and to act on them.
It is therefore not the teacher’s role, any more than the politician’s, to stand
guard over the minds of individuals. The educational task is to teach students
how to think seriously about serious issues. If this runs the risk of promoting
irresponsible freedom in some individuals, then that is a danger of living in a
liberal democracy, in which citizens are free to broadcast their opinions, to
choose, and to make their own mistakes.
Especially in democracies with large and diverse constituencies, education
demands not only basic literacy but also a widely diffused study of the
humanities. All citizens need to be able to weigh and discuss ever more complex
arguments, and as many as possible should attain some degree of intellectual
sophistication. There are no simple answers to the pressing questions that face all
of us. The job of teachers is to present alternatives, different ways of interpreting
texts, different conceptions of the world. There is nothing more dangerous to a
democracy than a restriction on what can be thought and expressed within in.
Choice means something only if there are real alternatives to choose from. A
liberal education is one which teaches that there is always more than one way to
see things and that it is always up to the individual to judge just where the truth
lies on any given issue.
A more pragmatic defence of liberal arts training turns on the much abused
phrase, ‘transferable cognitive and expressive skills’. Study of the humanities
fosters skills which find application in the world of making a living and working
with others. These skills are mainly textual or linguistic. They cover such
abilities as that of understanding the meaning of sentences, interpreting a
passage, dissecting an argument and judging its validity, as well as those
involved in putting one’s case to the public. We take it to be self-evident that the
ability to compose a written passage with some assurance and to speak fluently
to others is of value in nearly every walk of life.
Throughout this book we explore some of these skills and how they are
brought into being through practice. However, a temptation must be avoided.
The temptation is to sever the link between form and content, and to assign to
each a separate branch of study. The misleading appeal of this strategy is that it
sets up the acquisition of skills as a goal and then proceeds to define and teach
them, without care in the selection of content. The rationale for teaching
language skills on their own seems clear enough from a pragmatic, market-
orientated, perspective.
Many institutions encourage critical thinking and skills courses to secure a
future for their specialist liberal arts teachers. These courses provide a space where
teachers can work without continually having to justify their right to exist.
Composition or critical thinking teachers have a clear job to do, the results of
which are appreciated by a wide public. Everyone wants graduates who write
coherent English, who understand a memo, and are able to speak to a meeting
and hold their own in argument. Teach these skills to students and everyone is
likely to acknowledge that a good and worthwhile job is being done. To
introduce the question of content at this point may seem to confuse things. The
skills approach is able to sell itself without becoming embroiled in controversies
over content.
We reject this view as a matter of educational principle. Without something
worthwhile to learn, the acquisition of skills is a barren occupation. Moreover,
since there must be some content even in a skills course, it seems a waste to develop
cognitive and compositional skills while working with mediocre texts and
second-rate ideas. We do not say that it is impossible to learn the relevant skills
in this one-sided manner, only that there are better ways to do it.
If we turn this debate around and make content the centre of attention, a very
different picture emerges. What matters here is coming to grips with history,
literature and philosophy. The skills now appear necessary only in so far as they
advance the project of learning, not as ends in themselves. This is correct, but we
maintain that the skills must be taken seriously and consciously developed. The
fact that these same skills are transferable to other contexts is an external good,
welcome in itself, but not the primary focus of the teaching process.
INTRODUCTION 9
A properly thought out curriculum provides material worthy to develop those

cognitive and expressive skills everyone agrees have a positive value. They
should be acquired by working with significant texts. Nevertheless, the success of
various skills courses shows that it is not necessary to share this outlook.
Our pedagogy takes up both positions and upholds the rights of both. Thinking
demands something to think about. Having something to think about demands
the ability to think. We analyse thinking into textual activities that accord in
many ways with the way humanities subjects are currently taught. They have all
evolved from the language-based educational disciplines of the past. With the
possible and partial exception of history, the arts subjects centre upon texts of
one kind or another. Each of the main humanities subjects has discovered its own
ways of working with them.
There is a case for teaching skills and content separately, but neither is as
strong as one which appeals to both principles at once and includes them in a
single approach. They are equally important. Sometimes it seems that the skills
argument makes all the running, because it claims a clear public utility. But taken
by itself, this stance is one-sided and ultimately a cul-de-sac.
The contents, course materials and syllabuses provide a focus for study. The
practical orientation of our teaching does not remove the obligation to cultivate
standards of objectivity in our students as an operative ideal or regulative
principle. Students have something to learn from their studies that is not always
easy to grasp and requires persistent effort and some serious commitment to
make headway. In the first instance, it is an effort to understand textual materials
whose immediate relevance is of ten far from clear. By and large, teachers will
continue to set the reading list in the belief that the books considered are of
sufficient standard to support a term’s work. Students must take it on a fair
amount of trust that the texts will repay the effort of study.
Syllabus is not all-important. We want to emphasize the move from syllabus to
method, from the form of learning to its practice. The result is that whatever
material is considered worthwhile to study, individual students will learn how to
handle it and to form cogent opinions about it. In general, this change of
emphasis gives priority to providing access to texts, the sense of where to look
for relevant information or interpretations when they are needed.
This represents a real move away from authority, not in the sense that we
pretend to give students a freedom they do not possess while they are learning,
but that we are teaching them to be intellectually free at the end of the process.
This is a matter of the development of practical, cognitive and expressive skills,
and rests neither upon a settlement of all outstanding problems with the canon nor
upon the amount of material which is covered in any particular course.
Our strategy avoids the standard criticism of rhetoric that in the end it cares
more for appearance than reality, more for victory than truth. The reason that the
old rhetoric is susceptible to this charge is partly due to its own complicity. As
philosophy, logic and science separated themselves from the province of rhetoric,
the latter was left with but a fraction of its former scope. By the seventeenth
century there remained little more than elocutio, or the study of style. Rhetoric
came to be seen as a concern for mere ornamentation and empty sophisticated
language. This is because rhetoric, as it were, agreed not to concern itself with
the question of content and so lost itself in stylistics, poetics and semiology.
However, it is not necessary for rhetoric to co-operate in its own demise. It
does not have to pretend indifference to content, and indeed many of the ancient
rhetoricians made this very point. Rhetorical training was held to acquaint
individuals with the best that has been said and thought on which to model their
own thinking. We do not have to share the ancient ideals to recognize the
connection between a textual, linguistic education and the development of an
individua1’s power to think. Our texts and contexts are very different now, but
the methods of rhetorical education still apply.
The solution to the problems of liberal arts teaching is to see compositional
and critical thinking skills as part of its educational project and not as something
separate. This is what has happened with the critical thinking and remedial
writing movements. At one time they provided a useful defence against the
erosion of humanities programmes. A certain number of teaching hours are
secured by skills courses that were lost to shrinking enrolments in specialist
classes or to demands for increased teaching loads. Now, however, we must put
the pieces back together again.
The present humanist curriculum is a decayed and fragmented relic of the old
unified rhetorical paidaeia. Our aim is to restore that paidaeia and its unity in a
form suited to our present circumstances. It is not based on immutable canonic
texts, hierarchical or paternalistic values, but rather on the principles of active
study. It is therefore a flexible, but principled, approach to the teaching of the
liberal arts. It works to instil in our students habits of intellectual autonomy. In
the condusion we suggest what the future of thinking might be like under the
influence of a reconceived rhetorical pedagogy. The question now before us,
however, is the nature of thinking, and the best ways to develop it.
Chapter 2
Aspects of thought
This chapter theorizes the need for an advance in rhetorical training in the
humanities. It traces the development of thinking as a specialized activity
through the exercise of different aspects of thought. By a ‘specialized activity’
we mean one that is acquired through training and discipline, something one
learns to do. Thinking as defined here amounts to the mastery of linguistic,
social and logical codes; in sum, the thesis is that to think is to have the active
ability to read, write, listen, speak and remember. This competence, or
proficiency with signs and their employment, is the chief benefit of an education
in the humanities and certainly in literature, history and philosophy.
Let us explore the hypothesis that one learns to think by working through the
aspects of thought. Reading and writing are aspects of a complex set of activities
which constitute a significant part of the ability to think, and these include
equally speaking and listening. All four depend upon memory to supply much of
the matter for discussion. Learning to think involves internalizing and
appropriating all available means of expression to form the patterns of
individuated thought.
Thought and its style are inseparable. Cognitive and expressive skills are
bound together. The unfortunate tendency is to split them apart for economic
reasons. If we separate cognitive and expressive abilities, then it appears we can
achieve the economy of a division of labour. Some will teach thinking, others
expressive skills. A similar split between philosophy and rhetoric occurred in the
history of the humanities. Philosophy became the royal road to knowledge, while
rhetoric offered a rather more pedestrian route to success in public life. That, at
least, is the story as philosophers tell it. With the notable exception
of Giambattista Vico, few of them make much of rhetoric except as a field to be
excluded from the search for philosophical truth.
It is not our purpose to analyse further the vexed relations between philosophy
and rhetoric. The purpose is to understand that our powers of conception and
cognition are closely related to our ability to give forms to our thoughts—
primarily in words— for language is the prime field of rhetoric. However, we
must avoid the temptation to think that rhetoric is a specialized subject which
ought to be taught on its own; that path is already well worn and is clearly faulty.
To possess rhetorical skill but nothing to say is one of the things that gave
12 ASPECTS OF THOUGHT
rhetoric a bad name in the first place. To teach the techniques of persuasion and
the production of linguistic effects with any material that comes to hand
impoverishes those techniques through the lack of content.
Well-meaning as they are, the recent trends toward ‘study skills’, ‘learning to
learn’ and ‘critical thinking’ are misguided. These trends respond to a lack of
linguistic training and practice in college students, who need informal logic,
practice in writing, close supervision and contact. However, all this costs too
much. ‘Critical thinking’ classes and the rest are designed to make the necessary
economy.
What are the alternatives to these trends? The authors’ basic thesis is that
humanities classrooms should become rhetorical workshops. Given limited
resources, there are constraints on what anyone can achieve, but we are
convinced that whatever the limits, something positive is possible along these
lines. In other words, a philosophy class, a literature class, a history class and so
on, will freely descend to the level of grammar, ascending through logic and
rhetoric, all the way to the more specialized arguments and ideas of philosophy,
literary theory and historiography. The only breaks in the continuum which
extends from the minutiae of linguistics to the greatest of ideas are arbitrary.
One proviso to bear in mind at the outset is that we are not talking about
students who need total remedial language training. We assume the possession of
a basic level of linguistic competence on the part of the great majority of
students. We are working on the next step, the one in which students encounter a
higher level of reflective sophistication in language.
So when we advocate that classrooms become rhetorical workshops, we do
not mean to transform them into ‘bonehead’ English courses. On the other hand,
it is never forbidden to make clear a point or two which should not have been a
problem in the first place. If the discussion comes to centre on grammar and
syntax, so be it. Little things, if passed over, cause students trouble later on.
Better to take the points as they come, and always have a weather eye out for
grammar and various stylistic devices. These latter, while never ends in
themselves, are necessary to productive study.
READING
One of the best features of a rhetorical workshop is that it helps students become
creative in their reading. Borrowing a theme from contemporary literary theory,
we can say that reading is a productive activity, that by reading a text properly
one is rewriting it. Reading in the humanities is not a matter of allowing the
words on the page to unscroll themselves and pass away. The mind should not be
a blank slate waiting to be imprinted upon by the words of the text; that is a
recipe for blankness and an empty mind.
The passive approach to reading seems fine as long as the words are passing
through the mind. The problem arises after they have gone, after the book has
been closed. The stone which causes ripples in the pond settles to the bottom, the
THE FUTURE OF THINKING 13
ripples cease, their passage unmarked in the water. Similarly, the words cease to
echo in the mind, leaving not a trace behind. It is embarrassing to witness
students who have just ‘read’ something struggle to remember the first thing
about it. However, with some preparation, it is possible to read with more
retention and comprehension.
Two capacities stand out. One is the capacity to remember text. The other is
the capacity to ask questions. Memory delivers the material for reflection.
Access to texts is provided by the process of questioning. It is helpful to adapt
the Kantian view that we should go to nature not as a child to its mother for
instruction, but as a judge to a witness, to make nature answer our questions. We
test hypotheses and put constraints on our experiments. We look for what nature
has to say on particular issues of our choosing.
In reading, the same holds true. Students should not go to it simply to wait for
a general enlightenment, but with specific questions in mind. They should make
the text answer their questions, and not allow it to ramble on. A questioning
approach to reading foregrounds the index at the back of the books we read. A
question is taken to the index and then chased through the book. Cross-questions
arise. After pursuing a number of them, our hunch is that the text will start
coming together, much as the roads of a city come together for the person who
has driven along them from many different directions. One question leads to
another, that to another, and so on, The end is a circle of questions which
mutually suggest one another and lead one through the text in different
directions.
The linguistic construction is a playground of meaning. Texts are endlessly
interpretable. But interpretation is an activity, a practice which again can be
broken down into many different activities and practices. To ask a question is
also to ask for an interpretation of the text questioned. It may even invite certain
interpretations, while excluding others. All this comes of asking questions of a
text. To give students questions to take to the text is to equip them with a way
into it. It is not the only way, but one that deserves conscious implementation.
Asking questions of the text awakens an active involvement with it. The
reader forearmed with questions will listen to the text for the answers or
attempted answers or non-answers it supplies. By listening with attention, he or
she will be more likely to remember the answer. Remembering the answer is to
remember something which is said in the text, explicitly or implicitly related to
the question that is asked.
This questioning attitude towards reading aids memory without becoming a
rote exercise in memorization. Different sections spring out of a text when
confronted with different questions. Attention is mobilized and thus memory is
activated, since it is much easier to remember a text one has questioned than one
that has been allowed, as it were, to flow through the mind unimpeded and
uninterrogated.
All this is in aid of becoming active in the face of often recalcitrant material.
The students’ plates are heaped with it; then they are asked to devour it all at
once. They need to develop a stomach for the job. Their teachers need to break
everything down into more manageable bits and build up an appetite for the
material at the same time. It is a question of motivation. By becoming active,
students will improve their reading abilities as a matter of course and as a matter
of practice.
There are at least three ways of reading texts about which it is helpful to
remind students. The first is skimming, by which topic sentences stand out,
introductions and conclusions, chapter headings and so on. The second is
dipping. This is typical of the questioning approach, in which we trace a topic
through a text by using the index. The third may be called close reading. This
involves a word by word analysis and interpretation of a text which is small
enough to grasp in this intense way. We should encourage a mixture of reading
habits in our students.
The basic materials of the humanities are words and texts. Asking questions is
just one way of doing something with them, one way of remembering what is in
them. To be able to think, you need something to think about, and that is
normally what someone said or wrote. But to have something to think about, one
needs to remember what it is someone said or wrote. The education of memory is
essential to the success of an education in the humanities.
In this endeavour the humanities have an advantage over the physical and
experimental sciences in that they have access to the in-itself of their materials in
a way that the others do not. This is true of philosophy, of literature and true
even of history, which in other respects escapes textualization. The in-itself of a
text, as we use the term, is just the words that compose it. Putting aside the
problems of corrupt texts, the being of text is just the words which compose it.
This is not to say that we escape the hermeneutic circle nor is it to say that
words and texts are not subject to iterability and recontextualization. We may not
understand a text at all, and yet we can possess it in a way we can possess
nothing else on this earth. When you remember the words as they are on a page,
the entirety of the text is yours. Mistakes are possible, but so is checking whether
you have got it right. Putting radical scepticism to one side, the check is
absolute. ‘To be or not to be, that is the question.’ Does that line appear in my
old copy of Hamlet? Is it exactly the same? If it is, then I have the line right.
Nothing is left out.
The question is what to do with the lines of the text once they have been
learnt. As far as text is concerned, to know it is to remember and thus to possess
it. The beyond of the text is not in the text but in its possessor and in its many
interpretations and contexts. To understand a text is simply to be able to do
some thing with it, enlarge it, contract it, analyse it and generally to say
something cogent about it.
Time enters here. The education we describe takes both clock and lived or
‘subjective’ time. The latter is the time it takes for meaning or significance to
form around the texts we possess. As one comes to have more to say about a
text, its relation to other texts and to history, it becomes more suggestive and
allusive, more densely packed with meanings and interpretations. The texts
become pretexts for various forms of discourse, the stories and quotes we tell
ourselves and others to comment upon or to criticize. Without the ability to make
some comment, to speak about it, a person might know a text intimately the
whole of life, and yet retain but a superficial understanding of it.
The point of reading and remembering is to acquire material to think about,
and to exercise thought about it. Understanding is what emerges from a reading
and rereading of texts. In fact, rereading is necessary for understanding. We do
not mean the kind of understanding which merely results in an adequate
paraphrase, or a knowledge of the meaning of the sentences that compose the
text. We mean the understanding which grows out of a reflective reconsideration
of texts that can be approached from many directions, interpreted in many ways.
Our job is to approach texts from a variety of directions and to uncover the fields
of interpretation. This involves a certain decentring of our own perspective, but
it is just that versatility which should emerge from reading in the humanities.
The importance of rereading highlights again the crucial role played by
memory in the humanities. Rereading aids understanding on the condition that
the first reading is remembered in the second. Time is again the crucial element.
It has passed since the first reading. This difference in the time of reading gives
the reader something by which to gauge his or her progress in understanding.
Typically, rereading produces a response which says ‘I had not seen that point
before, how did I miss it?’ Remembering what one had thought is as important to
rereading as looking at the text again. One enters into a dialectical movement or
conversation with one’s former readings. The comparisons are instructive. It is
crucial that students feel they are making progress, and that includes progress in
reading through
Given this account, it would seem we must be immortal to do it justice. The
task is never-ending. If we are always rereading what we have already read, how
will we ever read anything new? Indeed, how should we ever get beyond the first
book we ever read? This is a sophistical question, but it nevertheless points up
practical obstacles to the attainment of perfection in these matters. There are no
perfect readers. There are, however, better and worse ones, and it is our job to
become better ourselves and at the same time enable our students to improve. It
is a valuable exercise, in this context, to conceive of what can be done in ideal
circumstances, if only to sharpen our awareness of the real and less than ideal
circumstances in which academic work is carried out.
Ideally, then, reading and rereading go together. Students take from their
books what they remember and the ways of working with them. This observation
brings us to speech and writing as the two main ways in which students become
active in relation to their readings.
SPEECH
Speech is a neglected issue of higher education. Of course, there are speech and
drama departments in universities and colleges. There are debating societies and
poetry-reading groups, public lectures and so on. But except for students
majoring in speech and drama, or interested in debate, poetry readings and the
like, speech skills are allowed to develop haphazardly. Nothing much is made of
them. The reason for this is that students are not, by and large, graded on their
facility of speech. They are graded on their essays and exam performance.
Developing the ability to speak in public was one of the primary goals of the old
rhetorical training. Into the Middle Ages, and down to this very day in some
institutions, the ability to make a verbal defence of one’s thesis is a condition of
attaining advanced degrees. The oral exam as part of the process leading to a
doctorate is still with us. Once again, however, its role has become attenuated
through the years. In any event, the oral exam is only part of graduate
assessment, and not the largest part.
This leaves us with a problem. If we are not going to grade students on how
well they speak, then how are we to incorporate the acquisition of speech skills
into the curriculum? Leaving this question aside, pretend for the moment that
students are willing to do what is best for their education even if they are not
graded for it. What, then, can be said for speaking as one of the most important
ways of coming to grips with the material provided by reading?
Let us conceive of speech as exploration. As such, it is also the realm of error,
creative error. Self-correction is at the heart of learning in the humanities.
Making errors is necessary to the process of self-correction. One must see where
one has gone wrong. The publicity, mutuality and reciprocity of speech makes it
a good vehicle of self-correction. The other person is there to remember what
you have said, to question, to point out difficulties and to explore remedies.
Consider a philosophical conversation as exploration. I say something to you.
There is some idea I am unsure about and I try to increase my certainty by asking
if you can grasp it or agree with it. We are simply talking together. You say ‘Is
this what you meant? X is F.’ ‘No’, I say ‘that is not quite it. It is hard to put. Try
this.’ I try again. Is that better? And so it goes, with no natural stopping point
beyond the calls of nature or of duty. Little by little, over a period of time, I
begin to get clearer about what I am saying by listening to you. I make mistakes.
I’m often unclear, confused or totally off base. I need your help. The give and
take of engaging another in philosophical discussion helps to clarify thinking. It
makes clear how well one has grasped an argument, its logic or its concepts, and
how well one has understood another philosopher’s theory.
Now flip the coin over. The other side is speaking. Talk is reciprocal give and
take; otherwise it ceases to be dialectical and falls back to the dominant rhetorical
forms of the past, persuasive or ornamental speech-making. There is nothing
wrong with these forms. In a debate, for example, speeches themselves enter into
a kind of give and take within a limited formal structure. Even here, however,
something is lost; namely, self-correction and error-making. Anyone who

prepares for a debate tries to anticipate what the other side is going to object and
to answer it in advance. There is some room for spontaneity at the end, but the
speakers will not be in the mood to make mistakes and explorations.
This is why grading speech is a bad idea. It is too inhibiting. The point is that
in conversation you are to feel free to let your hair down, rummage around in the
arguments and see what comes out. Thoughts are like arrows. They have a
dynamic and a direction. They are let loose in speech and where they are going is
not always clear. Of course, if we grade students on what they say, such freedom
will be lost. In an exam the other person is not just another person, but a judge. This
fact infects the whole situation with artificiality and self-consciousness.
Good talk is a falling away of self-consciousness. The self is not the centre of
one’s thinking; it is the argument, the novel, the historical period or whatever the
topic is. We have at least two people who are interested in the same thing and in
talking about it. In this way both increase their understanding and their ability to
respond to it and to each other. In talking about an idea, a theory, an argument or
an interpretation, one actively assimilates and transforms one’s own relation to it
and thus begins to put it in perspective.
The give and take of conversation contains within it the means to repair
communication. It is an arguable point whether we ever finally succeed in
communicating our ideas perfectly to others; but in this case, as in the case of
reading, there is better and worse. In conversation the speaker has another chance
to speak and the listener another chance to listen. As the formulations change, so
do the understandings of the interlocutors, both of what they are saying and of
what they are hearing.
In humanities subjects, good talk depends upon a shared world of references.
The question ‘What shall we say?’ does not arise if there is enough common
ground. This is what reading and memory provide: something to talk about and
ways to talk about it, found initially in what has already been said or written.
However, to read without talking about what is read is an incomplete activity.
Books, articles and lectures are grist to the mill and refined through discussion.
They are a challenge to teachers and students to find something pertinent to say.
The present emphasis on writing as the basis for grades has marginalized
speech. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that when speech is considered
to be important, as in the delivery of conference papers, the old rhetorical form
of controversy is the dominant one. This context negates the free-wheeling
exploration of ideas that humanities talk at its best should be.
In the Middle Ages, for example, an apprentice philosopher would be expected
to defend a thesis to the assembled ranks of students and masters. They would
throw questions at the candidate, who would then be judged by the whole group
on the basis of verbal replies. Facility with language and nimbleness of wit were
undoubtedly of value. The ability to put down a pesky heckler would also have
been of particular use. These techniques have come down to us. They are used in
academic debates, but they are never made explicit. Students are meant to catch
on. Those who succeed in this make progress, others are discouraged.
In philosophy, the standard format of public professional speech consists of
reading out loud to an audience the contents of written papers. Often it is a
matter of reading out what is never meant to be heard in the first place: a printed
text to be pondered in the silence of the study. The result is a piece of writing
which is transferred directly to speech. The paper is a form of writing to which it
is often difficult to listen. Closely argued papers are to be considered slowly and
in detail, pondered, reread. To hear such a paper is an excellent exercise in
concentrated listening, but it is not the best way to begin a discussion.
The structure of paper-reading at conferences seems to be a hangover from the
Middle Ages. It is a variant of the apprentice’s stand-up defence of a thesis. The
form of the delivered paper calls for attack, defence and controversy. The
speaker tries to defend a thesis against objections from the floor. A line is drawn
and there is a choosing of sides, for and against. The giving of academic papers
verbally can be seen as a kind of truncated debate in which the preponderance of
time is spent in the initial delivery.
This mode of attack and defence does not translate very well into conversation.
Like self-consciousness, being on the attack or the defence is not a way to enjoy
the exploration of arguments to see where they lead. For this reason, except as an
exercise, the adversarial mode of discussion should be prevented from taking
over as the dominant mode of talk. Instead, we should emphasize that talking is a
creative and co-operative activity where the participants are not trying to score
points at each other’s expense, but rather to understand and advance both their
own thoughts and those of the other.
Talking is a mobile form of communication. It is quick, subtle. It adapts to rich
contextual changes and is filled with the ephemeral meanings of the moment.
Talk is always a vanishing activity of interaction. Precisely because talk is fluid,
it leaves no marks behind. This is perhaps one reason why talk is devalued. To
one who sees only an instrumental utility in language use, talk that does not issue
in action is just so much steam: the bellows blow, air moves. Everyone talks, but
actions count.
Talking to people is a way of relating to them and entering into a social world
which is partly constituted by such talk. Furthermore, talk is not always a matter
of information transfer. People speak of what concerns and interests them, and
often speak simply to maintain human contact. The phatic dimension of speech,
idle chat, shooting the breeze, gossip and hearsay, all serve to keep lines of
communication open and in good repair. None of it is to be despised. On the
other hand, the sort of talk furthered by the study of the humanities goes beyond
idle chat. It is conversation as a form of enquiry.
If I tell you five times in half an hour that my Aunt Polly died, leaving her
entire fortune to the local home for stray cats, you get the message the first time.
Something else must be going on in the repetitions. Probably it is such a strange
event that I cannot get it out of my mind. Repetition is a way of taking in that
information to have it settle down. Repetition takes away its strangeness. The
listener, however, learns nothing after the first time the news is told. The same
holds with all forms of gossip, including academic gossip. The built-in limitation
is that information, once passed, loses its value. A secret everyone knows is no
longer worth knowing.
The difference between simply passing the time and entering a discussion of
philosophy, history or literature is that the latter is a process the outcome of
which is neither known nor ever fully intended. Surely we would not bother to
investigate some matter if we knew the outcome in advance. Enquiry is open-
ended but topic orientated. It brings to bear on the topic all the reading, writing,
listening and remembering that precedes every similar discussion. Such
conversation is a movable feast. Each time a topic is raised and discussed it is
enhanced by all the thought that has developed since the last time it was
explored.
Unlike gossip or shooting the breeze, conversation centred on topics from the
humanities subjects benefits from previous experience. It may be an old topic, but
it is always possible to give it a new treatment, to raise points previously ignored
or not perceived, and, in general, to advance our understanding of it. In the case
of the topic of my aunt’s odd will, it is not possible to make such advances, since
the idea of an advance does not apply. Information stays put, while enquiry
moves on.
Conversational enquiry is not static, but develops a momentum of its own
through continuity. Time enters again as a crucial element in an advancing
discussion. The more time we have to talk, the richer our talk may become. We
do not have to be in the position of characters in a Beckett play, reduced to
repetition, boredom and despair. A humanities conversation or discussion
uncovers novel connections of thought and unexpected lines of enquiry and
discussion. The problem is not running out of something to say, but running out
of the time in which to say it.
In the writing-centred or ecricentric universe, scholarly research is a solitary
activity. First I go to the library and pick out books to read silently to myself;
then I digest that material in silent cogitation or incidental chat. The main task
comes with sitting down to write. I am writing at my desk alone. This difficult
task is made harder if someone is trying to speak to me. At the time of writing I
must concentrate on what I am doing to the exclusion of others.
Conversational skills do not develop in isolation but through dialogue. It is not
only the argument that is the issue, but coming to understand one another’s point
of view to the extent that this is possible. We often seek agreement without
attaining it, but our efforts are sometimes rewarded with an insight into how
another perspective is possible. This is a valuable gain, but not one that is open to
sudden insight alone. To develop a conversation with another human being is to
develop a relationship with that other. The conversation and the relationship
change together over time, deepening and widening through shared learning.
Learning, in this context, amounts to the incorporation of the cultural and

textual vocabulary of one’s own and adjacent fields of enquiry into a familiar
repertoire. No one can hope to assimilate everything in similar depth or detail,
but the subject areas of the humanities overlap in many places and each of them
implicates the others. There are none but heuristic boundaries around the
disciplines. To engage in fruitful discussion involves the possession of the
relevant vocabulary and the ability to use it appropriately.
We are surrounded by signs of all kinds. We read them unconsciously and
consciously, fluently or incompetently. The point of studying the humanities is to
become, among other things, a skilled reader of signs, to recognize their uses and
abuses. In conversation this means building up a large reservoir of concepts and
references, ready to be used if the conversation turns in their direction. There is a
kind of readiness at work which often leaves a talker wondering how the
argument moves the way that it does. To converse is to explore ideas in the
company of another person. It is a form of community, if only a community of
two, and then, only for a time.
In language we distinguish active and passive vocabularies. In the active
vocabulary are all the words which the individual is ready to use if the occasion
arises. In the passive vocabulary are all words which are understood but seldom
used. Therefore, one’s passive vocabulary tends to be much larger than one’s
active speaking vocabulary. Perhaps the same may be said for cultural and textual
vocabularies. Our passive vocabulary is greater than our active one. We all have
a wide experience of signs; what is needed are the codes which make that
experience accessible.
This is not a mysterious process. There is nothing occult in the practices which
lead to linguistic and conversational facility. The two are connected, but
emphasize different aspects of the same continuum. There is a point at which
linguistic competence merges imperceptibly into conversational competence.
Facility in handling cultural and textual material goes with an increasing general
vocabulary and better use of it. By acquiring a grip on the workings of language,
we increase the competence with which cultural materials are assembled and
expressed.
LISTENING
Conversation is never completely impersonal or objective. It takes two to have a
dialogue. Speaking is the other side of listening. Just as writing is at the centre of
academic careers at all levels and talk is ‘mere talk’, speaking is at the centre of
conversation and listening tends to be an afterthought. We must rectify this now.
It is not a conversation if one person does all the talking and the other simply
agrees from time to time. Some of the later Platonic works are like this,
dialogues in name only. The interlocutor merely allows Socrates to continue his
monologues. The listening voice lacks identity and appears to be nothing but a
literary device.
If this happens in a face-to-face conversation, dialogue ceases. The reason that

listening plays second fiddle may be as simple as the fact that people tend to pay
more attention to what they are saying than to what someone else is saying. The
lecture is not ideal, for precisely this reason. If students do not know how to
listen, it is easy for them to drift off and let the sounds of the lecturer’s voice fall
into the background, like reading with a vacant mind.
The case of listening to a lecture is the same as that outlined for reading and
talk. It is a matter of becoming more active in the process of listening. In practice
this means taking up once more an interrogative stance, asking questions silently
to see if the speaker answers them, does not notice them, ignores them, answers
slightly different questions, and so on. It is important that the student bring his or
her reading to bear in the lecture, the better to question and consolidate it.
The supreme test of listening is memory. Can the student remember what the
teacher has said? In a lecture, professors speak and students listen.
Communication is mainly in one direction. Nevertheless, if students walk out of
a lecture remembering nothing of what was said, the lecture was either very bad
or one which had been allowed to vanish. With practice it is possible to improve
listening technique to the point that it becomes effortless and, given half a
chance, enjoyable.
In lectures this involves taking notes. Here listening and writing come
together. However, the point of students taking notes is not to have a
comprehensive record of everything the professor has said. This would preclude
actually listening to the lecture. Key words, phrases, and the occasional sentence
are all that need to be written down. Their function is to act as aidesmémoires. A
useful exercise for students is to write out a short précis of the lecture, based on
the notes, shortly after the class has ended.
The cultivation of listening abilities would certainly make lectures more
interesting. However, the benefits active listening confers on conversation are
even greater. In conversation we both have a chance to speak. Sometimes what I
have to say relates to something you have just said. I might ask for clarification,
put in an objection, raise a question, try to extend what you have said to see if
you agree with it. The list goes on. The point is that when you have something
you are trying to say, I try to help you to say it through my interventions.
Criticism, too, is to be welcomed, if it is delivered in a friendly way. When I
have something to say, you listen to me and return the favour. We are each, if
you like, the keeper of the other’s thoughts, since it is through conversation that
we have access to the other’s thoughts as well as to our own.
Socrates saw himself as a midwife of ideas. He helped people bring them to
birth, to see whether they were genuine or mere gusts of wind. In conversation
we take turns being pregnant and giving birth and helping someone else do the
same. The ability to listen, to concentrate and stay with an idea, is the heart of
conversation. By listening one stays with another person to concentrate on the
topic.
The role of the listener in conversation is to be a repository of what the

speaker is saying, providing the speaker with access to what he or she has said.
Once again memory proves to be the key. The listener can raise a question of
consistency, for example, only because of a comparison between what the
speaker said before and what later. It is easy to forget such things in the process
of speaking and very helpful to have someone there who can remember them and
point to any discrepancies.
Of course, the services of the listener go far beyond simply pointing out
contradictions. On the basis of listening it is possible to ask questions, to notice
obscurities or infelicities of expression, to paraphrase an argument or to follow it
up in novel ways. All of these activities can be recuperated in conversations,
reprised, themselves questioned and explored. We take turns to lead the way and
read the signs.
For example, what you say reminds me of something I had forgotten, but
which is suddenly relevant to our present concerns. Waiting my turn, I feed this
recollection back into the discussion and see how, or if, it makes a difference to
what you are saying. Outright incomprehension and disagreement are not
preferred options, nor is agreement a form of submission to another’s doctrine.
We can agree to explore ranges of ideas, noting our differences for future
discussion, and continue to learn from each other.
The role of a listener, then, is the same as the role of a speaker, but a speaker of
a definite kind, the kind who has been listening. It makes all the difference in the
world whether the person you are addressing actually listens to what you have to
say. This is not discovered until the speaker receives some feedback from
the listener. A listener who never spoke or gave a sign would be the silent
partner in a monologue, not part of a conversation. To be a conversation, we
have to hear the different voices speak, and each must speak for itself.
We see this happening very clearly in Plato’s Gorgias, when Callicles
becomes tired of what he sees as Socrates’ posturings. He is clever enough to
think that Socrates’ call for a proper dialogue is just a ruse by which he can give
vent to unsavoury ethics at the same time as he makes his interlocutor silent out
of shame. So Callicles lets Socrates know that he is on to the strategy and gives
the answers Socrates wants to hear just to help him get on which his speech and
finally shut up. The time for a dialogue between them, if it ever existed, is over.
The conversation is finished. Socrates must carry on by himself. If Callicles’
own voice cannot be heard, he will not speak at all. Callicles is that kind of
character.
What holds speakers and listeners together is a world of common interests,
concerns and topics of discussion plus a public world of historical, literary and
philosophical references. This, of course, must be slowly built up and is another
reason why it takes time for such conversations to get under way. It takes time to
cover the topic just as it takes time to become accustomed to the person you are
conversing with. It matters just as much who you are talking to as what you are
talking about. A good conversation, one that goes somewhere and is creative, is
one in which you are talking to an interesting person about a fascinating topic.
That is the ideal. Of course, it goes without saying that the other also finds
oneself just as interesting and the topic just as fascinating.
Monologues bear down on us. The monologuist speaks from a position of
authority. Powerless to reply, we must sit there and take it. A conversation is not
like this. Speaker and hearer are within range of one another. It is not a matter of
expert advice passed down the line of communication. A true conversation is
between equals, if not in immediate expertise, then as thinking human beings.
Otherwise we would not have enquiry but merely individual speculation. We
must be within range of one another to make the work truly a joint venture.
There is no point in listening if one is to get no chance to reply. Monologues
can be tuned out. One always has the option to make the perfunctory replies: ‘Yes’,
‘You don’t say?’ and their equivalents. The listener must, even in a pseudo-
conversation, make the appropriate noises every once in a while, or the speaker
will stop speaking to ask for confirmation of the listener’s attention. The main
problem of the lecture is that it is a highly monologic form based on an
institutional power structure. A lecture is given with the presumption that it
would be a good idea if students paid attention to it. But from the students’ point
of view, this is not always obvious. If there is no call to reply, the temptation is
to tune out and let the lecture flow by.
Listening to a lecture is something one must learn to do through practice. The
listening which belongs to conversation evolves through all the talking people do
to each other. It evolves through all our relations with others and grows with
those relations. The question of listening is a large topic. Let us limit it here to
the kind of listening which is involved in conversations about topics from the
humanities. It is this kind of listening that our pedagogy encourages and fosters.
It is a listening that reverberates or resonates with all the reading, writing and
talking which is part of the same process of education.
WRITING
This brings us to the last and largest topic of all, the question of writing. Our
interest at this stage lies in writing as it connects with the other aspects of thought:
reading, speaking, listening and remembering. However, there are some
preliminary difficulties which must be disposed of first, before we can go on to
see writing in its proper perspective within our educational project. These
difficulties begin with the fact that writing dominates the humanities at
institutions of higher education. It dominates the lives of undergraduates because
they are graded primarily on their written performance. It dominates the lives of
the graduate students who are trying to produce dissertations, and it dominates the
lives of untenured lecturers and others who seek to publish.
We, on the other hand, are looking at writing together with remembering,
reading, talking and listening. What role does it have to play there? Reading
allows us to enter into other thoughts. We can think along with them. Talking
and listening belong together and together are a way of exploring an historical,
materio-cultural and ideological world. Conversation is also a form of human
solidarity. Writing consists of many possible activities. To write is to do many
things at once. Writing about subjects from the humanities enables one to
discover what one thinks in a determinate and systematic way.
Words on the page stay put in a way that sounds in the air do not. They have a
kind of spurious stability. The ink stays on the page. That is not the problem. The
problem is to discover one’s own thoughts in the act of expressing them. If I
write a paragraph, for example, and later wonder what it means, this shows that I
did not know what it was I was thinking at the time I wrote it. It is possible to
temporize in conversation in a way that is more difficult in writing. Vagueness
and bad arguments can slip by even the most attentive listener. This can give the
impression that all is well with one’s thinking, when the reverse is the case. The
exercise of writing makes you put yourself on the line, and holds you to it.
The writer can reread what he or she has written. This puts the writer into an
analogous position to the listener in a conversation. It enables the writer to enter
into self-conversation. I am not the self who wrote yesterday’s paragraph, not if
it exceeds my comprehension today. Writing is an extreme form of self-
alienation and objectification. It allows the writer to confront himself or herself
somewhat as if by another person.
Writing consolidates the work of the other principal aspects of thought. It is
the coping-stone of study in the humanities, but not for that reason any more
necessary to the whole than the others. Without parallel development of our
powers of reading, conversation and memory, writing essays on topics from the
humanities becomes a merely formal exercise or a tedious irrelevance. With that
development, it can become a means of taking stock of one’s thinking so far, to
look back and ahead. To write is to call ‘Time out, I am going to work this out for
myself.’
Study in the humanities is not by definition a solitary affair, but reading and
writing often are. Writing, in particular, seems to be most closely wedded to the
image of the scholar as lone thinker and scribbler; Descartes before his oven,
Spinoza over his lenses, Schopenhauer in retreat. However, this is not the only
image we have. We also have that of Socrates questioning the value of writing
and spending his time talking with other people in the market-place. Plato set up
his school to pursue enquiries with others. This more communal image of
intellectual life is obscured by the situation of writing within the humanities.
Because writing is of ten a solitary affair, the image of the thinker as someone
sitting alone with his or her thoughts has come to dominate our collective
sentiment.
Essays, papers, monographs, theses and books are only a very few of the
possible modes of writing. They are favoured modes which have arisen for
historical and academic reasons. The point to note is that essays and theses arise
out of the practice of writing. They are not, at first acquaintance, the most natural
of forms. They appear rather formal and stilted, the distillation of past rhetorical
practices.
We are less likely to over-privilege writing if we consider it with the other
aspects of thinking. Writing essays or anything else is just part of a more
complex learning process which incorporates and interpolates the results of
reading and conversation. Nevertheless, the continued priority of writing in the
educational system behoves us to take a careful look at the practice of writing.
This we now proceed to do.
Chapter 3
Rhetoric and composition
There is far more of a positive element in art, that is to say,

something which can be taught and handed on from one generation
to the next, than is usually believed.
(Goethe 1971: 425)
At the end of the last chapter we suggested that writing dominates work in the
humanities. Speech plays a part in tutorials, seminars, interviews and viva voce
examinations; but it is on the analysis of printed texts, on the production of essays,
and (above all) on written tests, that progress (however measured) largely
depends.
In Chapter 2 we looked at some of the ways in which the imbalance between
writing on the one hand, and reading, conversation and remembering on the
other, might be redressed. Now we turn to writing itself. This might seem a
paradoxical move in the light of our claim that writing has already been given
too much attention, but although the written product is all-important in the
contemporary humanities faculty, the productive process has been largely
neglected. Not only is it assumed that undergraduates will be able to write to the
necessary standard, but more importantly, the practice of writing is not thought
to be very interesting, even in literary studies. Whether it is a textbook or a
student essay, what counts is the finished product. The view seems to be that, so
long as one can drive the car, there is no need to meddle with the engine. So on
the one hand writing is fetishized, on the other ignored. This is not to say that it
is not taught at all, at least in American colleges. But this teaching is often beside
the point, divorced from critical reading within a specific disciplinary context.
Almost all students are bad writers. That is not surprising. Most of them
dislike writing because they do not know how to write, and they do not learn how
to write because they dislike writing. It is difficult to say why this should be the
case, but the contrast with reading is suggestive. Students in the humanities often
become students precisely because they are good readers: because they think of
reading as a pleasant and rewarding activity. They have learnt to read fluently if
sloppily early in their careers, and reading appears to them almost a natural skill,
like eating or breathing. They cannot remember what it is like to be non-readers.
RHETORIC AND COMPOSITION 27
Yet writing, which they began to learn at about the same time, remains
obstinately alien for all but a few. They can write, but it gives them little
pleasure.
No doubt this has something to do with the way in which reading and writing
are taught at school; and this teaching is in turn shaped by deeply rooted cultural
assumptions about the nature of the two activities and the relationship between
them. Reading is considered an essential life skill. It is also easier to teach. Yet
writing is apparently difficult to teach, and enough skill to sign one’s name and
fill in the odd form is all that most people require. The rest is relegated to the dire
province of ‘self-expression’ and ‘creativity’, thought of as an extra like music
and woodwork. This situation is aptly symbolized by making writing solely the
responsibility of the unfortunate English teacher, who is then blamed by his or
her peers for failing to teach it well enough. It rarely occurs to them that they
should be teaching it themselves.
The consequence and partial cause of this attitude is that reading and writing
are taught separately. It is here the rot begins, for when we separate the two we
diminish both. Once we put writing in the category of pure creativity, we
encourage our children to think of it either as an ‘extra’ or as the natural gift of a
few. Both the separation and the specialization become more acute as children
progress through the education system. By the time they reach undergraduate
level their reading competence and their writing skill may well be in inverse
proportion. This produces the bizarre situation in which students of literary
studies are reading the most sophisticated material while barely able to put their
thoughts together on paper about the simplest thing. As any college English
teacher will know, this is not an exaggeration: it takes a good three years to get
many perfectly intelligent undergraduates beyond pass level in their written
work.
How is this to be remedied? The ideal answer is obviously to teach reading
and writing in a different way from the start. The old rhetorical curriculum offers
a way of doing this, though it is likely to be a long time before teachers can be
persuaded of the merits of such an approach and trained to apply it. However,
one of the greatest virtues of our rhetorical curriculum is that it can be entered at
any time and at any level. In this chapter we propose to show how it might be
adapted to help contemporary undergraduates in the field of literary studies with
their writing skills, in the light of two principles which clearly belong together:
first, that writing and reading cannot usefully be studied apart; and second, that
at the higher levels both skills are usefully taught only in the context of particular
discourses.
READING AND WRITING

It was Erasmus who urged students to ‘write, write, and again write’ in order to
improve their reading. At the same time he insisted that by careful reading they
would best enrich their speaking and writing. He knew that none of these skills
makes any sense on its own, and that reading and writing are not just
complementary but unimaginable without one another: writing implies reading,
and vice versa. Recent theorists have suggested that this distinction is a kind of
delusion: the one just is the other. To read is to rewrite, to write is to read the
already-written. Yet radical theory is almost exclusively concerned with
interpretation. Even Marxism, with its complex accounts of ideological
production and the materiality of the sign, has little to say about composition: the
actual business of putting words on paper.
This is no doubt partly due to the sheer volume of reading necessary in all
humanities subjects today. It is a profound irony that, if writing is all-important
in determining final ‘success’ in such disciplines, students spend most of their
time preparing for that success by reading. Even with the guidance of reading
lists, and the careful selection of appropriate topics, a student may spend weeks
producing one essay. Quite apart from giving an undue importance to
stereotypical essay-forms, this only helps to make essay-writing more daunting
and prevents the development of facility in writing. Ironically, this manoeuvre
weakens reading skills, for it is by writing that students take possession of course
materials. In this process they learn the arts of arrangement and selection. The
task of writing enjoins them to confront the vast mass of secondary texts with an
editorial eye. The ability to scan selectively is a basic reading skill. A good
writer is a good reader; a bad writer a bad reader.
SUBJECT SPECIFICITY
It is important to teach not just writing but particular modes of writing, geared to
reading programmes. In the early stages, reading and writing can and should be
taught without reference to any particular subject matter. But even a limited
degree of specialization requires particular techniques. The novelist and the
quantity surveyor do not write in quite the same way, any more than the
postgraduate student of poetry and the traveller with a map read in quite the same
way or with the same purpose. Learning to play the cello is not the same as
learning to play the piano, though both are musical instruments and may join in a
common repertoire. Yet even at undergraduate level writing is usually taught in a
curricular no man’s land. This is largely the consequence of traditions formed by
a combination of the Aristotelian theory (expounded in the Rhetoric) that
rhetoric has no proper subject matter, and the Ciceronian view that it is a
multipurpose collection of skills applicable to any material. The resulting
pedagogy is an unfortunate mixture of generalizations and over-detailed
prescriptions. Like the fashionable ‘critical thinking’ courses, composition is
taught as a skill on its own. Students are drilled by precept and practice in the
acquisition of style and the writing of themes, thereby repeating all the worst and
none of the best features of the ancient tradition.
The old rhetorical paidaeia was designed to suit lawyers and legislators who
needed to speak persuasively and at will on any topic, matching their manner to
subject, audience and occasion. But contemporary students in the humanities are
concerned less with persuasion than with communication. Their first task is not
to attain short-term adeptness in any subject, but to achieve a thorough study of
specific disciplines. These two approaches are not exclusive: study in the
humanities should provide what are now called transferable skills, including the
quick and easy assimilation of new material, and the ability to make
something of it. But in the modern curriculum, whose full scope is far beyond
any individual, such skills are best acquired through engagement with particular
subjects.
In consequence, we take the view that each discipline has its appropriate
rhetoric which is learnt only through the study of that subject. What we need,
therefore, are not the generalized rules and detailed prescriptions of the ancient
rhetorical hand-books, but subject-specific writing programmes which
complement the reading, listening, speaking and remembering which are all part
of learning to think. What counts, we believe, is not just learning how to write,
but learning how to write (and read) in this or that discipline. Driving a car may,
in the long run, help one fly a spaceship, but a general course in cosmic
navigation is of no help on the road.
The authors teach philosophy and literary studies and share an interest in the
ways in which the two domains overlap. We are therefore well aware that the
common ground between philosophy and literature is a fruitful area of study. But
we are also aware, from the experience of teaching our students, of the
differences between, and within, these disciplines. Both as critics and as writers,
students need to become aware of these differences. As we shall see in
Chapter 4, their critical activities support their writing; but the reverse is also
true, learning to write in different modes sharpens critical insight.
Like the distinction between cognitive and expressive skills that underpins all
our chapters, the distinction between composition and criticism, synthesis and
analysis, is a convenience not a principle. We take it to be axiomatic that, like
reading and writing, composition and criticism must work together if they are to
develop properly. What can unite them is precisely the revived rhetorical practice
outlined in our introduction. And if there is some overlap and even repetition
between the chapters, we regard this as a virtue. For the attainment of
competence in writing and reading, as Erasmus points out, can only come with
endless practice of both. It is not originality that counts here, but constant
application. What is true of playing a musical instrument is true of writing. There
is no short route to improvement.
PROBLEMS WITH THE USUAL APPROACH

What practical difference does our approach make to the way in which literary
studies are taught?
As an example, let us suppose that we are running a course in twentieth-
century fiction. Among the texts are some experimental novels: perhaps by
Calvino, Llosa, O’Brien or Kundera. Normal practice is for students to read the
novels; to attend seminars and/or lectures; and then to be given reading lists and
essay questions. Weak students write their essays by quoting or paraphrasing
critics or by falling back on the descriptive methods they learnt at school. Strong
students compare critics with one another and finally give their own account of
the text. Either way, the work falls into three stages: reading, reflection, writing.
The third stage of producing an essay is tacitly assumed to be the point of the
whole process; for, as we have observed, it is on such writing that students are
judged, and such judgement is one step on the road to examination success and
prosperity in the outside world.
This seems to be the obvious and logical sequence of actions: you cannot
reflect on what you have not read; you cannot write without reflection. There
are, however, problems with such a sequence.
First, students read with minimal guidance. While this can have merit for
experienced readers, it is also enormously wasteful of time and effort among the
inexperienced, who should be going to texts with questions, not with empty
minds. Precisely because of their comparative facility as readers, too many
students of literature assume that their task amounts to little more than browsing
in a few pleasant books and recording their impressions of the experience. This
is no doubt why many of them choose the subject in the first place. Their
approach is subjective and aesthetic. Their interest in the mechanics of the text is
minimal. Many of their tutors share this assumption. The model of the innocent
consciousness encountering the richly layered text is still dominant in many
English departments. Underlying this model is the assumption that the sheer
volume and variety of reading will eventually reach a point at which critical
methods and concepts begin to form, almost of themselves.
The violent and justified reaction against this model among recent literary
theorists goes to the other extreme, turning the study of literature into the more
or less sophisticated conning of elaborate ideological or stylistic paradigms. But
this only replaces blankness with confusion in the average undergraduate mind,
unaccustomed as it is to dealing with the complex hierarchies of theory. More to
the point, both old and new approaches make the mistake of paying too much
attention to the syllabus and not enough to the student. They want to pour their
strong wine into new bottles without calculating the strength of the glass.
The second stage of the sequence, reflection, involves the same difficulties as
the first. Few readers understand what it is they are looking for unless directed.
With a reading list and essay topics in hand, the student tends to overemphasize
the significance of the essay. Appearing as the end product of other activities, it
can easily seem like the culmination and the objective of these activities. This
feeling is encouraged by the fact that the essay is the only form of writing most
students produce. Undergraduates spend their time either preparing to write
essays or actually writing them. Apart from making the essay itself a daunting
task, this detracts from other activities. Seminar discussion, for example, can
often seem a waste of time which might be better spent in the library. Even
reading the texts themselves becomes an irritating distraction from consulting the
critics and writing the essay. The logical outcome is that writing essays is a
tiresome preliminary to graduation, which is a boring preparation for etc. etc.
These problems are compounded by a number of other practical and theoretical
difficulties: the rapidly increasing volume of secondary texts; uncertainty about
the relationship between primary and secondary texts, and about the situation of
the student essay vis-à-vis both. Finally there is the fragmentation of the
curriculum and the differences of opinion among teachers about the nature and
function of the critical essay. These are compounded by a general uncertainty
about why it is we study the humanities at all, and why we approach them in the
ways we do.
Taken together, such problems undermine the very basis of the conventional
undergraduate essay. Text plus critical commentary may provide the basic
structure of literary or philosophical discourse, but students are usually being
asked to provide a form of metacriticism by commenting on the
commentaries. They often find that the ‘text’ is itself a commentary on other
texts. These fascinating theoretical questions need discussion, but they are also
profoundly confusing for the student who wishes to know what to write about.
As the volume of critical literature grows, the problem becomes more acute.
Only a few years ago it was assumed that primary texts were the primary materials,
fortified by reference to critics. This is no longer so obviously the case. Without
reading them all, the sheer volume of critical writings makes it very difficult for
students to make more than arbitrary choices between them.
These practical problems, once incidental and remediable, are now central and
potentially destructive of the whole discipline of literary studies and, by
extension, the other liberal arts. They stem in part from the collapse of a
rhetorical curriculum in which composition and criticism formed two aspects of
a unified outlook. There is, of course, no way back to that unity, and any
revisions of the curriculum will have to take the different approach we discussed
in Chapter 1. However, it is possible to deal with some of these problems by
changing the sequence of learning which has become so fundamental to
undergraduate life, and by breaking down the rigid relationship between reading
and writing which dominates it. This means placing writing at the beginning of
any course of study, which in turn involves looking at the function of literary
criticism in a rather different light.
CRITICAL MODES
There are two prevailing critical modes in literary studies. The first is fairly popular
and its function is to promote the understanding and appreciation of literature. At
one end of the spectrum this includes the great mass of weekly and monthly
journalism and the genre of literary biography. At the other end there is textual
exegesis and every kind of historical and scholarly study. Much of this material
is too sophisticated or specialized for the general reader, but it is produced with a
nod in that direction.
There is another class of criticism written for academics, which is heavily
theoretical. Its purpose is not so much to promote general understanding as to
argue the case for one theoretical perspective or another. It is polemical,
recondite and assumes that the reader exists primarily for the text.
Both critical modes operate in academic life and both are biased in favour of
reading. This last point might seem obvious. What else is criticism for, it may be
asked, if not to help in the task of interpretation? But there is a third sort of
criticism whose purpose is primarily heuristic and reflexive. This is exemplified
by the ancient rhetorical tradition in which students study the work of others in
order to improve their own. This critical activity places demonstration before
evaluation and explanation. The point of studying models is to evolve our own
technique. In this critical mode, the text exists primarily for the writer.
The notion of studying texts as a basis for composition provides criticism with
a badly needed raison d’être and points the way to overcoming the serious
estrangement many students experience in the study of seemingly remote texts.
The obsessive distinction between primary and secondary, between ‘literature’
and ‘criticism’, and the feeling that students produce only a very inferior version
of the latter, exacerbates the difficulties many already have with writing as an
alien process. Confronted by the chasm between the highly finished products
they study and the dismal texts they produce, it is no wonder that many
undergraduates despair.
If the study of literature is to be of any value it is essential to overcome these
problems. The revival of a rhetorical paidaeia is one way towards this.
PROGYMNASMATA
We therefore propose to substitute a new model sequence of activities for literary
studies, in which writing is present from the outset. Instead of beginning with the
reading of texts, followed by reflection, then by critical writing, we want to begin
with reading and writing together, with the second based on the first. We
understand writing primarily as a stimulant to the reflective stage of study.
In practice this means beginning with text-based exercises the ancients called
progymnasmata, or preliminary exercises. Their virtue is that they can be
adapted to students at any level of competence. This is important today. While the
classical schools of rhetoric provided a carefully graded and integrated
training which took pupils from the nursery classroom to graduate school, the
diversity and complexity of contemporary schooling makes this virtually
impossible. So we need to ask ourselves two questions. First, what exercises can
be adapted to fit the different liberal arts courses, and more particularly, which
exercises suit the discipline of literary studies?
Many old rhetorical exercises such as encomium, commonplace and proverb
have only marginal relevance today. Like the study of pronuntiatio they belong
to the domain of public speaking, the law courts and political assemblies. They
derive from the notion of rhetoric as persuasion, inappropriate to contemporary
conditions. The Augustinian theory of rhetoric as communication with which we
are working, demands a different approach. Our objective is not to produce
orators, but good writers and critical thinkers.
Though some exercises, such as refutation and confirmation, are more suited
to philosophical discourse, it can certainly be argued that all students of literature
should be able to argue or defend a case.
One word of caution. It is vital that these exercises are not seen as merely
preliminary to essay-writing. Although they also serve that function, they have
expressive and cognitive value in themselves: cultivating mental and verbal
flexibility, encouraging students to think about things in different ways. If the
essay is seen as the inevitable and only outcome, much of the point of these
exercises is lost, because it is from them that the much-lauded ‘transferable
skills’ are derived, which are part of liberal arts disciplines.
We must remember that skill is always ‘skill in something’. There is no such
thing as skill in the abstract. So the most useful thing we can do to develop
transferable skills is to make sure that our pupils learn specific skills as well as
possible. Without that, there are no skills to transfer. Of course any discipline in
the humanities involves useful verbal and cognitive skills. Reading rapidly and
accurately, mastering and arranging quantities of information, developing
arguments are only some. The progymnasmata can help to strengthen and
broaden these skills, but they also have refinements of their own to offer, especially
in the domain of expressive style and mental flexibility. The purpose of these
exercises is not to produce intellectual uniformity; far from it. They are designed
to develop fluency at the individual’s own level of competence, whatever that
may be, and however it may develop.
DISPOSITIO AND ELOCUTIO

Classical rhetoricians subject composition to very close scrutiny under the
headings of dispositio and elocutio: arrangement and style. Their exercises tend
to follow this distinction, some concerned with argument and structure, others
with tropes and figures of speech.
Dispositio
The structure of an oration, from which the student essay descends, is
conventionally divided into five parts: introduction, exposition, proof, refutation
and conclusion. Much ancient commentary is tedious and not especially helpful
to the novice, caught as it is between the pitfalls of minute observations and
vague generalizations. The general principles of arrangement are easily and
briefly stated but useless without practice. Most time in composition classes is
spent telling students how to write essays. Most of this time is wasted because
the advice boils down to the useless Aristotelian dictum that the oration must
have a beginning, a middle and an end.
The problem is that writing an essay is like learning to swim. The student
must first acquire the basic skills before he or she can learn to use them
appropriately in each different situation. This problem is compounded in literary
studies because no two texts or writers are quite alike. Without judgement honed
through practice, general maxims are useless.
In this learning process there is no substitute for expensive individual tuition;
the painstaking dissection of each pupil’s work with a tutor. But if there are no
useful general rules for the student, it is possible to make some recommendations
to the teacher. The first essays should be brief and centred upon specifically
designed topics. All too often students are simply issued with an indiscriminate
list of essay questions, which cover the range of essential topics without
indication as to possible approach or level of difficulty. Length and scope are
also taken for granted. This may have been a reasonable procedure when all
undergraduates shared a common background and education, but it is very rarely
the case today. Any group of undergraduates reveals a wide range of abilities and
linguistic attainments. Moreover, the essays they wrote at school were largely
descriptive or factual, not analytic and theoretical. The kind of analytical work
required at undergraduate level, taking in such factors as tone, style,
interpretation, textual commentary, linguistic analysis, argument, and so on, is
perfectly well within the capabilities of most students, but they are rarely
prepared for it. It is rather like being asked to fly a spaceship when one has only
just learnt to manage a bicycle. The principles of navigation may be the same but
the technical skills are quite different.
The essay is still the most significant piece of writing most students do, and it
will remain important even when supplemented and nourished by the exercises
described in this book. The assumption that all essays are very much alike is
profoundly mistaken. The term covers an enormous range and variety of forms.
Essays are no more uniform than novels or plays, though they may have formal
characteristics in common. This is obvious to teachers of literature, themselves
schooled in making fine rhetorical discriminations. In short, the notion of the all-
purpose essay-form, equally suited to geography and philosophy, should be
treated with great suspicion at the level of undergraduate writing.
By the same token, variations in audience count for a great deal: the seminar
paper, the undergraduate essay, the position paper, the extended essay, the project,
the learned article, the thesis, the specialist book, the popular book, the
newspaper article, the review, the blurb, the letter, the leader, the tabloid
paragraph, all call for different approaches. This is just to name the forms
common in academic life. Outside academia other forms of address are legion,
from the homily to the insult. Yet many students cannot even distinguish
between the essay and the seminar paper delivered orally to the class. They do
not grasp, for example, that the degree of detail necessary in an essay is otiose in
the paper, while the paper requires a consciousness of the spoken word and its
effect which the essay does not, unless it is designed to be read aloud.
Elocutio
This adds up to an insensitivity to style, in the widest sense of the term. For
many students, all forms of non-fictional writing are one form; and the
distinction between fiction and non-fiction is about the only one they grasp. The
result is that they overemphasize its significance. For this reason, working with
style offers a more fruitful starting point for composition than a one-sided attempt
to master abstract theoretical principles. Style is something most students can
think about constructively once they are past the naive stage of discussing texts
purely in terms of content.
The study of style is valuable beyond the bounds of literary studies. The
mental exercises outlined below are adaptable. They can be shaped to fit all the
humanities and perhaps the social sciences as well. Even such unlikely
candidates as geography and engineering stand in need of rhetorical analysis.
Scientists generally might benefit from scrutiny of their own language use,
especially concerning the buried metaphors that sustain their disciplines. Indeed,
it is precisely students in these other disciplines who are most in need of
rhetorical instruction.
But if students of literature are vestigially aware of style as a crucial element
in any discourse, they usually have a shallow notion of it as something which is
itself superficial. They think of style as the dress of thought, an ornament added
to the substance of the text. This is an ancient tradition, made respectable by
Roman rhetoricians and sanctified for modern use by eighteenth-century practice.
We take the rather different, though equally ancient, view that style is not
something added to discourse but something fundamental to it, operating at every
level from the single phrase to the whole disciplinary field. Ultimately it is about
the relation of parts to a whole.
This grand notion of style is really what many ancient rhetoricians mean by
the guiding principle of decorum, that is the suiting of means to ends. Style is
fundamental to the nature, function and effect of our discourse, not something
added on for aesthetic effect. This is as true of an undergraduate essay as of an
epic poem, and it means that in each case we must bear our audience in mind and
the purpose we have in addressing it. Paying attention to style is far more than a
matter of fiddling with details; properly considered, it entails thinking about the
whole scope of any piece of writing.
Yet because the study of style begins with the simplest elements of discourse,
it is both an excellent way into the understanding of texts, and the best basis for
the formation of individual style. This approach has the added advantage of
helping to overcome students’ estrangement from the literature of the past by
helping them to situate themselves practically in relation to that literature. They
will begin to appropriate the text. They will get inside it, identify with it and
learn that style is not accidental but essential. At the very least they will begin to
see that style is there, even in the drabbest prose.
There is another closely related point here, which we might make by analogy
with philosophy. Anyone engaging in philosophical discourse is entering into
dialogue with the great philosophers of the past, however modestly or
inadequately. To discuss philosophy is, in a sense, to philosophize. The same
does not seem to hold true of literary studies, where criticism appears to be a
different kind of text than the one on which it comments.
To approach texts through style is to begin breaking down the rigid
distinctions between primary and secondary, creative and critical, by showing
that there are many different kinds of discourse. The Romantic hierarchy which
puts creation so far above criticism is thus overcome. The student’s efforts need
not be dreary rehearsals of other people’s ideas, but a creative appropriation of
their material. Without knowing it they are entering into the great discourses of
the past. Like their predecessors, they are in dialogue with the writers they read
and discuss.
Stylistic commentary among ancient rhetoricians tended to focus on figures of
speech, and here again the rhetorical text-books are not always helpful, so
concerned are they with minute distinctions and microscopic effects. However, a
more relaxed view of style provides a useful way into the rhetorical paidaeia.
What we do not need from the old study manuals is their wearisome cataloguing
of technical devices. What we want to keep are (1) their practical approach to the
study of style, and (2) their insistence that composition and criticism, synthesis
and analysis, must go together. We might also learn from their starting point.
Students find large structures such as the argument of an essay difficult to grasp,
but they are usually capable of imitation and analysis at the local level. The trick
is to use these capacities to ease them into more elaborate attempts.
Most students show little feeling for the style of the material they discuss, and
even less for their own, which is usually a long way behind their models. This
distance is most embarrassingly marked in literary studies. The average essay on
Jane Austen, for example, however worthy its discussion, usually serves to
underline only the author’s remoteness from his or her subject’s stylistic felicity,
which puts a large question mark over the value of the essay and the degree of
understanding it indicates. This suggests that literature students stand in as much
need of rhetorical training as any other.
CASE STUDIES
It is now time to introduce a specimen course in twentieth-century fiction which
we have chosen just because nothing might seem more remote from ancient
rhetorical practice. Our twofold purpose is to deepen understanding of texts and
to develop writing skills.
The obvious way to study style on the small scale is through extracts. To begin
with we work in miniature, and thus can begin anywhere. Later on there is time
to consider large-scale rhetorical effects. Let us suppose that the novel under
discussion is Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller. We deliberately
choose a novel in translation to avoid the minute scrutiny of diction which
usually passes for stylistic analysis. Given the language in which this book is
written, Anglophones will be compelled to focus on other matters such as tense
and person, to which little attention is paid in the usual discussions of fiction.
This is a very distinctive and delightful book and any extract chosen at random
gives a flavour of the text and provides an intriguing passage to work with:
‘I can’t find it, but no matter,’ you say to her. ‘I noticed you have another
copy anyway. In fact, I thought you had already read it…’
Unknown to her, you’ve gone into the storeroom to find the Flannery
book with the red band. ‘Here it is.’
Ludmilla opens it. There’s an inscription. ‘To Ludmilla… Silas
Flannery.’
‘Yes, it’s my copy…’
‘Ah, you’ve met Flannery?’ you exclaim, as if you knew nothing.
‘Yes…he gave me this book…but I was sure it had been stolen from
me, before I could read it…’
‘Stolen by Irnerio?’
‘Hmmm…’
It’s time for you to show your hand.
‘It wasn’t Irnerio, and you know it. Irnerio, when he saw it, threw it back
into that dark room, where you keep…’
‘Who gave you permission to go rummaging around?’
‘Irnerio says that somebody who used to steal your books comes back
secretly now to replace them with false books…’
‘Irnerio doesn’t know anything.’
‘I do: Cavedagna gave me Marana’s letters to read.’
‘Everything Ermes says is always a trick.’
‘There’s one thing that’s true: that man continues to think of you, to see
you in all his ravings, he’s obsessed by the image of you reading.’
‘It’s what he was never able to bear.’
(Calvino 1981:126)
Transcription
Two types of progymnasmata remain especially relevant to the study of fiction:
translation and impersonation. Both generate a wide range of exercises.
However, before we approach them, there is a preparatory appropriation of the
text to be carried out. Students should begin their course of study by writing the
passage out, being careful to reproduce accurately spelling, punctuation, and any
typographical oddities, just as if they were transcribing a computer program.
This request may well be met with indignant cries, but these are worth
overcoming. It will almost certainly transpire that most of the moaners cannot
even copy accurately, which will help tutors suggest tactfully that they may not
be reading the passage accurately either.
Most people associate copying with the Middle Ages, but until the recent
advent of cheap texts, copying by hand was very common. Economy, however,
is not the reason we recommend transcription. The aim of this exercise is to
encourage concentration on the words and phrases the writer (or translator in this
case) has actually used, not the vague impression of them most reading gives.
What are these words and phrases exactly? We need to remind them that they owe
the author, the text and themselves the duty of accuracy before beginning to
make the wild interpretive claims so tempting in literary studies. It brings home
the truth that one is never too good to improve. Two musical analogies are
appropriate. The greatest performers continue to practice the simplest exercises,
and student composers often still copy out complex scores in order to get inside
them.
Finally, this operation underlines the fact that there are many things to do with
a text before interpreting it. This is important in an age which equates criticism
largely with interpretation, and which tends to assume that there is no such thing
as the uninterpreted text, on the grounds that to read at all is to interpret. But
there is a kind of reading more like computer scanning, which simply seeks to
establish what we might call the facts of the text, not its meaning, but the way it
is composed. Students should learn to come to terms with these before they
launch out on interpretation.
Translation
Once the passage is accurately transcribed, students are ready to start on
preliminary translation exercises. These are designed to sharpen the sensibility,
to awaken it to elements in the prose which it is easy to take for granted. We use
the term translation in the widest sense to cover every method of changing the
form of the text while keeping its contents the same. Later, under the heading
‘Impersonation’, we will consider ways of keeping the form and/or style intact,
while changing the contents. Translation exercises include alterations in every
feature of the grammar and syntax, reductions and amplifications of the text,
turning it into monologue, changing the point of view, and so on. Obviously the
material will determine which exercises are appropriate, but most of the
examples discussed below can be used with philosophical and historical as well
as literary texts.
Tense and person

Certain features of this text are obvious. It consists largely of dialogue. It is in
the present tense. It is narrated by one of the characters. Later, we will do some
work on the dialogue, but first it is worth looking closely at the basic constituents
of tense and person.
The first task is to substitute the past or future tense for the present, which is
such a distinctive feature of this passage from Calvino. This is more difficult
than it sounds, because the tenses are already complex and students will be faced
with the problem of which ones to change. This leads to a discussion about the
effects of different tenses, why Calvino has chosen to write in the way he has,
and what differences are made by the changes. It is worth stressing that this
exercise, though complex in its implications, requires no technical knowledge
beyond the ability to distinguish the basic tenses.
We then go through a similar procedure substituting ‘I’ for ‘you’. There are only
a few places in the passage where this is possible but they make a drastic change
in its rhetorical status, opening the way to a discussion of narrative viewpoint,
crucial to any study of fiction.
Finally, we experiment with different combinations of these exercises,
changing both tense and person in more involved ways, attributing the dialogue
to different persons, altering the time to the future, and so on. These exercises
draw attention to the actual nature of the text by considering its possible
alternatives, thus inviting readers to focus very closely on why the text is as it is
and not otherwise. It reminds them that the text is something constructed, not a
gift descended from heaven.
Précis and summary

Next come the précis and summary. English language examinations have turned
these into dreary businesses largely concerned with efficiency and almost devoid
of theoretical interest. In fact, the philosophical implications of these exercises
for the study of literature are profound and we discuss them in the following
chapter. They raise questions about the nature of language, about exactly what
constitutes a text, and about the relation between style and content.
Briefly, précis gives the general sense; summary lists the important points.
Students should attempt both exercises at various lengths. The first exercise is to
see whether they can sum up the passage in a single phrase or sentence. Can they
reduce it to half-length? Can they list the ‘points’ covered? After this they might
consider the different modes appropriate to different purposes. Is attempting to
summarize a passage briefly in an examination answer the same as simply
alluding to it in conversation? How important is it to retain elements of style,
such as the use of the present tense? What difference does reported speech
make?
The purpose of this exercise is to show that every text works at many levels
and in many ways. The length of a précis or summary will depend upon the
difficulty of the task, and the time available to pursue it.
Monologue, dialogue, reported speech

Making a précis of the Calvino passage will almost certainly involve turning it into
reported speech of one sort or another. This can lead on to changes in the entire
mode of the piece and various types of paraphrase. If the passage contains
reported speech, one invites students to turn it into dialogue. Alternatively, the
passage quoted here might be turned into monologue, or reported entirely in the
third person. We might see the action from the other person’s point of view,
change the sexes of the participants, make them mother and son, husband and
wife, two sisters, and so on. These exercises are extensions of the experiments
with person and tense with which we started.
Amplification
The next exercise requires students to develop the passage, to explore and
expand its points. This makes us think about what the writer may have left out,
overlooked, compressed or alluded to. It also causes us to reflect on what we
may be bringing to the text and how we are interpreting it. Amplification is
obviously most suited to short passages of perhaps a phrase or a sentence in
length to begin with. At this stage the imagination is free to wander, confined
only by the spirit of the piece. Students might want to name the characters, to fill
out their dialogue, to invent more of their relationship, either out of context or in
the light of what they know of the book. Now they are writing fiction themselves,
getting inside the skin of the writer, learning what it might feel like to be Calvino
writing this novel. And though their amplification begins by staying very close to
the given text, there is no reason why they should not take wing, once the basic
exercises have taken effect and become habitual.
Impersonation
Such an approach leads students to another group of exercises involving
impersonation, a central feature of ancient practice. This can take a number of
forms. We begin by inviting students to impersonate the author, extending the
narrative by a few lines or a paragraph. Then, in the same vein, they produce an
entirely original piece ‘by’ Calvino about some quite different topic. At this
stage we look at more of the novel to get its full flavour, and sample some of the
other narrative strategies it uses. It is equally interesting to impersonate one of
the characters in the story, to write on from his or her viewpoint. The same
applies to other characters in the book.
Having done that, the next stage is to take on the persona of a critic
commenting on Calvino the novelist. No doubt the tutor will suggest critical
texts. Having established what critic X has to say about Calvino’s work, can we
construct his views on this particular passage? And can we do so in his style?
At this point the exercise opens out in a very important way. Given the
tendency of novels such as If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller to undermine the
distinctions between truth and fiction, fact and fable,what could be more salutary
then to practice different kinds of discourse, both fictional and critical? Could we
not then construct a dialogue between two critics with very different views on
the subject of this novel or something in it? For example, we might have Lodge
and Leavis, or Lukács and Barthes discuss the passage under consideration. The
dialogue does not have to be long. The point is to establish rhetorical and
ideological differences. The writing of dialogue is especially useful because it
gives students a route into understanding conflicting viewpoints. Criticism is not
a matter of right or wrong but of coherent, articulate interpretation.
This sort of exercise provides an excellent transition from text to criticism.
Students can treat critics in just the way they treated the extract from the novel.
Indeed, this is the next stage, which uses these exercises as a basis for the
student’s own critical writing. One of the problems with the characteristic
undergraduate essay is the half-digested authorities it refers to. Understandably,
students rarely have the time to come to terms properly with their critical sources,
which they use rather as quarries for useful material. Getting to grips with the
ways in which criticism is actually written, learning to identify with the critic as
we identify with a poet or a novelist, is a profoundly illuminating exercise which
becomes more than an exercise for the committed reader. This approach is
equally useful for the philosopher and the historian.
USING COMPARISONS
One difficulty with the study of style is that the inexperienced have no bench-
marks, no ways of recognizing what is distinctive. One way of overcoming this
is to use comparison. We might, for example, take a passage of approximately
equal length out of Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds: Biographical
reminiscence, part the ninth:
It was the late summer, a humid breathless season that is inimical to

comfort and personal freshness. I was reclining on my bed and conducting
a listless conversation with Brinsley, who was maintaining a stand by the
window. From the averted quality of his voice, I knew that his back was
towards me and that he was watching through the window without
advertence the evening boys at ball-throw. We had been discussing the
craft of writing and had adverted to the primacy of Irish and American
authors in the world of superior or better-class letters. From a perusal of
the manuscript which has just been presented in these pages, he had
expressed his inability to distinguish between Furriskey, Lamont and
Shanahan, bewailed what he termed their spiritual and physical identity,
stated that true dialogue is dependent on the conflict rather than the
confluence of minds and made reference to the importance of
characterization in contemporary literary works of a high-class, advanced

or literary nature.
The three of them, he said, might make one man between them.
(O’Brien 1960:160)
The use of comparisons can considerably extend the scope of the exercises
discussed here. For example, students can rewrite part of one passage in the style
of the other at every stage of the way, substituting persons, tenses, narrative
voices, and so on. Clearly the Calvino and O’Brien passages are very different
in almost every respect. One might simply compare them in discussion, but it is
more illuminating to try out different techniques to bring home to readers exactly
what is involved in the writing.
HOW DOES IT HELP?

The authors take for granted the usefulness of mental and stylistic exercises in
sharpening the critical intelligence. This aspect is developed in the following
chapter. Finally, we need to address the question of how such exercises will help
students become better writers.
Clearly, our premise is that reading and writing, interpretation and
composition, are intimately connected. Improving the one improves the other.
Sharpening the critical faculties helps writing. But as we know to our cost, this is
not the case if we approach criticism only through analysis. On the contrary, such
an approach actually estranges the student from his or her own writing by
making it seem either pitifully inadequate, or too difficult to embark upon. The
practical involvement of students is therefore essential, and this is one good way
to achieve it.
The lowlier one’s beginnings in any craft, the easier is the way in. No silversmith
starts by making a Cellini vase. Why should undergraduates be expected to
understand difficult works in history, literature and philosophy before they have
become competent in the practice of these disciplines? Copying and imitating
others is therefore not only a useful preliminary to producing one’s own work; it
is, indeed, the recognized route into all traditional crafts. We should therefore
think of learning as a craft in which the student is an apprentice, the teacher an
initiate. In this hierarchy, writers are artisans, not inaccessible geniuses.
Chapter 4
Philosophical and literary exercises
To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual

possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and
make it one’s own.
Henry James, The Art of the Novel
Given the unity of cognitive and expressive skills expounded in the last two
chapters, how can we best encourage our students to apply these skills to the
formidable mass of texts they will confront in any academic course? How can we
stimulate the mind and the sensibility to become active in the face of often
recalcitrant and abstruse material? Too frequently, enthusiasm and talent are
stifled by the sheer volume of reading. In this chapter we suggested some
exercises which will help students to assimilate that reading, while sharpening
their critical powers. Where do they start? How do they continue? Above all,
what is it they are to accomplish?
Before the end of the rhetorical era such questions had very definite and detailed
answers which could be taken for granted. There was a broad, unified curriculum
within which philosophy, history and literature, and the ways in which they were
studied, all had their allotted roles. Pupils who went through the mill of school
and university covered a common sequence of graded exercises which provided
them with an intellectual lingua franca. This is no longer the case. Instead, we
have a vast and complex landscape of more or less distinct disciplinary fields,
each with its own methpdologies.
Rhetorical praxis has been detached from subject matter and relegated to
classes in composition, creative writing and critical thinking. The irony is that
students arriving at college rarely have an adequate training in the elements of
the disciplines they now propose to study at advanced level, because the
rhetorical paidaeia on which these disciplines rested has all but vanished from
schools.
Any return to the traditional rhetorical training is unthinkable, if only because
it is no longer appropriate to contemporary conditions. Though the world is as
much governed by language as ever it was in antiquity, the purpose and context
of that language have changed. Then, it was the property of a governing class
with a common ideology and a unified field of knowledge. Now, there is no

common ideology, even within the relatively homogeneous societies of the
West, and the governing classes are no longer synonymous with the educated
sector of the population.
Conservatives are inclined to see this as a misfortune, radicals as their
opportunity to build a brave new world. In fact, it is neither. As we saw in the
first chapter, the consequence of these changes is simply that our education
system no longer matches our social and political needs. We are faced with the
task of revitalizing the system. Put starkly, higher education today has a wider
brief than to produce statesmen and administrators. Instead, we have to educate
increasing numbers of the population at large, whatever their initial outlook. To
do this we have to put the old university disciplines on a new basis, and abandon
the idea that education has a culturally and socially homogenizing national role.
The fragmentation of the curriculum and profound social and political changes
have put a big question mark over the survival of a humanities community
retreating in the face of increasing criticism and suspicion. The result has been
the introduction of changes designed to suit a market economy and the demand
for a functionally literature workforce. However, once we realize that for most
people a college education is not the prelude to life as an academic, we can think
again about the role and value of further education to individuals and society as a
whole.
Higher education has different purposes for different individuals and must
always remain flexible enough to cater for their needs. Its main task is training
the majority of students to think and express themselves more efficiently. The
test of the effectiveness of its teaching strategy is simply whether it does so. This
is the point at which the rhetorical tradition can be usefully reborn.
We are not talking about years of gruelling training and negative reinforcement.
Rhetorical education has always had a tendency towards mechanical learning.
The ancient rhetoricians churned out dicta to be memorized at a furious rate. The
main problems with the old systems are that they tend to stick rigidly to a
preordained scheme; to fuss over details; and to grade students on rhetorical
productions. This last implies the presence of a judge and audience, a public
place of shame or honour. It also implies standards of stylistic conformity and
accuracy which are no longer appropriate. Pleasing a judge is important for
future lawyers and politicians, who benefit from early exposure to the public
forum. Conformity and accuracy may be useful for future civil servants. But for
most students, who need to acquire intellectual flexibility, expressive fluency and
imaginative openness, they are neither necessary nor beneficial.
Reduce the importance of the judgement, the shame and the honour, and you
diminish the constraints that inhibit experimentation with content and form,
matter and style. Rhetoric becomes a field of language play, not a collection of
dreary routines. Released from its narrow equivalence with persuasion, and freed
from the need to convince large audiences about life and death issues, it is the
PHILOSOPHICAL AND LITERARY EXERCISES 45
gymnasium of the mind. Here students begin to test and assess their own powers.
They become judges of themselves.
AN ANALOGY
Literary, historical and philosophical texts have pedagogic value only to the
extent that the student assimilates and transforms them through work. There is
more than enough material. None of it is worth a bean without the active
intervention of the student. Cognitive and expressive skills are developed
through use of the material and, hence, through the practice of exercising the
mind. Let us explore this analogy, without forgetting that analogies only take us
so far.
Everyone agrees that a certain amount of exercise is good for the body and for
physical health. Exercise not only builds new muscles, but also keeps them in
shape. Bending and stretching keep the body supple and prevent stiffening. Little
by little is the key to healthy regular exercise. Sporadic and intense bouts of
physical exertion are not beneficial. We want to build habits of exercise which
both produce and maintain physical excellence and health.
The mind is analogous to the body. It needs exercise. This exercise both
produces and maintains it. We want to add new muscles to the mind and keep
them fit. We do this by building habits of exercising the mind so that it goes from
strength to strength, long after the time when the body has passed the peak of its
perfection. Some mental exercises are analogous to weight-training and are
aimed at strength. Others are analogous to gymnastics and are aimed at
suppleness and balance. The former produce mental muscles where none existed
before; the latter, through bending and stretching, keep them agile.
Just as a programme of physical fitness contains a number of different
exercises, so will a programme of study. We need to develop logical powers, a
sense of style, the ability to describe, analyse, argue and invent. Some of the
exercises can be carried out in the classroom, but others are strictly
extracurricular. Study is self-initiating and self-propagating. The first step is
always one’s own, and it is into the unknown. Our job as teachers is to find ways
to encourage students to become self-moving and self-motivated. Therefore, we
should do everything we can to make the material come alive for them.
However, this does not happen for them through our actions, but through their
own, by working with the texts they study and discuss.
The analogy with physical exercise is the answer to those who see the study of
poetry, philosophy and history as alien and unnatural. It is a second nature
produced by the training of the first. This is worth explaining to students, who
are required to trust their teachers at the outset with unfamiliar and sometimes
difficult exercises. In the end, trust must be replaced by self-motivation, and this
comes only with practice. We cannot ride a bicycle well and with pleasure if we
do not learn to ride it at all.
PRACTICAL MATTERS
Like physical exercises, the first mental exercises should be brief and easy,
ascending by stages of difficulty to the most intricate and sophisticated operations.
Even the brightest students can benefit from the simplest tasks, if these are
repeated and discussed. The combination of practice and reflection is vitally
important here. Too often there is a long gap between what students do and any
response to it. Basic exercises, designed to be complemented in class time, are
one way of overcoming this problem. Students learn to work with the material
instead of regarding it as an inert, inaccessible mass. They learn to think, speak,
read and write ‘on the spot’.
Initially, the exercises are done in class. Later on, more complicated tasks may
be set and brought to the class for discussion; but to begin with, it is useful to
work in situ. Our practice is to assign a short, anonymous writing exercise in the
first part of a session; to collect and shuffle the papers; and then to read them out
one at a time. The results are not graded. Virtues and vices of every kind, from
grammatical slips to good and bad arguments, are remarked. Obviously there are
other ways of going about it, depending on the size, type and character of the
class.
Anonymity is valuable for several reasons. First, because it encourages
everyone to take part wholeheartedly without embarrassment. Each student does
some writing every week and the seminar carries fewer idle passengers. Second,
because it lets students make their mistakes and submit to criticism without
feeling that shame which paralyses so many. Third, because it minimizes
competitiveness and promotes objectivity. Fourth, because it shows that what
matters in this forum is the effort to learn as part of a group. For this reason, it
does not matter if only a few texts are actually read out, discussed and criticized
each week. No one is singled out or neglected.
But where to begin? It does not matter. To begin at all, anywhere, is to
discover what is needed. Below, we suggest some simple starting points for the
fields of philosophy and literature. We choose them for the same reason that
musicians repeatedly practise the most elementary parts of their craft. There is
great value in the simplest tasks.
PHILOSOPHICAL EXERCISES
Précis, paraphrase and summary are three exercises which call upon roughly
parallel networks of concepts. Let us examine them in more detail. Précis is an
act of compression. We take a larger text and make it smaller, always trying to
leave nothing out. Of course it is impossible to do this, so the exercise admits
only degrees of perfection. However, we need only a better and a worse to begin
to make progress. It does not matter for the present discussion whether our
conception of better and worse itself changes through time. There is progress
too, perhaps, in judging what is better.
Précis is impossible, which is precisely why it makes a good exercise. We ask

students to take any number of pages, put them into one, and to think about what
this involves. We might advise them to make an outline, to number the major
points they find in the text, and to express each as succinctly as they can. We tell
them to try to be conscious of what they are leaving out and why. The number of
pages does not matter. The exercise is the same whether they are reducing a
book, chapter or section of text. For a beneficial result, however, a précis of one
side of one page is a good length for the classroom exercise or as homework.
The exercise of précis-writing develops critical powers. A précis does not
simply copy salient features of the original text, but selects and orders them as
well. To write one involves wrestling with the text to the extent that questions
are posed, the answers to which find their way into the précis. In fact, a précis is
just the answer to the question which asks what the central points of the text are,
and in what order they occur. It develops the ability to find and then to set out the
main points of a text in as few words as possible.
The précis appears straightforward. It does not question but attempts to mimic
its object, the text. A good précis is true to the text and conceals an identity of
form within its difference in length. It goes directly to the central points of the
text. The margins are consigned to marginality, the shadows remain in the shade.
It seeks identity, not difference.
As a metaphysical theory, the logos of the précis may have little to
recommend it, but as an exercise in compression and concentration it has much.
The students’ viewpoint can be enlarged only if it first has a focus of some kind.
The exercise of writing a précis encourages that focus to be taken up and
articulated into its parts. The précis brings together features of the text which are
marked as significant within it. Phrases such as ‘the reader should particularly note
the following point’ and other subtler variations indicate places that are
highlighted in the text itself.
Précis-writing is an exercise of analysis followed by synthesis. The longer text
is analysed and the result is synthesized. If the précis is a reduction in scale, then
the original is taken apart only to be put back together minus its least necessary
and peripheral portions. The longer text is itself a whole which precedes the
précis and its analytic bias. Practice in this exercise is a practice in analytical
criticism. It can sensitize minds to those guiding signals, sometimes very faint,
which emanate from the text.
SUMMARY AND PARAPHRASE

A word of caution. In speaking of summary and paraphrase we are in danger of
falling into the presiding temptation of rhetorical study, to complicate and
proliferate the use of linguistic forms. The more one begins to uncover the
workings of meaning and effect-producing devices of language, the more
tempting it is to skip wider questions in order to concentrate on details. For
example, we can argue that the difference between précis and summary is that
the former reproduces the structure of the original text while the latter states its
conclusions. But what is the difference between these and the abstract? It is easy
to see how to start asking such questions, but difficult to see where to stop.
Our rule of thumb is to mark only the differences which make a difference,
and thus to reconsider the place of rhetorical training within philosophical
education. We must choose rhetorical exercises useful to this pursuit, not cling to
the manuals of the past. Their use makes sense only within a wider educational
project. Philosophy is one field where rhetorical exercises become philosophical.
Not all rhetorical exercises will be of use to philosophy students, and some will
be of more value than others. The same is true with the other disciplines, but
each will have to make its own selections.
With this in mind, let us return to the question of paraphrase. As much as
anything, this exercise encourages mental expansion. The problem is to make
unfamiliar concepts and technical terms part of everyday understanding, to make
them part of an active vocabulary. This means using the concepts in differing
contexts, pondering the questions and difficulties of interpretation which arise
from them. Strictly speaking, paraphrase asks us to put in other words those we
find before us. Those ‘other words’ could be anyone’s. In philosophy, the point
of writing a paraphrase is for students to put the argument in their own words, not
simply to rearrange the terms of the text to be paraphrased.
Paraphrase calls upon a wide variety of skills. Students have to decide, once
again, what the object text is saying and doing, but the real test is to find the
right example to make the point in a way that connects with their own thoughts
and concerns. It is a kind of translation, not from language to language, but from
idiom to idiom within the same language. The challenge is to capture another’s
words in one’s own. This is impossible to perform perfectly, yet again we
recognize a better and a worse in translations of all kinds and can give reasons for
our judgements.
Paraphrase forces the individual to confront the text as an object to be
transformed through work into another text. This second text is a reading of the
first, but never the only one. The important thing is that in the paraphrase we find
an interpretative strategy at work. Since no paraphrase is perfect, each leaves out
elements which another might include.
It is instructive to question the strategy of selection at work in a paraphrase,
one’s own or another’s. Paraphrase highlights portions of the text and puts others
in the shade. The attempt to put another’s thoughts and arguments in one’s own
words makes the student aware, upon questioning, of the many possibilities of
interpretation. This awareness of textual complexity feeds right back into reading
and writing, talking and listening. Students begin to come at texts from different
directions, sensitive to the tensions in and around the text. This is an advance in
thought, since it brings with it an increased power of expression, one with the
considerable resources of langguage behind it.
Paraphrase is practice in the making of interpretations. Its aim is to say the
same thing in other words and to say it consistently, intelligibly and coherently.
Behind the difference of words it looks for the sameness of meaning and
thought. A good paraphrase is one in which the reader or listener can recognize
the similarity between the text to be paraphrased and the paraphrase itself. To
read or evaluate a paraphrase requires a comparison with an original. Yet this
‘original’ always slips away. The text is there, but it is not possible to compare
the meaning of the text to that of the paraphrase, since the meaning to be
compared is already part of an interpretation of the text. Both a paraphrase and
its reading are always provisional and selective.
Nevertheless, this instability of meaning does not prevent us from comparing
what we see in the paraphrase with what we see in the ‘original’. For example,
faced with a paraphrase of Kant’s analytic in terms of a computer model of the
mind, a positive response runs as follows:
Yes, that’s just how Kant would have made that point, if he had been
speaking in late twentieth-century idioms. Instead of using the language of
faculty psychology, he would use the language of computer programming
and neural networking. Kant’s categories are the basic computational
programs built into the hardware of the brain. They perform preset
activities in fixed ways, and outside of them the computer is not programmed
to deal with input of any kind.
This restatement of Kant’s position is not wholly adequate, but it might be a

good paraphrase.
There would seem to be not much difference between paraphrase and analogy.
The ‘other terms’ in the example are borrowed from computer science. They
have their own uses in well-defined contexts. The analogy is between Kant’s
categories of pure reason and the computer’s program. They are both a matter of
software, a question of structure. We can push the analogy to illuminate the
computer model of the mind and Kant’s transcendental psychology.
This is a good result in an exercise designed to sharpen the mind. So is the
inevitable ‘failure’ of the paraphrase or analogy. The exercise of producing
paraphrases has built-in imperfections. Errors are part of the learning process and
students should not be penalized for them. We do not judge a musician on how
well the scales are played; nor should we judge students upon their rhetorical
exercises. However, because grades are necessary in present circumstances,
assessment is made if précis, summary, paraphrase or analogy are attempted in
an essay or exam.
The exercises discussed so far, with the possible exception of analogy, are
straightforward and serious. You have to keep your mind on the task at hand, to
boil down or render an original text whose status is always in question. There are
others which give students a considerably freer hand. These are imaginative
translations and transpositions of the voice and vocabulary of another thinker
outside straightforward contexts. The paraphrase of Kant into the language of
computer theory takes one step in this direction. Now let us take another.
One exercise in philosophy which asks for something more than analysis and
re-synthesis is the task of imaginatively working through the response of a long-
dead philosopher to a contemporary issue. To follow our example, we might ask
Kant to respond to the issues surrounding the current debate about artificial
intelligence and the chances of producing machines that think. Whatever Kant’s
view is, students are never going to get anywhere with the question except by
trying to respond to it themselves. If they put themselves in Kant’s place, what
would they think about it? This is a good question, but one without a ‘right’
answer. It is an exercise, one which calls upon their ability to identify with the
thought of another, if not always sympathetically and with admiration.
The field is wide. What is Rousseau’s position on animal rights? Will Mill
please comment upon business ethics? How would Plato intervene in the debate
on euthanasia? How would Aquinas argue the abortion issue? Will Carnap help
us with the question of embryo research? Let us have Russell on pluralism,
Hegel on the political ferment in Eastern Europe, Feuerbach on religious
revivalism, and so on. How would Descartes view the ‘decentring’ of
philosophy? There is no end to the number of exercises that can be devised on
this model. Relevance to subjects and topics will uncover those most useful for
particular courses.
Such an exercise is good because it makes students work through a philosophy
from the inside. Writing as someone else, the work of imaginative synthesis is
required. They must ask themselves, ‘If I were Kant or Descartes, how would I
see the world, how describe it, how adapt my philosophy to cover novel questions
or previously unimaginable contexts?’ The mere asking of these questions starts
a train of others which lead in ever-widening circles through the philosophy at
work in the text, an effective way of doing something constructive with it. This
exercise develops a mimetic skill, but does not culminate in the performance of
another text. Its aim is the creation of a distinctive voice or style of thought
through the internalization and assimilation of linguistic devices and codes
embodied in texts which are initially alien.
A variant of the exercise that asks philosophers to comment upon current
issues is one that asks them to talk to each other. What would Descartes have to
say to Wittgenstein? to Heiddeger? to Derrida? We must remember, here, that
these names conjure up the writings we attribute to them. The Descartes which
students imaginatively reconstruct in their exercises is not so much the man
himself as a useful fiction of the texts. This is the Descartes who is led into
contemporary debates. We make him answer our questions and discuss our
topics. This kind of philosophical and rhetorical exercise encourages reflection
on the text and its relations to a world we still inhabit.
The technical name for this is prosopopoeia. It means ‘to speak in the voice of
another’. In many ways it is cousin to the paraphrase, but the ‘other words’ are
not the student’s own, but those of whoever is to speak. To do a good job with
this exercise requires textual knowledge, understanding and imagination. The
knowledge required is simply a memory of what the writer says on different
topics. Learning the language and the lore is a bit tedious. You have to sit down
and remember a few definitions, a few maxims. Understanding comes with
further reflection on them. Descartes wrote ‘Cogito ergo sum’, but what this
sentence rneans depends upon interpretation and critical reflection. This further
work is impossible if we do not have his writings, as it were, on tap. A student
must know Descartes well in order to enter imaginatively into the question of his
response to other issues or other philosophers. The completed exercise reflects a
level of achievement in understanding the figure concerned.
From paraphrase and prosopopoeia, let us move to another sort of exercise
which asks us to write in the style of a thinker. This will often involve trying out
different philosophical genres, at least in miniature. Thus, one invites students to
write a dialogue like Plato, a journal à la Kierkegaard, a stoic meditation in the
tradition of Marcus Aurelius, aphorisms in the style of Nietzsche, an essay such
as Locke’s, or numbered paragraphs in the manner of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.
The value of exercises like these is similar to that of prosopopoeia: it invites
students to enter the world of the text, to move about in it, to pick up the feel of
it and the arrangements of its parts. It invites an imaginative identification with
the text through an exercise of imitation. The critical task comes later and is all
the better for students who have entered into the spirit of the philosophy they
study. They learn by granting, for the sake of argument, both assumptions and
conclusions in order to explore fully the universe projected by the work.
Students are more likely to remember their own spoken and written
productions than those of others, however brilliant. The words, in this case, are
the words of the text, the thoughts are of another thinker. By systematically
granting assumptions and following arguments, students discover a way to look
at a wide variety of topics and questions from something like a unified
perspective. Of course, it is often impossible, given the best will in the world,
not to notice discrepancies between remarks of the same philosopher. Often, the
more one tries to find supporting evidence for a philosopher’s theory, the more
one begins to notice cracks. The game is to pretend not to notice them for a
specified time. Let the Emperor continue to think he is finely dressed until we
find out what he does. There is no fun in pointing out his nakedness too early.
Writing or speaking in the style of a given philosopher on a wide range of
issues is one very good way of entering the study of philosophy itself. It makes
accessible a fairly stable body of thought by which students may thread their way
through the labyrinth of confusing theories. It gives them something to compare
with the other theories and philosophers they encounter. The fact that it is only
an illusion of stability does not prevent it bringing together and concentrating
some main questions of philosophy. If the student knows, in the sense of
remembers, what Descartes said about the main questions in epistemology and
metaphysics, than that student is in a better position to understand the various
criticisms which are levelled at Descartes’s philosophy, better able to see that
while there are many sides to philosophy, each can be supported and criticized.
QUESTIONING THE TEXT

One argument does not a philosophy make, nor a single contradiction destroy.
The imitative exercise of writing in the mode of a given philosopher or text
encourages students to see the work as marshalling arguments and points in
order to bring them to bear, concertedly, on a philosophical theory or practice.
By trying to argue Descartes’s or Kant’s position, students can go to the text and
ask for help. Where do the philosophers touch the question at issue? How do they
handle it? How many arguments can be gathered up and used to put together a
ramified defence or extension?
Anything which encourages students to take an interrogative attitude to the text
is good for study. Questioning the text is one of the main ways to do something
with it, though not the only way. In the exercise under consideration, we are
asking the text to show us what makes its case most strongly. However, it is
equally feasible to do the opposite and question the text as to its weaknesses. In
this way the exercise of writing in the style of someone else, or arguing another’s
case, turns into the basis of a critical approach to the texts under consideration. It
is by remembering what philosophers have said and written that students become
able to uncover flaws in their reasoning.
Consider Descartes’s philosophy again. There is evidence in it of anxiety over
the seemingly insoluble puzzles generated by the supposition of a mind-body
dualism. The connection between them remains a mystery, not least for
Descartes. He gestures towards his ignorance and asks us to do better. He is not
very interested in the problem, and his infamous appeal to ‘animal spirits’ in the
pineal gland shows more exasperation than philosophical sense. So, by trying to
enter Descartes’s philosophy, to go along and encourage it, the student also feels
those tensions and anxieties, feels the force of implicit or explicit criticisms.
Exposition and philosophical criticism are two sides of the same coin. The one
works from within, the other from without. When the time comes to assign grades,
we give the best ones to critical essays, not ones which, however competently, do
no more than recapitulate a given argument. The exercises under consideration
give students practice in thinking in terms other than their own, and thus increase
those very terms. However, this is not the whole story. We need to add exercises
which bear more directly upon the development of critical competence.
LITERARY EXERCISES
It is often assumed that literature and philosophy have to be studied in different
ways. Philosophy is concerned with arguments and ideas, literature with themes
and styles. While it is perfectly true that two very different disciplines appear to
have grown up, closer examination often reveals that the differences are matters
of emphasis. A poem may have a strong and subtle argument, while a page of
philosophy may rely heavily on a metaphor. For this reason all the exercises
applied to the study of philosophy in the previous section can be used with equal
profit when discussing literature.
In order to illustrate this, we suggest working some of these exercises with an
example which seems about as far away from philosophy as it is possible to go: a
‘Romantic’ poem which represents everything people conventionally expect of
poetry, and which they often say should not be analysed.
Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel than or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
(‘Remember’, in Rossetti 1970)
There are many ways to approach this poem, but most of them are concerned
with its meaning, whether they be naive biographical interpretations or
fearsomely difficult deconstructions. As we saw in Chapter 3, however, there are
several stages in reading which come before formal interpretation. We must first
scan the text, establishing how it is put together, what is or is not there.
Memoria
We begin with an exercise of transcription. Once this is done, we we add another
task, more associated with poetry than philosophy: memorizing the text.
It is extraordinary that one of our major mental powers remains almost entirely
untrained in today’s schools, presumably because it is associated with
sentimental images of cruel teachers in dreary classrooms flogging Latin poetry
into baffled school-children. Yet memory is a vital part of any education worth
the name and it is more than a merely mechanical skill. Quite apart from the
pleasure to be derived from learning poetry, or even passages of prose, what is
memorized grows in the mind (or the unconscious) without effort on our part.
Historically, of course, poetry is the product of a memory culture. Rhymes,
stanzas and verbal patterns contribute to ease of recall. In our age of electronic
information retrieval, poetry can now perform an equivalent function by
stimulating an ability which may otherwise become atrophied.
Most important of all, learning a poem is a way of appropriating it, and

appropriation is the first step to understanding. Of course memorizing a poem is
not the only way of taking possession of it, and we are not suggesting it can or
should be used in every or even many cases. One cannot, after all, memorize
long poems or whole novels. But if our memory is well trained we will not need
to commit them to heart. Memory begins to work involuntarily, like any other
faculty. Students may not remember whole poems or passages accurately, but
what might be called the general memory grows in strength and their
impressions become sharper and more long-lasting.
We also take the view that rote learning is not necessarily a bad thing, but can
be a pleasure and a convenience. To resort to a calculator or book of tables every
time you need to know the product of four times nine is wearisome indeed. Yes,
we can remember learning poems at school and hating every minute of it, but that
is because the task was presented as a hurdle, a painful test, not as an intriguing,
delightful and productive game.
When students have transcribed and memorized some lines of the poem, they
should check one another’s work carefully for discrepancies. Why should they
do this? Something was said on the subject in Chapter 3 but the study of a poem
suggests several other powerful reasons.
First, it reminds them that they are dealing with something visible, palpable,
scriptive, composed of material signs whose accurate transcription is the first
condition of study and understanding. The status of literature’s existence on the
page is a hot theoretical issue at present, so this exercise also raises theoretical
questions.
Second, the process of transcribing and checking makes students read the
words with close attention. Laziness is the main enemy in textual criticism and
this exercise at least forces students to be aware of exactly what words are on the
page before they begin to produce interpretations.
Third, the exercises draw students’ attention to the complexities of typography
and punctuation, so often taken for granted, yet playing a crucial role in the
understanding of texts. This may be easier to comprehend with a poem that looks
distinctive on the page, and it leads to serious discussion concerning the
significance of stanzas and verses, rhyme schemes, titles and every other visual
aspect of the text.
Fourth, students with any sensibility will immediately improve their feeling
for a writer’s style and ambience, simply by noticing such things as the order of
the words and the manner of punctuation. The more limited students are
encouraged to notice that there is a style.
It will no doubt be said that these activities are puerile. Certainly it may seem
so when set beside the barrage of complex literary theories to which first-year
undergraduates are often subjected. Our argument is simply that it is useless to
erect an elaborate building if the foundations are rotten or non-existent. In all too
many cases, teaching at undergraduate level is as much a matter of stripping
away useless habits and prejudices as it is of anything else. Too many students
arrive at college full of half-baked, half-understood theories but can hardly

transcribe or read aloud a few lines of prose or verse with any accuracy.
Learning the poem and writing it out may awaken livelier students to the
realization that the poem ‘exists’ in a problematic way. It has one kind of
existence as signs on a page, another in the reader’s memory, and yet another in
the writer’s imagination. The perception of these diverse modes of existence is
one way of opening up the route to theoretical discussion of what a poem ‘is’ and
what it does. Thus the simplest exercises can generate the most sophisticated
theoretical philosophical discussion, where students have the aptitude for it.
Clearly one cannot write out every text studied, nor is there any need to do
these exercises with more than selected examples. Transcribing and memorizing
a few lines of Milton or Pope, for example, can do more to open students’ eyes to
their distinctiveness than wearily reading endless pages of criticism. But though
economy of effort is desirable, the primary purpose is the banishment of readerly
passivity. Almost all readers tend to become lazy and vague over time. Once a
student learns how to fillet a text quickly and efficiently, the details tend to slip
by unnoticed. The task of reading becomes routine, mechanical, and thereby self-
defeating in the long term. Yet in the short term even its mechanical qualities can
be a virtue, in that any student, however unprepared, can perform this first stage
on the road to critical competence on a par with his or her more able
contemporaries.
Having transcribed and (perhaps) memorized the poem, students are then
asked to note every interesting feature of it: rhyme scheme, form, unusual
diction, appearance on the page, sound and so on, without reference to the
poem’s meaning. The point of this is to get them to look at the text (verse or
prose) as a construct or machine. Once again, this focuses attention and sharpens
responses when we come to discuss what the poem means.
Précis, summary and paraphrase

Having appropriated the text, the students are ready to begin tentative exercises
in interpretation, starting with summary, précis and paraphrase. There is no need
to repeat here the differences between them or the justification for these
exercises outlined in the last section. All three are valuable for reasons which are
apparent in the following discussion.
In essence, all three are forms of translation. Where a second language is
available, a most valuable exercise involves translating the poem or part of it,
and then discussing the problems involved. This was, of course, central to the
classical curriculum in which all students had access to one or two other
languages. Sadly, this is rarely the case in English-speaking countries, for just as
people are said to learn about their own country by going abroad, so they learn
about their own language by learning another.
Fortunately, there are different kinds of language even within one tongue. We
can, as it were, treat poetic diction (in so far as the poem has any) as a foreign
tongue. This approach raises yet another crucial question about how far the poem
is in colloquial English, and how far it is a variant of poetic or literary language.
This is a central issue for any student of literature, but it applies with equal
relevance to other disciplines in the humanities. The question of philosophical
languages is clearly a vital one. What are they? What relation do they have to
‘ordinary’ language, whatever that may be? What do they tell us about the
capacity of ordinary language? Why do they come into being?
We begin by asking students to paraphrase the poem in about the same
number of words. It may be best to take the task stage by stage, concentrating on
the first four lines, then the next four, and so on. From this procedure problems
of interpretation will soon emerge, although we are concentrating for the
moment only on the literal or surface meaning of the words. Finding enough
synonyms is a problem in itself, which may cause some students to notice that
one word does not simply stand in for another in a straightforward way. They
may also become aware that the simple diction of the poem carries a whole
complex of subtle references.
Having done this they are asked to make both a summary and a précis of the
text, that is, a list of the points it makes and a reduced version of the poem itself.
Both these tasks are fear-somely difficult and we would not expect students to
succeed. Their value lies in the attempt and the subsequent comparison and
discussion of versions. Instead of the usual vague claims about what the poem
means, students are thus forced to give chapter and verse for their
interpretations, and argue them out with others.
At this stage other meanings emerge and students are faced with the further
problem of how to deal with them. Do we give what appears to be the surface
meaning priority? Is there, in fact, just one surface meaning? How do we
distinguish between levels of meaning? Is the poem about different things at the
same time? Though the word ‘death’ is never mentioned, most readers assume the
poet is referring to death—but is she? How valid is that assumption? Is the whole
poem really about death, or is it about some other kind of parting?
These exercises draw attention to two things: (1) why the poem is as it is and
how it might have been otherwise; and (2) how different interpretations arise. On
the first point, students are invited to notice the difference between the sonnet
and its prose paraphrases. What part do the rhymes play? How does the sonnet
structure shape the poem? The student’s attention is drawn to the sentence
structure of the poem, to compare it with their own. Taking the first sentence,
and paraphrasing only that, for example, how far can students preserve the
structure as well as the sense? Do they notice the extended repetition of ‘gone
away’, the balance of ‘Nor’ and ‘When’, the variation on ‘turn’ and ‘turning’?
Can they reproduce them? And if so, how? The paraphrase is developed further
by asking students to write about the part played by this or that word in the poem,
‘remember’, ‘turn’, ‘vestige’ and so on, bringing out its particular sense or senses
in the poem.
Amplificatio
When this is done we take the process two stages further, reducing the poem and
expanding it. First we ask for statements of the theme in a single sentence. Then
we put the reducing procedure into reverse, amplifying or expanding the poem,
analysing the stages by which it proceeds, taking into account sonnet structure,
punctuation and the emotional evolution of the poem, as well as steps of the
argument. This is more complex than appears at first.
It is worth imposing a word limit on this exercise to prevent subtler students
from being carried away. Alternatively, the revelation of each subtlety in one or
two examples will show how indefinite exegesis is, a useful theoretical lesson in
the distinction between exposition and interpretation (such as it is), and the
multiplicity of interpretive nuances.
At this stage students compare their expositions with other people’s to see
what the differences are, and why. This exercise is far more valuable than the
somewhat aimless discussions which often pass for work in seminars and group
tutorials. Whatever help the tutor gives with initial exercises, students must be
encouraged to rely on each other at the comparative stage.
The point of these exercises, beginning with the formalizing of conventional
attempts to say what the poem is ‘about’, is to show that Rossetti’s choice of
theme and language, easy and natural as they may sound, are at least in part the
product of highly sophisticated conscious artifice. Students are led to reflect on
whether the poet has chosen the best methods to say what she seems to want to
say; whether it could usefully have been done otherwise; how far the words are
distinguishable from the sense; where the metaphors and similes are, what they
are, and what they do; how the punctuation works and so on.
There are many possible variations of these exercises, and they can be adapted
to suit any sort of text, including those most resistant to any sort of summary,
such as surrealist poetry. Even in that case, the attempt to summarize or paraphrase
is most illuminating, if only negatively. The greatest virtue of the practical
approach, however, is that it forces students to back up their accounts of the
poem with detailed reference to the text, and it encourages them to be less narrow
minded about the attribution of meaning.
Ethopoeia and prosopopoeia

Having ‘translated’ the poem in various ways, we can then move to forms of
imitation and impersonation. These open the way to more imaginative work,
after the stricter exercises which establish the nature of the text as it is. In this
way students deepen their understanding of formal and thematic elements of the
poem by creating their own work out of the material it provides.
Students begin by imitating the basic elements of the poem’s style: sentence
structure, rhyme scheme, verse form and diction. Take the first sentence once
again. We have already invited students to notice its distinctive structural
features. Now we want to ask other questions. Are they aware of the play of
vowels and consonants at work here? Do they observe how and why the lines are
laid out on the page as they are? Do they understand how and why the rhyme is
closed?
Some will answer these questions affirmatively. Some will seem to know
instinctively, others to have learnt the answers, but few will be able to put
coherent reasons to their perceptions. This is why the next set of exercises is so
pertinent. Students are asked to reproduce features of the first sentence, in a
sentence of their own, whether of structure, sound or rhyme. The point is for
them to understand and use voice, tone, style and manner as distinct from subject
matter. Can they get inside the skin of this highly idiosyncratic poet?
In the ancient handbooks, impersonation finds two common forms, ethopoeia
and prosopopoeia. The first involves writing for a known character, real or
fictional; the second means inventing both characters and words. Strangely
enough, impersonation is very much out of fashion among academic critics,
though the writers they study revel in it. Speculating on what characters in
novels might do outside them, for example, is sternly discouraged by most
teachers on the grounds that it distracts attention from the text. This is a legacy
of twentieth-century attempts to institute literary studies as a serious university
discipline by banishing all imaginative or creative approaches in favour of
scientific rigour and narrow definitions of objectivity. Fortunately, recent theory
and criticism shows signs of moving away from these false and absurd
dichotomies, albeit in alarmingly sophisticated forms. Pedagogic practice has
been slow in following suit, but we can restore both ethopoeia and prosopopoeia
to undergraduates by introducing them to critical practice as we introduced them
to compositional practice in Chapter 3.
Ancient teachers are very positive about the value of impersonation for
inculcating the principle of decorum. By learning to speak and write ‘in the
manner of’, students learn how to suit styles to characters and situations. For
modern purposes, we can see that this also works the other way round. Learning
to write and speak ‘in the manner of’ is a most effective way of finding out just
what that manner is, what it does, what it cannot do, and why it is in use. The
pleasure many people take in mimicry suggests that there is a huge reservoir of
talent and interest to be tapped among our students if they can apply their taste
for parodies to the study of literature.
Having learnt how to imitate the elements of style, students are ready to
impersonate this poet and the characters in her poem in a number of ways. They
begin by writing a few more lines, stanzas, or even a whole poem in the manner
of Christina Rossetti; on a similar subject or on something very different. This is
an alarming challenge for students resistant to verse, but that gives it all the more
value, since it is propaedeutic to a full understanding of poetry. After that, they
might write a poem in reply by the person addressed in the poem, or turn the
poem itself into a verse or prose dialogue between the two characters.
Taking the process further might involve writing critical commentary on the
poem in the style of this or that critic. It would clearly be best to begin with very
distinctive critics: Arnold, Eliot, Leavis and Lukács spring to mind as writers
whose style and stance are easily imitated. This exercise provides a vital link
between the creative and critical processes we have emphasized in this book. The
student employs just as much imagination impersonating the critic as
impersonating the poet. After these experiments in ethopoeia this sequence of
exercises concludes by asking the students to imagine a friend or contemporary
of Rossetti’s commenting on her poem, or inventing a modern poet’s response to
her work.
The possibilities are many and will be limited only by available time, student
aptitude, and educational priorities. However, we need to remind ourselves again
of the danger inherent in the rhetorical paidaeia: that it can become an end in
itself for those fascinated by it. Our principle in this case is utility. These
exercises are worth doing only if they help students to understand the ways in
which texts are produced and the critical procedures by means of which they are
interpreted.
Theme, plot and character

So far we have concentrated on the textual minutiae of one poem. But how
useful are these methods when dealing with plays and novels, for example, or
when discussing theme, plot and character? A few words on this topic is in
order.
As with short poems, the tendency of initial discussions about longer texts is
to ask what they are about. Though inevitable, this can have a very depressing
effect on discussion, by reducing all critical discourse to subjective squabbles
about interpretation.
One solution to this problem is to ask students to summarize or paraphrase the
‘theme’ at different lengths: in a phrase, a sentence, a short paragraph, a long
paragraph, and so on. This is a way of bringing home to them that the theme is
not simply a little nugget to be extracted like gold from the text’s ore. More
importantly, it makes them pay close attention to the text.
This exercise is more illuminating in the case of plot because it focuses
attention so sharply on the problem of just what the plot is. Is it the same as the
story? Is it the causal mechanism on which the story hangs? If so, which
elements of the narrative are causal and essential, which superfluous, and so on?
Students summarize the plot at different lengths, taking in different levels of detail.
The discussion of character is a rather different and more sophisticated
exercise that involves a number of operations, beginning with the student’s
description of the character in his or her own words, continuing with conjecture
about how that character behaves in other circumstances, and concluding with
the student writing as that character so described and understood.
It is neither desirable nor necessary to expound a complete manual of

rhetorical criticism. Given the basic concepts of translation and imitation which
underlie all the procedures described in these chapters, it is open to all teachers
and students to make up their own exercises.
SECONDARY LITERATURE
Most of our discussion has dealt with primary texts, but contemporary study is at
least as much based on critical commentaries. The trouble is that these are often
as difficult as the works they refer to. Students find it hard to take up an
independent and critical attitude to them. How are undergraduates to learn to
make their own discriminations in the catalogue of criticism and commentary?
One teaching strategy is to familiarize students with examples of journal
articles, and to point out the patterns of critical arguments displayed in them. A
good exercise is to have students write short reports on critical essays which
discuss a topic or questions from the course reading list. Another is to ask for an
outline of a critical argument, laying bare its structure. Précis and paraphrase are
used to develop critical skills. The student works through someone else’s critical
argument, which at the same time makes it more clear just what a critical
argument is. When the time comes to write an extended essay or take an exam,
the student will at least possess some idea of the forms that criticism takes.
Critical competence is also encouraged through another exercise which we
borrow from the ancient sophists: playing devil’s advocate. This exercise is not
far removed from the exercise of writing in someone else’s style. In both cases
students pretend to be something they are not. Playing devil’s advocate is a game
in which the rules specifically encourage arguing a case whether or not it is at
cross purposes to normal commitments and beliefs.
For example, we ask all those who believe in God to argue for atheism,
sceptics to argue for the existence of knowledge, libertarians for totalitarian
government, pro-life advocates for the rights of women to opt for abortion, pro-
choice advocates for the immorality of abortion. In literary studies there are
many comparable issues in which it is possible to choose sides and reverse them
for the sake of argument.
The value of playing devil’s advocate lies partly in the critical insight it
provides, but also in the experience of role-playing it affords. These exercises are
experiences in alienation. By playing devil’s advocate students learn to anticipate
the objections that can be raised against their original positions. They discover that
there are perspectives other than their own which have ceased to be mere
intellectual abstractions. The exercise of devil’s advocate puts flesh on the bare
bones of the opposing position and thus makes it more real.
THE SPOKEN WORD

We have discussed a range of writing exercises which give rise to discussion and
then to more writing. We conclude this chapter by describing some speaking
activities which are useful to literature and philosophy teachers, and by extension
to liberal arts teachers in general. Like the training of memory, the training of
speech is no longer fashionable outside speech and drama departments and
debating societies, but we believe it is an important part of education in the
humanities.
It is a good idea, if possible, to devote some class time to formal debate, in
which members of the class argue different sides of a philosophical or critical
issue. The preparation for debate invites assessment of the pros and cons of
different theories. The execution brings increased awareness of the role of body
language and vocal delivery in putting the case. The point of this exercise is not
to produce polished debaters so much as articulate speakers who can rise to the
occasion at will and on demand. This is part of being fully articulate. The
necessity of face-to-face communication in human affairs is not confined to
courtrooms, assemblies and great ceremonial occasions.
Speaking out in class as a participant in debate helps to incorporate this
element of face-to-face address in the experience of the student so that he or she
will gain some appreciation of the materiality of language, its strengths and
weaknesses, the effects it produces in all kinds of audiences. By working with
linguistic devices, patterns of recognition build up which add to speaking,
reading and writing skills. The spoken address, the written page and the writing
page complement each other. Practice in the use of linguistic devices to argue for
and against philosophical claims and theories leads to increased critical
competence and interpretative skill. Plainly, however, these exercises should not
be done slavishly or in too much detail.
READING ALOUD
One of our themes is that writing and reading are privileged over speaking and
listening. Before concluding this chapter, let us see what can be done to redress
this imbalance. It is instructive to ask a student to read a page out loud. Often,
there are pauses and awkwardnesses in presentation. Some sentences do not read
very well; they do not make sense read out loud just as written. Faced with this
lacuna, everyone is invited to rewrite the sentence so that it can be read out
successfully to an audience.
What often happens is that students attribute to their written work a meaning
taken from the time of writing, which vanishes upon a later reading. Something
which obviously made sense at the time of composition fails on a later occasion
to do so. The exercise of reading written work out loud facilitates the
development of a sense of distance between writing and reading out. At times it
almost seems to the student as if someone else produced the piece he or she
wrote last week. It can raise the questions ‘What did I mean by that?’, ‘What is
the connection between this sentence or paragraph and the last or the one yet to
come?’, ‘I knew what I meant then, but now I do not. What has gone wrong?’ This
is a constructive puzzle to contemplate. It shows that Sartre was right when he said
that rewriting is the essence of style. However, it is one thing to hear this,
another to realize it for oneself. The need for rewriting becomes apparent when a
first draft is read out loud.
Speaking exercises have a great advantage. They sharpen the student’s
awareness that what he or she says is directed to an audience. In debate, or in
reading out written work, the audience is actually in the room, not a vague
hypothetical audience of written work. It is hard to ignore the members of the
audience while addressing them in person. This makes speaking in public a
daunting proposal for many students. There is plenty of room for slips and
embarrassment. Yet here, as elsewhere, practice makes competent.
We find it helpful to keep the exercises short, no more than a single side of A4
paper at the maximum. We cultivate anonymity in the class. Each student reads a
page picked at random from the pile. This puts the student more at ease, and
shares the difficulty he or she might have in reading it equally with the author. In
the end the whole class has a laugh, but not at a named person’s expense.
Another method assigns the reading of a common class text to different students
in turn. Of course it is the soundness of an argument that is to convince us, not its
sound. Nevertheless, to read out a page of a philosopher’s or critic’s work
requires an interpretation to give it sense, just as in the case of one’s own
writing. The words are another’s, but to read them with sense is already to have
grasped a meaning. The very act of reading out a passage contributes to an
understanding of it. Difficulty in reading it out may reveal a problem in the
student’s thought or in that of the text concerned. Such exercises, therefore, feed
into the development of desirable critical competences.
Reading aloud is improved by practice. The exercise of rereading the same text
traces the movement of understanding. Difficulties of rhythm and emphasis are
sorted out as one comes to grasp the point: ‘The stress goes here because it
makes sense that way.’ Students begin to be able to see the meaning of the
punctuation marks, to take hints from the text and to use them in reading.
Though it has a mechanical component, reading text out loud also engages our
imagination and understanding in such a way that our ‘reading’ and
interpretation of the text come out in our reading of it.
Another useful speaking exercise is the previously mentioned class report.
This is distinguished from students reading out essays to the class. The trouble
with such occasions is well known. They tend to become overblown. Students
become nervous when they have to perform in front of the class. Occasionally
some interesting work is produced in this way, with a student who reads out a
longish essay. However, as everyone who has ever gone to an academic
conference will know, delivery is not a strong point with most speakers. They
tend to concentrate on a written text, held before them to read aloud. Couple this
with a monotonous vocal tone and everyone is set for a somnolent forty minutes
or so.
At a conference of specialists one can expect a certain amount of common
interest and knowledge. In class this cannot be assumed. Usually the hard-
pressed speaker is the only student who has gone into the material in any depth.
The others are hoping for a free ride. The result is what happens when lecturers
themselves forget their student audiences and imagine a room full of their peers,
to whom they speak with all eloquence. Unfortunately this leaves out
groundlings. The class is lost when the speaker’s words fail to address them,
when the whole exercise is carried out at a level far exceeding the capacity of the
actual audience. In class presentations we are not dealing with professionals
come to deliver learned disquisitions, but with students who, by and large,
simply rehash some of the secondary literature.
The way forward is to take seriously the idea that it is what the students do
with text that is important. The trouble with a major paper is that it is the burden
of a single student. The load must be shared. Think of the class as engaged in a
common project to which students and teachers contribute. The aim is to come to
grips with some set of texts and the issues surrounding them. No one person is on
the spot, but two or three can spread the burden and the work. We want more
shorter contributions from students. The paper is too big. A short report is just
right.
Since the bulk of papers amount to little more than commentary, why not
make this task explicit and ask students for short pieces on selected secondary
readings? Like magic, the onus falls off the student and on to the shoulders of the
author. If, out of that process, the student develops a critical perspective, well
and good. There is plenty of room for these concerns to be expressed at the end of
their reports, but if not, everyone will be at least acquainted with a relevant text
and point of view. This is a definite contribution to the class. By giving reports
the students will learn to address an audience not only with increasing
confidence, but also with a sense of belonging to an investigation which is that
of the class as a whole as well as every member of it.
Self-consciousness and the possibility of embarrassment attend any public
speaking. The practice of giving reports is meant to minimize these distractions.
The student is not on the line. The report is not as personal as an essay or paper.
Yet giving a report aloud does exercise the student’s ability to expel air at
controlled rates of speed, to anticipate succeeding sentences and to shape a
vehicle of cominunication. Ironically, the act of reading out a report, or giving
one, does put across to an audience some thoughts arising from the text. It is thus
already one step down the path that leads to giving papers. It is already a
performance, though not one likely to be judged too harshly. The text is what
everyone is looking at, and this gives the speaker an illusory feeling of
invisibility, enough to practise delivering talks without too much worry.
The practice of reading short reports aloud to an audience makes self-
forgetfulness easier than holding up an original thesis and defending it from
attack. When the thesis is criticized, it has nothing to do with the student who is
delivering the report. This makes it easier for everyone to take that step back and
consider the thesis on its own merits rather than how its success or failure
reflects on the one who reads it out, as of ten happens on occasions of
controversy and judgement. It is no wonder people feel nervous in that context.
The report, on the other hand, is short and informative. It is researched in the
library, adds to class knowledge and discussion, and limits the responsibility of
the reporter.
The point is to get students used to small acts of writing and speaking about
their reading and listening and remembering. The vocal exercises of reading out
a passage or a report reflect an understanding and interpretation of the text or
script. The reading of the text recalls other texts, other issues, other questions.
The same holds true with writing. All these different aspects of thinking feed into
one another, build upon one another, support one another, and augment each
other’s powers. The exercises we have explored represent a fair sample of the
kinds of practice that facilitate a philosophical and literary education conceived
as one which produces people who have the means to think for themselves about
the issues raised by their studies.
The exercises of paraphrase and analogy, of compression and expansion, role-
playing, reading aloud and playing devil’s advocate are not by any means a
complete list. The main thing is that teachers begin to find more ways to
encourage students to become active in the face of the text.
This task is facilitated for us by the efforts of generations of grammarians,
logicians, rhetoricians and sophists who devoted their lives to making fine
distinctions in language use and noting the effects they produce in different
audiences. Though the ancients often went overboard in the construction of
elaborate systems of schemes and tropes, what they lef t behind is a treasure
trove of exercises from which we can construct a rhetorical workshop in the
contemporary classroom.
Chapter 5
Samples and preliminary results
Our revised rhetorical pedagogy for the humanities turns on the efficacy of the
exercises to increase learning in philosophy and literature. We believe, however,
that the results have general implications for higher education. The project
continues to evolve as we write. In this chapter the reader will find complete
exercises from two small groups of students who were enrolled for the literature
and philosophy degree of Middlesex Polytechnic, London, in 1990. The
exercises are expressly designed to suit a first-year course on Plato and Aristotle
and a second-year course on Schopenhauer. In addition, there is an end-of-term
evaluation exercise which asked for comments from first-year students,
anonymously, on the progress of the class and what, if any, benefit the students
felt they received from the new format of classroom exercises.
The particularity of the circumstances at Middlesex Polytechnic—the fact that
the literature and philosophy classes are small and proceed in two-hour increments,
that we work with lectures and seminars, and that our students all pursue the same
course of study—limits the conclusions that can be drawn from them for different
institutions and degree courses. Nevertheless, we believe it is instructive to
describe our practice and display its early results in some detail. The principles
remain the same, though the problems change.
The examples are from the philosophy class, but they could just as easily have
come from classes in literature or history. We have two two-hour classes per
week. One of these is a lecture, the other a seminar. Suppose the lecture concerns
Aristotle’s theory of human happiness. The seminar on this lecture begins with
one half-hour devoted to general discussion of the topic. This is followed by a half-
hour period in which students write their exercises, and for the last hour a few of
the pages are read out slowly to the class and discussed.
The students’ assignment is to write no more than one side of an A4 piece of
paper on the topic or topics of the day. Doing the assignment is a voluntary
action. If a student wishes to sit and look at a blank page for half an hour, so be
it; even that can be a learning experience. Another important point is the anonymity
of the contributions. There are no names on the writings presented here. It is up
to a student to volunteer or not to volunteer the information that it is his or her
work that is up for examination and questioning. As time passes and the class
members get to know and trust each other a bit, anonymity is not as important.
For some students, however, it may remain an incentive to contribute to the class.
So far the exercise is voluntary and anonymous. The coping-stone is non-
assessment. Rhetorical exercises are not graded. The protection of anonymity is
put up against the fear of judgement. No one wants to be thought a fool. Take away
the fear of judgement, or rather personal judgement, and you take away some of
the fetters of thought. Anonymity, and the fact that no one’s degree will suffer,
frees the students and the teacher in their criticism and judgement of exercise
work. To make it more random we shuffle the papers before picking out
individual pieces to read to the class. Some escape, for a while, but there is
always a chance that it will be their page that comes out of the pile; up for
judgement after all, but at one remove. Some students find it unsettling at first,
but they generally settle down after a while. The fact that they suffer in silence
and privacy does make a difference to how much of a risk they are willing to
take in writing their pages.
Because we emphasize speaking as well as writing, the students take it in turn
to read out other students’ pages. This is a good exercise in many ways. It makes
students understand the importance of legible handwriting and structured
expression. But even if everyone in the class had a portable word-processor and
typed out their page of writing, the value in reading it out loud to the class would
be preserved. Not only bad handwriting gets in the way of oral delivery, but also
bad or misleading grammar and syntax. This point is crucial in philosophy,
and valuable to other humanities disciplines. Conceptual clarity has a direct
relation to perspicuous grammar.
Reading another student’s page out loud faces a student with numerous
choices of stress, intonation and inflection. All these, in the delivery itself, imply
an act of interpretation which is at the same time a choice from the pool of
possible readings. It is impossible to read out a passage without providing it with
a reading. If a student can make neither head nor tail of it, a garbled version
emerges, even though all the words may be read in their proper order. You might
try reading the samples in this chapter out loud to yourselves. Difficulties of
interpretation in the reading soon emerge, more for some than for others. It is not
hard to imagine some of the ways class discussion can open out from this point of
application, or the benefits students can derive from it.
One benefit a student receives upon hearing his or her classmates’ pages read
out anonymously is that it makes clear the differences in the quality of the
written pages; from the senseless to the grammatically seamless, from the
difficult to the effortless, from the random to the highly organized, from the
superficial to the deep. In the process, the student gets a chance to develop
incrementally. For example, a page is read out. It is a piece of passable prose.
Another one is read, which is worse, while another is slightly better. By
appreciating the variations in writing, students realize that improvement is not out
of reach; even those near the top have themselves to improve upon. With
SAMPLES AND PRELIMINARY RESULTS 67
application, nearly everyone can progress to a level of adequacy or competence

which far outstrips what can be achieved without training and practice.
Another benefit is that it soon becomes clear that there is not always a one-to-
one correspondence between good writing and good thinking. If you read the
student responses, you will see that some of them are written well but touch a
problem very superficially, while others are poorly written, but have a deeper
grasp of the problem. So writing clearly and well is an aid both to thinking and to
the communication of a thought. The interesting, but badly written, efforts would
benefit from grammatical coherence if not elegance of style. In philosophy at any
rate, thinking style is rarely of primary importance, but at the same time it is
impossible to think about anything coherently without some style or manner of
proceeding.
Let us look a little more closely at the writings of a first-and second-year
philosophy class. The order is purely random. It is helpful to refer to the exercise
when reading them. The pages are transcribed with a minimum of change,
keeping the lack of punctuation, etc. However, we have left out the passages
which are crossed out on many of the pages. Occasionally the transcription from
the handwriting is so tenuous that we have tried to make some sense where none
was directly to be found. The first set have a commentary to indicate lines of
questioning. The rest speak for themselves.
The two exercises given here are not meant to be original or out of the
ordinary in any way. They simply ask the students to comment upon and
consider some questions from Aristotle and Schopenhauer. At the end of the
chapter we will give some more examples of the types of exercise one can set in
relation to teaching ancient philosophy. It is for literature or history or cultural
studies teachers to devise for themselves the exercises most suited to the needs
of their students and their subjects.
EXERCISE I, YEAR I:
ARISTOTLE ON PLEASURE
Consider and comment on either or both of the following two quotes from
Aristotle’s Ethics (1976:81). The questions at the end are suggestions.
the argument of some thinkers that there must be something better than
pleasure, because the end is better than the process (genesis, coming-into-
being) is not conclusive; because pleasures are not processes, nor do they all
involve a process; they are a species of activity (energeia), and therefore an
end (telos). They result not from the development of our powers, but from
the use that we make of them. Nor have they all some end other than
themselves; this is so only in the case of those that are involved in our
advance to the completion (perfection) of our nature. It is therefore
incorrect to call pleasure a perceptible process; we ought rather to say ‘an
activity of our nature state’, and ‘unimpeded’ instead of ‘perceptible’.
(p. 252: Book VII 1153a 9–15)
Each of the senses is active relatively to its object, and its activity is
perfect when it is in a good condition and is directed towards the highest
object that falls within its range of sen sation…therefore the activity of any
sense is at its best when the organ is in the best condition and directed
towards the best of the objects proper to that sense. This activity will be
most perfect and most pleasurable; for there is a pleasure corresponding to
each of the senses, just as there is to thought and contemplation; and it is most
pleasurable when it is most perfect, and most perfect when the organ is in a
healthy condition and directed towards the worthiest of its objects; and the
pleasure perfects the activity…as a sort of supervening perfection, like the
bloom that graces the flower of youth.
(p. 320: Book X 1147b–1175b)
Do these passages flatly contradict each other or is there a way to see them as
compatible? Is there an alternative to this either/or?
Both passages agree that pleasure is not a process (a coming-into-being); are
they both perhaps wrong?
What does it mean, in the first passage, where Aristotle says that not all pleasures
have ‘some end other than themselves’, but only ‘those that are involved in our
advance to the completion (perfection) of our nature’?
Aristotle compares the mind to a physical organ of sensation in the second
passage. There is, he argues, a pleasure corresponding to ‘thought and
contemplation’. How far will this analogy hold?
Student 1. Not all pleasures ‘have some end other than
themselves’…‘only’…‘those that are involved in our advance to the completion
(perfection) of our nature’. What does this mean?
I found, at first, the above quote extremely difficult to grasp and to a certain
extent unreadable. This, I feel I have to say, was due to the disruptive influence
of my fellow students around the classroom.
‘Not all pleasures’ can be loosely translated as ‘some pleasures’ and so the
first section can be interpreted as ‘some pleasures have some ends other than
themselves’. Which means certain pleasures are means towards something else
which involves the activity of that pleasure. A ‘pleasure in itself’ is therefore
something which is an end which pertains to the perfect nature of that person
exercizing the pleasure which is an activity. An activity of this kind is not a
process but an actualization of perfection.
The rules, then, for this pleasure or what this pleasure involves is of
paramount importance and if this pleasure runs in accordance with the ‘doctrine
of the mean’ then it is a ‘good pleasure’, if it does not then it is what I understand
to be Aristotle’s bad pleasures and therefore a mean for something else.
Comment: Students usually stick to the topic, but sometimes one will make a
more personal comment, as in the first paragraph above. As for the rest, it was
pointed out that the correct inference from ‘not all’ to ‘some’ is lost in the
confusions that follow. It occasioned a discussion about what Aristotle means by
activity as opposed to process.
Student 2. Both passages state that pleasure is not a process. Pleasure is not a
development of our powers but comes from the use we make of them. A process
would involve a separate end but pleasure itself is the end. ‘Pleasure perfects the
activity.’ The healthy eye looking at the perfect object has reached its limit of
perfection; it is pleasure that makes this activity perfect.
If our aim is perfection and all our activities are geared towards the completion
or perfection of our nature and if, as Aristotle states it is pleasure that perfects
our activities then pleasure itself must be the end we seek, pleasure of the mind
is our ultimate goal. And if pleasure is the ultimate end then it can never be a
process towards a end.
Comment: This one is clearly enough written. The discussion tends to centre
on the philosophical question of whether pleasure of the mind is identical with
happiness without making it explicit.
Student 3. I think that there is both a pleasurable process and an end. However
sometimes pleasure can be ephemeral. If you drink or eat too much, your
pleasure can result in your not feeling too well. There is a process in pleasure
because sometimes people undertake Herculean tasks in order to satisfy their
personal desires. They may during this process endure much hardship, yet the
result of their efforts may be pleasurable. It’s like getting up at 9:30 in the
morning, is not funny, yet if it means that you get a degree it would have been
worth it, I think. So there is both a process and an end, and only taste or
circumstance can help interpret which is best—sometimes the process,
sometimes the result.
Comment: This one takes a more personal line. The first-person singular
makes its appearance twice. It is not clear, however, that the argument leaves
Aristotle without comeback. There is nothing in the processes mentioned that is
pleasurable per se.
Student 4. The two quotes become compatible if we accept that the pleasure of
our rational soul and our irrational soul can be considered as separate.
The first passage concentrated on the pleasure of the rational mind when it has
reached a state of unimpeded actualization. Pleasure for the mind is not a process
but a state of being; the faculty and the thought have become one and the same.
The second passage however discusses the pleasures of the irrational element
of the soul, namely the ‘appetites’. The pleasures of the appetites are impeded by
the temporality of being man; a mortal as opposed to being divine. In the same way
that the senses derive the most pleasure when they are most perfect the appetites
derive the most pleasure when they are least impeded. Pleasure for the appetites
is limited in the same way that we as humans are limited. When we die the limits
on our pleasure, that is, the highest pleasure—or rational thought— becomes
unlimited. We are no longer the divine because we have become divine.
Comment: Quite a bold one, this. It is one of the better ones in our opinion
because it argues a thesis and comes to a conclusion which is by no means self-
evident. There can be an argument with the position of Student 4, because
Student 4 has a position to maintain, even if it turns out to be finally untenable.
Student 5. Aristotle differentiates between pleasure as an ‘activity’ and as a
‘process’. As an activity, pleasure would also be the ‘end’. As a process, pleasure
is the ‘coming into being’. But surely pleasure can be both a process and an end
in itself.
Pleasure can be an end in itself as well as having an end other than itself.
Completion and conclusion of action or activity is not necessary for pleasure in
every case.
Aristotle argues that pleasure comes not from the development of our powers,
but the use of them, but cannot activity embrace both of these? Pleasure does not
have to have a definite aim or end.
Comment: This one is more confusing. The writing obstructs understanding.
There are mistakes as well. To say that Aristotle ‘differentiates between pleasure
as an “activity” and as a “process”’ implies that a pleasure can be a process,
which Aristotle explicitly denies in both formulations. Not as competent as the
preceding one.
Student 6. ‘Both passages agree that pleasure is not a process.’ They seem to
be right because the specific quality of pleasure is complete at any given
moment. It is a sort of whole. A process cannot be said to be complete until it is
actually finished e.g. the process of building; when each section of a house is
made the process of building it is complete, at the end. Pleasure is not a final
result but a way of embarking upon an action. Like persistence, when something
is done with persistence the end reached is not persistence, but rather an action
that has been undertaken persistently.
Aristotle uses the analogy of a pleasure corresponding to ‘thought and
contemplation’. He says that most pleasure is reached by, for example, an eye
when it is in the best of health, and directed to the best of its objects. The analogy
holds well because, while Aristotle didn’t agree with Plato on the good-in-itself,
he pursued the necessity of realizing self-thinking thought, the un-moved mover.
To him, this idea of pure form is the best in the realm of the mind.
Comment: Here the first paragraph brings out the contrast between an activity
and a process better than anyone else so far. The notion of pleasure as ‘a way of
embarking upon an action’ may not be the most felicitous phrase, but it does
capture something of Aristotle’s account of pleasure. The simile of persistence is
not clear enough. This is another working page: something is argued, though not
always with perfect clarity.
Student 7. In the first passage Aristotle says that pleasure is not a process but
an end in itself. When he says pleasures result from the use we make of our
powers, not from the state of development of our powers it is his way of saying
pleasure is a supervenient by-product of our development but not the
development-in-itself. So, exercising any of our 3 soul-parts (nutritive, sedentary
or rational) will result in pleasure which is the supervenient by-product of that

activity. In this sense actualization is only possible if virtue and training are
brought to bear because otherwise a man will pursue the pleasures of the senses
alone and only his nous patheticon will develop. So, pleasure is synonymous
with activity but not development. Virtue will guide potential into actualization
to assume development+the best pleasures will be the supervenient by-product.
Comment: The mistake about grades of soul in Aristotle near the middle of the
page made for a perfect opportunity to correct it, both for the perpetrator and for
the class as a whole. This one struggles a bit, seeming to catch and miss points at
the same time. The good thing about it is that it is struggling, rather then resting
content with a writing technique which avoids the problems.
It is clear from these and the next set of examples that the performance of the
students is variable. Strengths and weaknesses of different kinds bless and afflict
their pages. The worst case is one that displays sheer incomprehension, since in
that case there is no place to start the process of enlightenment. Fortunately, this
does not happen very often, and did not quite happen in the preceding examples.
A couple of them were close, but none of the students is beyond improvement.
EXERCISE II:
SCHOPENHAUER AND HIS CONCEPTION OF
PHILOSOPHY
Comment on one or more of these quotes from The World as Will and
Representation (Schopenhauer 1969) bringing in your own understanding of
philosophy as you reflect upon it now.
The animal learns to know death only when he dies, but man consciously
draws every hour nearer his death; and at times this makes life a precarious
business, even to the man who has not already recognised this character of
constant annihilation in the whole of life itself. Mainly on this account,
man has philosophies and religions…there are on this path…the strangest…
opinions of the philosophers of different schools, and the most
extraordinary, and sometimes even cruel, customs of the priests of
different religions.
(p. 37)
this nineteenth century is a philosophical one; though by this we do not

mean that it possesses philosophy or that philosophy prevails in it, but
rather that it is ripe for philosophy and is therefore absolutely in need of it.
This is a sign of a high degree of refinement, indeed a fixed point on the
scale of the culture of the times.
(p. 47)
every science…leaves things as they are…. This is the real point where
philosophy again takes up things and considers them in accordance with its
method, which is entirely different from the method of science….
Philosophy has the peculiarity of presupposing absolutely nothing as
known; everything to it is equally strange and a problem; not only the
relations of phenomena, but also those phenomena themselves…
(p. 81)
we, who are…aiming…at philosophy…at unconditioned knowledge of the

world…start from what is immediately and most completely known and
absolutely familiar to us…in order to understand what is known to us only
from a distance, one-sidedly, and indirectly.
(p. 125)
philosophy…considers the universal alone.

(p. 141)
…according to my view, philosophy is nothing but a complete and

accurate repetition and expression of the inner nature of the world in very
general concepts, for only in these is it possible to obtain a view of that
entire inner nature which is everywhere adequate and applicable.
(p. 264)
Philosophy can never do more than interpret and explain what is present at
hand; it can never do more than bring to the distinct, abstract knowledge of
the faculty of reason the inner nature of the world which expresses itself
intelligibly to everyone in the concrete, that is, as feeling.
(p. 271).
In my opinion, all philosophy is always theoretical, since it is essential to it

always to maintain a purely contemplative attitude…to inquire not to
prescribe. But to become practical, to guide conduct, to transform
character, are old claims which with mature insight it ought finally to
abandon.
(P. 271)
The genuine method of considering the world philosophically …is

precisely the method that does not ask about the whence, whither, and why
of the world, but always and everywhere about the what alone.
(p. 274)
The following exercise papers appear without comments. Readers are invited to
make their own.
Student 1. How can an animal only know death when he dies? If, when he dies,
the conscious awareness of the world and self is annihilated, then he can never
know death. In fact death would be as meaningless as his existence because he
could never have any awareness of himself in death. Indeed it would be doubly
meaningless because the animal is supposed to have no sense of self while in
life.
Schopenhauer suggests that because a man consciously draws closer to his death
every hour, that life is made a precarious business. However, it is not the
individual’s life itself that becomes precarious. It is only precarious in the
individual’s judgement of his life as precarious. It is a sentiment, an opinion and
tells about Schopenhauer’s attitude [to] the world rather than an objective
philosophical enquiry. Schopenhauer seems to invade every aspect of his
philosophy; he cannot separate his sentiments from his observation of the world.
Thus his philosophy seems more akin to the depiction of an artistic vision: he is
not philosophically investigating the world, he takes the world through his own
sentiment and then seeks to rationalize it into his ‘philosophy’.
Schopenhauer suggests philosophies and religions are brought about by a
refusal by man to accept the character of constant annihilation of life itself:
because life is the ‘precarious business’, man needs philosophies and religions as
crutches against the pain of existence. Yet Schopenhauer’s philosophy has as
much of a creed as the philosophies and religions he talks about—I am expected
to have faith in his picture of life as being characterized by suffering, yet that
seems on as shaky ground as the best of all possible worlds philosophies.
Student 2. Philosophy presupposes that nothing is known, whereas science
only supposes that something is known, when it can be demonstrated
inductively. This presupposition on the part of philosophy is philosophy. Science
is about things in the phenomenal (as Kant defines it) world. Philosophy has
greater licence than science, licence which allows it to try and solve problems at
the expense of method. (As philosophy investigates being, and as being is
changeable, abstract and peculiar, so is the research which hopes to know it. If the
will could be seen, constructed, deconstructed, joined to other substances etc.
then philosophy would be scientific.)
However, with method philosophy rarely solves anything, and without method
its endeavours are just as fruitless. Instead, philosophy presents us with a series of
speculative notions. Perhaps Schopenhauer is so ‘anti-striving’, because he has
been part of the striving of philosophy. Perhaps he is slightly solipsistic in
believing that because his striving has been in vain that everybody else’s will be.
Were he a chemist, striving to produce a medicine to save the suffering of
thousands, Schopenhauer might not have been so cynical about his endeavours.
Student 3. Schopenhauer’s conception of the nineteenth century as being an
essentially philosophical period in history is based on the realization that the
myth of Heaven on Earth as being a possibility is a fallacy propagated by
religious dogmatism and Hegelian optimism. It is a manifestation of the human
need for purpose in and meaning to existence. This is a need that can never be
completely satisfied in this life. Schopenhauer paints a picture of life being

fundamentally absurd and without purpose. Yet it is still driven by the unstoppable
engine of the will which is the fundamental essence of life itself. The nineteenth
century is a point in history in which the striving of human beings for ultimate
and complete knowledge had reached its peak. The only essential metaphysical
knowledge reached has been the recognition of the human desire for meaning
and purpose. This desire is the fundamental drive of philosophy which as
Schopenhauer says ‘considers the universal alone’.
Student 4. Only through the sad fact that man knows that he is going to die
does he presume that life has a meaning. It is this search for this meaning that
has bred philosophy and religion. The attempt to offer a meaning in life or,
failing that, postulate that the meaning of life is given by something that we
cannot know—a sort of life—after death. Schopenhauer sees this as
cruel because it encourages the striving that is the antithesis to his own of
acceptance and resignation.
Schopenhauer’s idea that ‘a need for philosophy is a sign of a high degree of
refinement’ seems to be fallacious. If an author has a need for philosophy is it
not simply a continuation of the process of a search for meaning? If we look at it
from the point of view that suggests that in looking for a meaning as or
performing a higher function than mere acquaintance. Does this not suggest a
paradox with Schopenhauer’s ideas of acceptance etc? Looking for a meaning is
a striving of the will which we would be better off without.
Student 5. From the passages 37, 125, 271, we can see that Schopenhauer has
a distinct opinion on the use of philosophy. He claims that philosophy is to aim
at ‘unconditioned knowledge of the world’. This implies a kind of universality of
knowledge unrestricted by culture, character, morality and religion.
In passage 37 Schopenhauer presents a reason for philosophy and religion
seeming to stem from fear. As rational beings we are conscious of our own
mortality which Schopenhauer claims makes ‘life a precarious business’.
Therefore man devises philosophies and religions in an attempt to explain life
and the certainty of death. Is all this futile? What Schopenhauer appears to
dislike is the use of cruelty in religion i.e. Catholic promises of hell and
damnation for unforgiven sins. In passage 271 he condemns the use of
philosophy for practical guides to conduct, he sees these as old misguided ideas
which should be abandoned.
So what is philosophy for Schopenhauer? A contemplative process through
which one can have theoretical knowledge. I feel that Schopenhauer is
attempting to break away from teaching us the ‘correct’ way to live and is
essentially avoiding dogmatism. This idealist approach for aiming for
unconditioned knowledge is appealing. I feel that in studying philosophy one can
broaden our knowledge of the world without having that knowledge restricted by
moral laws and religious/ethical obligations.
Student 6. Schopenhauer’s conception of philosophy (and mine) Philosophy
occurs because of man’s awareness of death. Death renders all our subjective
pains and achievements futile. It is the Abyss upon which we walk a tightrope in
everything we think, say or do. Philosophy and Religion and Art are the
manifestations of our will for knowledge and our desperate need to understand
our own condition. A philosophical awareness of life and its necessary
conclusion of death is a sign of cultural refinement. Philosophy seeks truth. Truth
and love of truth draws us into philosophy. By confronting what is most
inexplicable and haunting in our phenomenal experience (ultimate conclusion of
Death) our understanding and pursuit of life must afterwards be enhanced. For
Schopenhauer philosophy remains theoretical and inquisitive and he states that
its practical pursuit should be abandoned. This is where my view of philosophy
divorces from Schopenhauer’s. In recognizing the futility of death Schopenhauer
equates this with the futility of life but I refuse to see life as anything other than
an immense precious gift with as much (if not more) potential for pleasure as
well as pain. Anything can only be in opposition and contrast to something else.
Practical concerns are utterly important and philosophy renders itself impotent
by remaining theoretical. Philosophy should ask why?—if it remains in the arena
of what? it can never give practical enlightenment. Schopenhauer’s pessimistic,
realistic, resignation is attractive but because it does not affirm life in contrast to
death it swallows hope and meaning in its own foul breath.
love from a
naive
idealist
But maybe he was being ironic!
Student 7. As Wittgenstein was later to say philosophy (itself) leaves
everything as it is. This view is prefigured in Schopenhauer but for him
philosophy appears, is symptomatic of something else. In saying of his own time
that it was ripe for philosophy and ‘a sign of a high degree of refinement’ he
seems to be suggesting that philosophy is a characteristic of impending death.
In that it universalizes it is in that sense a relief from particular striving and at
the same time a stage nearer the end, a move in itself towards annihilation. Its
application to practical problems is something that ought to be abandoned, since
that makes it no more than an extension of will.
Student 8. Man is the only creature that has knowledge of death before it actually
happens—animals are blessed with ignorance about the annihilation of life itself.
Because of this knowledge of death, man is the only creature with philosophies
and religion; perhaps to try and gain answers to the meaning of life so that they
can create an illusion of optimism for themselves. Schopenhauer believed that
we should shed these illusions and face up to how the world really is.
Schopenhauer believed that ‘philosophy…considers the universal alone’. This
is because he believed that there is one will which mirrors the world of
representation. Our wills are simply particularized parts of the one. Even reason,
is simply the highest form of the manifestation of this one universal will. Our
characters actions are also manifestations of this universal will.
Student 9. Schopenhauer is making an historical point here the key phrase is
‘it is ripe for philosophy and is therefore absolutely in need of it’. The
industrialization of the western world, which had taken a grip upon Germany in
particular, forced men to have a different attitude to philosophical questions this
led, inevitably, to the nihilism which is present in the writings of Schopenhauer.
From a social perspective the movement into urban environments of the mass of
the German peasantry must have contributed to Schopenhauer’s bleak pessimism.
He does paint a gruesome picture of life in the factories and any reader of the
twentieth century can see the development of nineteenth century philosophies as
being directly related to social and economic change leading to both Marx and
Nietzsche.
At the time when he was writing it obviously appeared to Schopenhauer that
the time in which he was living afforded far greater scope for philosophy than
ever before, for the first time it was acceptable to produce secular works without
persecution and, since Kant, the synthesis of rational and empirical philosophies
enabled the new thinkers to approach the fundamental questions of their society
from a solid basis in transcendental idealism.
It is fairly obvious that thinkers in the nineteenth century being faced with a
world in complete turmoil regarded themselves as critical ingredients for the
formation of a new consciousness, but Schopenhauer wrote his work at the
beginning of this massive change in social and economic situations and his
outlook is extremely bleak yet, faced with a much changed society now his ideas
of pain as the central essence can still be applied.
STUDENT EVALUATION 1
The regime of weekly exercises that you have been doing is designed to help you
assimilate philosophical texts and incorporate philosophical concepts into your
thinking. How well is it working? Partly, the new format is the result of a priori
ideas, but it must still be validated by experience, your experience. As usual, your
one page will be unsigned, but just to give you that added measure of distance
from the prejudices of the teacher, we will not read them in class. In fact, they
will be put into a sealed envelope and delivered by one of you directly to the
course leader, who will transcribe them into even more anonymous print. There
is no way we will ever know who said what. So feel free to say what you think.
You have all had long enough to have some thoughts on the subject.
The task today is to evaluate your experience of the philosophical exercises
you have been doing this term. It may be of help to think of answering the following
questions, but they are only guides.
Sample questions
How effective have the exercises been in helping you to come to terms
with philosophical texts? Have they improved your writing or critical
thinking skills?
Is our practice of reading out exercises a good way to use seminar
time? Can you think of a way to make improvements?
Can you think of any exercise that would be a useful addition to the
stock or any that are tailor-made for philosophy?
What do you understand to be the underlying reasons or purposes for
the use of the exercises in a philosophy course?
Any other comments?
Student 1. To be asked to write about something each student doesn’t know until
he gets his paper from the teacher and in a limited given time, seems to me to
develop readiness of critical thinking skills. The student doesn’t write when he
feels like but when it is being required and that improves the student’s response
to stimulus in any circumstances.
At some time is not rush forwards repeated conclusion because through the
prose the reasoning is unfolded in ideas which a student might have not thought
to have.
In fact to have a blank paper to fill is like a mirror in which our thoughts will
be reflected more easily than they are altogether in the students mind.
Student 2. The exercises are half an hour in duration, in which time we have to
rationalize an aspect or moral of thought. This obviously requires our
involvement to achieve the result of a complete page of prose reasoned and
grammatically correct, must induce the students to think. Thought should be the
common denominator of all seminars so the more excellent the thought the more
useful the seminar. The exercises by nature must focus the student as ambiguity
etc.
More is required of the student if he or she has to write, more thought more
concentration, more focus, more accuracy. More is better than less!
I think we should read our own text out so that we may answer the questions
relevant to it, and thus justify our position, or not. This would help to discover
the merits of our arguments and the truth.
Student 3. Its a bit hard to say how beneficial this system of teaching has been
as I lack any real frame of reference regarding ‘old type’ or ‘normal’ seminars
apart from my weekly English seminar (which is very ‘old Type’).
I think that there are probably several +’s and −’s in this system. The weekly
writing exercise is very useful because it drops me in a jungle of whatever
philosopher we’re studying and I have to find my bearings from that position. This
system has sometimes occasioned a kind of creative leap where several disparate
strands have become inspired into a new picture.
But.
You could argue that these exercises could be done at home as an aspect of
our (the student) commitment and responsibility to ourselves and the course and
that seminar time would be better used in instruction. What I am saying is that
the advantages of writing I listed above could be accrued from any writing,
anywhere so why do them in precious seminar time.
However, being put ‘on the spot’ with regard to having the piece read out is
nerve wracking enough (in spite of the anonymity) that it drives me and
stimulates my competitiveness. I love it when I’ve written well and the class
responds positively.
Another disadvantage is that I sometimes wonder what its all about and if this
degree course I’ve sacrificed my career for isn’t just another 1960’s hand down,
me-generation work shop type hippy indulgence i.e. I am saying I don’t have any
clear sense of the rational behind it.
To summarize.
The exercise stretches me. But is it worth the seminar time when it could be
done elsewhere? Why isn’t the system explained more clearly? The informality
of such an approach does encourage risk taking in teacher/student relations and
that seems good.
Student 4. The exercises have been helpful to me in understanding philosophy
to a certain extent although I do have some criticisms. Firstly, I object to the way
the exercises have been read out; continually stopping to comment on spelling
mistakes or punctuation. Although these comments can be useful it disrupts the
flow of each exercise and it is impossible to remember and understand what the
person has written and so there can be no discussion on the particular subject.
Also the pretence that the exercise is anonymous is annoying as if the exercise
isn’t done by someone, they are pressured, and we all know who does each exercise
by the writing and the style.
One of the best exercises we have had was when we each had to argue for an
opinion in which we didn’t believe. That encouraged people to lash at and
understand the other point of view and in some cases people found that they did
agree after all. The exercises have encouraged people to voice their opinions
whereas before they may have kept them to themselves.
Student 5. For myself, I find the weekly exercises to be a really enjoyable way
of sorting out all the information thrust on you in the philosophy lectures. There
seems to be much more energy in this form of seminar, as the discussions which
arise tend to have much more of a focus than that of an ordinary seminar.
Writing your argument in a set time period means that you are forced to
concentrate fully on the topic at hand. Through doing it you can learn to quickly
clarify your argument and write it down as economically as possible, i.e. there is
no time or space for waffle; and because it is read aloud there is much more
thought put into the way you write. If the seminars were purely oral, there
wouldn’t be as much significance placed on style, all would be dominated by the
actual content.
Also, this style of seminar seems to be well structured, so that you always come
away feeling that you have achieved something. It gives everybody a chance to
have their views put forward, for those who would normally sit and say nothing
do not find such shyness when writing. Writing anonymously means that those
who find it difficult to speak out in an ordinary seminar have a greater chance of
participating.
Student 6. Some thoughts on the new pedagogy
I cannot think of anything negative to write about the principle of this method
of teaching.
It is a useful and positive exercise to perform coming as it does immediately
after the lecture. It helps to clarify and ‘nail down’ ideas with which we have
been present in the two hours previously.
My response, however is not unqualified! Although it has improved my ability
to think critically about very specific aspects of a philosophy, I find it difficult to
relate this criticism to a philosophy as an interactive system of components. This
is perhaps a more a sign of my confidence in my own critical abilities than a
fault in your method. It is worth noting, however, other possible reasons for this
and the ways if any they might be brought to bear on the structure of the
exercises.
We are often given a choice of quotes or paragraphs on which to comment. The
result of this is that the reading out and subsequent discussion is often hurried
and very diverse. So, rather than grasping one or two ideas or important issues, I
find that I have a less certain idea of an approach to a text. It is interesting to note
that the occasions when we were given a choice of only two quotes almost all the
students chose to comment on the same one. This, though giving the seminar
more specific topic of discussion, would suggest that the more difficult pieces of
text would have merited attention. Is a compromise possible? Perhaps the answer
is to have only one largish quote that accompanies central themes of any
particular philosopher.
To rewrite a portion of a text was for me, not as useful as other exercises we
have performed. It is unfortunately easy to paraphrase without comprehension.
It may be useful to be given an isolated piece of text and ask how we can link
it to what we know of a philosophy. This may encourage us to interpret
something we don’t know with something we do know. This may also raise
critical questions as to how and if a philosopher is able to reconcile one portion of
his systems to another, thereby giving a deeper critical perspective.
To end on a positive note, I feel that it has involved me in the understanding
of the text to an extent that I would not otherwise have reached. Any form of
teaching that puts demand on the student has to be preferable to dogmatic
lecturing as the sole approach.
The exercises undertaken throughout the first term, have definitely led to a
greater understanding of the philosophical texts. As well as improving written
skills, the exercises help to organize patterns of thought that may have been
previously confused. In merely speaking, thoughts can lose their objectivity and
become long-winded and effusive. However concise, written work does I feel
help the students to systematically organize these previously confused thoughts
into straightforward sentences.
Short samples of written work do tend to open the mind further than typical
seminar conversation, often discussion can breed stubbornness and an inability to
listen with an open mind. However written exercises can break down these
barriers and result in greater realization and understanding of the texts; for
instance on one occasion recently the lecturer asked me to write in support of
Aristotle’s ideas as I was stubbornly in conflict with them.
However, at the end of the exercise I had completely changed my mind, and my
perception of his work. The reading of exercises in class results in a loss of our
inhibitions.
In effect ‘the new Pedagogy’ gives every student a greater scope for
understanding than typical seminar discussion, and overcomes the problems of
shyness and reluctance in students. The reading of each piece of work means the
ideals of everyone are related without damage to their anonymity.
Student 7. To begin with I felt that the exercises were unfulfilling in that the
subjects or students were asked to comment on a piece of philosophical text in
half an hour which, at the time, I felt was far too short a period.
Secondly I felt that the virtually constant chatter of my fellow students was
extremely destructive and very annoying. Incidentally, this chatter is happening
right at this very moment. The topic of their conversation concerns this very
exercise and I feel a little perturbed by this.
At the moment I cannot think of anything else to say as my concentration
level is easily tipped over and what I mentioned above has totally dominated my
mind.
It is now a quarter of an hour into the exercise and I will now try and synchronize
myself into a different mode of thinking.
Now, to talk of the exercise itself and the end result: Personally I am not very
talkative in the seminar itself but do get a little satisfaction out of what is being
said. The greatest fulfilment I get is when my own short essay is read out and
even though the contest has been somewhat hindered by the aforementioned
chatter I feel I can see where my errors lie.
So, the disadvantage of these exercises is that the conscientious student is not
getting very far in cultivating his potential due to disruptions. The advantage is
that if your own particular essay is written out you feel you are improving due to
the expert comments made by the lecturer.
Finally, following on from what I said I get the sense that students switch off
occasionally when someone reads out other people’s essays. I admit that I am
guilty of such things but that is a fault I know I need to rectify.
Student 8. I consider the practice of reading out exercises a good way to use
seminar time because it encourages discussion often on seemingly small points.
By hearing several views on one topic we are given different angles which may
not have occurred to us. The exercise points out the importance of accuracy and
being able to back up a point which can easily be seen as invalid or misled given
the context.
It can still be seen that several members of the group invariably remain silent
for whatever reason. While nobody should be pushed to talk, some other method
could be employed to help them break the ice. E.g. they could be asked the odd
specific question or be asked to expand on a point somebody else has made.
From essays and seminar exercises, it is clear that everyone in the group has
something to say whether they would admit it or not.
Jeff picks up on minor points of grammar which, while being a bone of
contention for some students, is good, even though at this point our grammar
shouldn’t need correction.
I would say that the exercises are beginning to improve my critical thinking
skills. After about 7 years away from education I feel happy even in the
knowledge that a beginning and a small start in the opening of my mind is being
made.
SAMPLE EXERCISES
The following seven exercises were taken from a Greek philosophy course which
centred on Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nichomachaean Ethics. The first six
focus on Plato and the last on Aristotle. They make no claims to great originality
or innovation but indicate the range of possibilities available to this method of
teaching. In the invention of exercises in thinking, the only limit seems to be that
of ingenuity itself.
Exercise I
The setting of the following quotation is this: Socrates has just finished
demolishing the definition of justice put forward by Polemarchus that ‘justice is
to help your friends and harm your enemies’ (334b8) by getting him to agree that
it is never right to harm anyone. Now Thrashymachus, the professional teacher
(sophist) and speaker (orator), takes up the challenge and defines justice as the
interest of the stronger. Here he identifies the stronger with the governing party.
Your task is to rewrite the following paragraph in your own words.
Thrashymachus: Each type of government enacts laws that are in its own
interest, a democracy democratic laws, a tyranny tyrannical ones and so
on; and in enacting these laws they make it quite plain that what is ‘right’
for their subjects is what is in the interest of themselves, the rulers, and if
anyone deviates from this he is punished as a lawbreaker and ‘wrongdoer’.
That is what I mean when I say that ‘right’ is the same thing in all states,
namely the interest of the established government; and government is the
strongest element in each state, and so if we argue correctly we see that
‘right’ is always the same, the interest of the stronger party.
(Republic, 338e–339a)
Exercise II
It is generally agreed that Socrates and Thrashymachus do not see eye to eye and
that their discussion of justice ends in an impasse if not a stalemate. Your task is
to write two paragraphs, one describing how Thrashymachus looks to Socrates
and the other how Socrates looks to Thrashymachus.
Exercise III
‘Do we learn with one part of us, feel angry with another, and desire the pleasures
of eating and sex and the like with another?’ (437a)
This question comes up at the beginning of the section on the three parts of the
soul: nous, thumos, and epithumiae. In the larger context an analogy is made
between the three parts of the soul and the three classes of society: guardians
(philosopher kings), auxiliaries (soldiers), and workers. The excellences proper
to these classes also extend those of individuals: wisdom for the guardians,
courage for the soldiers, and self-discipline for the workers. The wise are driven
by truth, the soldiers by honour, and the workers by pleasure. In the individual
and in the state, justice is finally agreement about the ruling principle. Justice is a
harmony of all the parts of soul or state.
Expand upon this question or the topics surrounding it. Two suggestions:
Answer the question: Yes, different parts of ourselves do desire these different
things; or No, they do not. This is why… Give some reasons.
Reformulate the question so as to bring out what is involved in learning, in
feeling angry, and in physical appetite.
Exercise IV
Write about one of the following criticisms of Plato’s moral philosophy. Write
how strong you think the criticism is and whether you think Plato can defend his
position. The first three quotations are from Irwin (1977) and the fourth from
Crossman (1971).
Plato might be taken to say that morality is what promotes the agent’s
happiness; and this seems to be an absurd account of morality. We are
inclined to say that moral principles apply to everyone, and it is morally
intolerable to prescribe that everyone is to promote my happiness. Plato
seems to be no less wrong if he means that each man ought, from the
moral point of view, to pursue his own interest; for the moral point of view
is concerned with anyone’s happiness, and Plato has not shown that the
interests of individuals following his advice will be coordinated in a
morally satisfactory way.
(p. 251)
[Socrates holds that only what contributes to a person’s happiness has a

rationally justifiable claim on the individual. Another kind of moralist, the
deontologist, accepts a different principle.] If morality is rationally
justifiable, an agent has sufficient reason to accept it, apart from any
concern with his own happiness. [p. 250]…moral principles are not
restricted in their content or application by any external end; principles of
justice…are valid whether or not they promote some nonmoral end apart
from them, and are not reducible to technical principles for achieving some
external good.
(p. 259)
If we count on a virtuous man to respect other people’s rights and promote

their interests, whether or not he will achieve the good he pursues, we will
not be satisfied with Plato’s view of moral obligation. [His view does not
allow a proper concern for human rights.]
(p. 278)
At the end of his life Plato knew he had failed…. His researches in logic, in
astronomy, and in mathematics could satisfy his thirst for knowledge and
ensure him lasting fame: they could not console him for his failure to solve
the problem which Socrates had set. For it was precisely the application…
of philosophy to everyday life, which Socrates had demanded and for
which he had died…. The spirit of disinterested criticism and scientific
inquiry seemed to have contributed nothing to the elimination of social
evils. It had diagnosed the disease, but the cure which it applied had been
completely ineffective.
(p. 165)
Exercise V
‘At present,’ I said, ‘those who do take up philosophy are quite young, and
study it in the interval before they go on to set up house and earn their
living; they start on the most difficult part (I mean abstract argument), give
it up when they’ve barely touched it, and are then considered complete
philosophers. Later in life, if they accept an invitation to listen to a
philosophic discussion by others, they think it quite an event, the sort of
thing one does in one’s spare time, and by the time they are old any spark
they have in them is extinguished more finally than Heraclitus’ sun, new
every day. It will never be relit’
‘And what’s the right way to approach it?’
(Republic, 498a)
Your task is to become active in the face of this text. There are a number of ways
this can be done. Pick one or make up your own.
You can question the text; e.g. ‘What’s wrong with the approach to the study of
philosophy described in the first paragraph?’
You can answer the question at the end.
You can comment on any part of it. For example, the line ‘they start on the
most difficult part (I mean abstract argument)’, and then barely touch it. Does
this mean that abstract argument is not the best place from which to begin the
study of philosophy? Where else might one begin?
Exercise VI
Iris Murdoch in The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists (1977)
takes Plato’s side in his condemnation of art. Analyse and evaluate one or more
of the following critical paragraphs from Murdoch’s book.
Plato gives to beauty a crucial role in his philosophy [but] he practically

defines it so as to exclude art.
(p.2)
Art and the artist are condemned by Plato to exhibit the lowest and most
irrational kind of awareness, eikasia, a state of vague image-ridden
illusion…[compare the Cave analogy]
(p.5)
The poets mislead us by portraying the gods as undignified and immoral [or
laughing]…. Music and theatre should encourage stoical calmness, not
boisterous uncontrolled emotion. We are infected by playing or enjoying a
bad role. Art can do cumulative psychological harm in this way.
(P. 5)
art is always bad for us in so far as it is mimetic or imitative.

(p.5)
Art naively or wilfully accepts appearances instead of questioning them…

[e.g.] a writer who portrays a doctor does not possess a doctor’s skill but
simply ‘imitates doctor’s talk’.
(p.6)
it is easier to copy a bad man than a good man, because the bad man is
various and entertaining and extreme, while the good man is quiet and
always the same.
(p.6)
Artists are interested in what is bad and complex, not in what is simple and
good. They induce the better part of the soul to ‘relax its guard’…images
of wickedness and excess may lead even good people to indulge secretly
through art feelings which they would be ashamed to entertain in real life….
Art both expresses and gratifies the lowest part of the soul, and feeds and
enlivens base emotions which ought to be left to wither.
(p.6)
Only ‘rationally controlled pleasures are good’ [There are higher and lower
pleasures and art aims to gratify the lower pleasures and to give them an
aesthetic gloss which is only an excuse for self-indulgence. Plato argues
we must cultivate the pleasures of learning, rather than strive to acquire
sophisticated aesthetic tastes.]
(p. 10)
the aesthetic…is of interest only in so far as it can provide therapy for the
soul… The area of acceptable art where pure pleasure, true beauty, and sense
experience overlap is very small.
(p. 12)
Exercise VII
in arguing about what is for the most part so from premisses which
are for the most part true we must be content to draw conclusions that
are similarly qualified.
(Aristotle 1976:1094–5)
Write a paragraph or two about this quote, bringing in the following paired
concepts, words or phrases. Use them in any order or combination to bring out
what is involved in Aristotle’s view about what we can expect from reflecting
upon moral matters.
practical reason vs theoretical reason;
necessary vs contingent truth;
moral virtue vs intellectual virtue;
logic vs rhetoric;
certainty vs probability.
CONCLUSION
The point of designing exercises is to develop reasoning skills and expressive
ability; to help students to become active in their thinking. It is not so much the
exercises themselves that are important but the use made of them by students. As
old-fashioned as it sounds, classroom exercises do serve to concentrate the mind
and give it something to work on at the same time. If they are designed with
particular courses in view and made part of the learning process, we believe that
students can only benefit. This claim cannot be demonstrated at present, for it
has not been tried. It is based on an a priori intuition about the learning process,
but one which can be given empirical trial. Let us give it a try and see what
happens. Certainly the results, even if negative, can only advance our
understanding of the educational process.
Chapter 6
The future of thinking
The conclusion of this book lies outside its pages, in the institutions of higher
education. It is not so much a matter of a prescription or recipe for the future as
of attitude and educational principle. The book is not a specialist contribution to
some well-established debate; it is the attempt to rethink the topic of education in
the liberal arts, its value to a democratic society, and its function in the training of
articulate human beings, literate in the ways of texts and language.
Our goal is to help students to work with and through texts to their own
eventual understanding and expression. This is what our pedagogy aims to do: to
invite students to become articulate in their own beliefs, to acquire the critical
skills necessary for an informed judgement and to have access to the codes which
stand at the gates of intelligent and informed enquiry and debate.
It may seem to some that ours is simply another writing-based teaching
strategy. Composition teachers, for example, may think there is nothing new
here. This is an understandable mistake. However, we should not be misled by
the fact that the exercises presented in the last chapters are mainly concerned
with writing. This is because writing is the most visible manifestation of
cognitive and expressive skills, and because of its place in the grading system. In
most liberal arts or humanities courses students are graded on their ability to
write competent answers to exam or essay questions. Finally, it is because of a
perceived lack of modest writing skills on the part of college graduates that it is
natural to make development of these a top priority in rethinking teaching
practice.
The reason that our pedagogy looks like a writing course is due more to the
exigencies of institutionalized liberal arts teach ing than to our philosophy of
education. This philosophy is that of a bottom-up learning process which enables
students to integrate scholarly practice into their lives in such a way as to form
those intellectual habits which produce a well-stocked and functioning mind.
The result is a writing-based set of exercises. However, the principles behind
the exercises are general. Thinking requires the cultivation of all the powers of
thought involving the use of words and concepts. Speaking is as important to
expression as writing, though it draws on different motor skills and enters into
different contexts. Reading, as we argue, is the other side of writing and its skills
are just as complex and powerful. Listening is the other side of speaking, and is
itself an inconspicuous art. Memory is the touchstone of the whole process and
development of thinking, to which speaking, writing and the rest belong as equal
partners.
Two principles of education lie behind this account of learning to think. The
first is that the powers of thought are developed through the actions and practices
which produce and characterize them. The other is that we learn to think best if
we are given something worthwhile to think about. There is no need to determine
in advance just what will count as worthwhile.
The questions and topics which have received serious attention over the years,
or which are particularly relevant to present interests and concerns, have a prima
facie case for consideration. What is important is that the texts selected to be
read, written and spoken about are judged worthy of sustained attention. Without
this belief, there is no reason to consider them at all. Our teaching strategy,
therefore, will accommodate any changes to curriculum or canon so long as it is
judged that the changes provide a reading list of positive value.
The authors support a liberal education that gives students access to the
working of linguistic codes and devices, empowering them to communicate
effectively in a world which is shaped by language as well as the material bases
of life. The purpose of liberal arts teaching is to extend the power of language to
the widest possible audience. It is not to tell people what to think or how to think
it. Accordingly, we conceive of formal education as a time of experimentation
with the ways of thinking. Our ends are met if the students themselves become
capable and desirous of reflective thought. We want them to make up their own
minds, but more importantly, to have minds to make up.
Thinking, education and training belong together. The result of study is not so
much knowledge as the ability to learn. The more knowledge one has, the better
one studies texts and interprets signs. Knowledge and its growth are part of the
process of learning, but not its end. The three or four years most students have to
consider a succession of texts is actually but the beginning of a lifetime’s
learning, although it comes to an end formally with the attainment of a degree.
The knowledge acquired is consolidated later, if at all, in second thoughts,
perhaps long after graduation.
A number of factors conspire to prevent undergraduate work from counting
for much after graduation. The college years are treated as a final institutional
stage of formal education, beyond which there is an informal education in the
university of life. This perspective encourages the belief that the only acceptable
reason for textual study is the acquisition of knowledge. Books may collect dust
but the knowledge remains. Course content is imparted to fill students’ minds
with it. Yet this perspective is fundamentally flawed.
The distinction between formal and informal education, if insisted upon,
fosters the kind of educational system we see embodied in liberal arts courses
today. Even if no one believes it, the assumption is that knowledge is the end of
education, since it is to knowledge in our students that we look when it comes to
grading their academic performances. Students are graded in humanities subjects
for two things: their knowledge of texts and their level of expressive
competence, primarily in writing. Since knowledge and information are
conveyed through texts, it is only natural to think that the goal of study is their
communication.
Knowledge in the liberal arts is primarily a knowledge of texts. In every class
students are held responsible for the content of these. They are held responsible
for remembering what is said or written in them, and also for the various
contexts by which they have been taught to frame and interpret them. Though
they contain ambiguities, not all texts are equally ambiguous. To test students on
what they have learned of the content of their courses presupposes that the
content is clearly enough stated to be grasped by any attentive reader. Without
this presupposition, it makes no sense to grade them.
Expression is judged primarily for grammatical correctness, where this affects
the sense of what is written. There is no great concern with eloquence. Style is
not something that can be measured against anything except different models and
paradigms, yet when coupled with genuine effort it is reflected in the grades.
Student writing shows itself to be excessively rhetorical precisely at the point
where the material runs out, since it is almost always a matter of obvious
padding. Rhetoric here works to prevent the beginning and end of what the
student has to say from coming together too quickly.
In the event, the quality of the student’s writing style is judged, though not in a
quantifiable way. The assumption is that we can tell the difference between clear
and obscure writing, between a clear but shallow essay or answer, and an
obscure but thoughtful one. Furthermore, it is also assumed that these differences
are in the writing, and not simply a matter of individual taste.
In a rough and ready way, the grading process demands the conviction that there
is a limited objectivity in the texts students read. As for style, what this amounts
to in practice is the recognition that there is a standard of acceptable writing,
however ineloquent or rough. In present institutional practice, the weighting is in
favour of what has been learnt over how well it is expressed. Once again the
impression is given that knowledge is the raison d’être for study, rather than the
other way round.
We do not attack the grading system, but bring out what is involved and
presupposed by it. It is only natural that grades come to dominate the educational
process, but they measure only one part of the student’s intellectual growth and
aptitude. Other facets of the student’s achievements cannot be tested within the
framework of an undergraduate course hedged in with deadlines, mid-term
exams, finals, projects or dissertations. It is difficult to tell how much course
material is actively retained in the minds of students. Often one suspects not
much, for the simple reason that course work fails to find a permanent relevance
to their thoughts and aspirations as they move out into the world. They never
become scholars, in the good sense of self-motivated investigators of texts and
interpretations. The academic year peaks at exam time, which is seen more as the
end of something definite, than as another beginning in a continuing process.
The real value of an undergraduate education in the study of texts is to

familiarize students with the workings of their language and its uses in different
contexts. Knowledge is important because it facilitates learning. The reverse is
also true. As one learns to learn, it becomes easier to retain information and
absorb the knowledge on offer in the pages of course contents. However,
knowledge is inferior to learning, because it does not matter how much people
know when they are dead. The point is to put the knowledge one has
accumulated to use in an education which realizes itself in the course of a
lifetime.
This ideal has inspired some great teachers in their work. However,
institutional structures and procedures often make it an uphill struggle. One
obstacle is the pervasive sense that college is an interlude, a time of play before
the serious work of life begins. To accept this is to assign what is learnt in
college to those childish things one puts aside in adulthood.
Callicles, in Plato’s Gorgias, puts it best. The charge is against philosophy,
but stands for all the liberal arts. ‘For philosophy, Socrates, is all very well if it is
touched upon at the right time of life, but if someone should pursue it beyond that
point it becomes a waste of time and ruins people’ (484c5–9). The presumption
is that study should come to an end, that it is the basis of something further,
rather than an end in itself. Although Callicles does admit in the same passage
that a liberal education suits free human beings, he draws a line against the life
of enquiry beyond that which is useful for a life of action.
This view is crippling. There is no reason whatsoever to stop studying after
graduation. The university of life may not have a reading list, but there is nothing
in its regulations that prevents reading. Even a busy practical existence has room
for a continuing text-fed self-dialogue within it. There is room for some reading,
some rereading, and plenty of space for memory. It is a commonplace now that
texts float in a sea of intertextuality. In the background move the shadows of
other texts, other readings. In memory these texts are instantaneously available.
They suggest each other, move each other. Thought advances in the process by
which the memory of one text leads on to another text or thought, for which
questions of connection arise. These questions lead to others, pointing up novel
links or aporiae in a developing thought process.
If our claim is true, that mind comes into its own through exercising the
different aspects of thinking, then to develop the full potential of their minds,
students must engage in appropriate mental activities, not only as part of course
requirements but as part of their everyday lives. There is nothing mysterious
about mind, in the sense we indicate. It stands apart from the questions of mind-
body dualism or reductive physicalism. The question of mind is not so much
metaphysical as practical. The trouble with the way things now stand is that the
time which is spent in formal study goes to waste when it is not taken up in
habits which finally become second nature and almost, as it were, unthinking,
spontaneous intellectual responses.
We do not expect small children to read and write very much before they are
six or seven years old. Why should we expect students to take less time to
develop the higher skills expected of them in college? If we take cultural literacy
and the content of courses seriously, then a maturing process is surely necessary
before course materials are assimilated and consolidated by the students. If we
can start them thinking about the vast and absorbing fields of study to which they
are introduced, then this maturational process will have a chance to occur. Time
will take care of the rest. The students will find, after they have reached a certain
point in their thinking, that it continues under its own steam.
Teachers have nothing to do but to continue their own studies. Students learn
to think for themselves by thinking. What the teacher supplies in this approach to
student work is not so much knowledge but texts and the means of transforming
and commenting upon them in different ways. The development of cognitive and
expressive skills is to be expected more from the efforts of the students than from
information imparted to them by a third party.
There are, however, educational reasons to continue with formal assessment of
student work. Sometimes it is good to be put on the spot. Like other formal
limitations, the time constraint of exams focuses the mind and brings all energies
to a point. Formally assessed essays and undergraduate theses are valuable to
students because they constrain them to make their thoughts accessible to others.
In writing essays for assessment, the student has a chance to put into play those
cognitive and expressive skills which our pedagogy aims to develop.
However, it is important to put exams and formally assessed written work into
perspective. They are only part of a student’s life, and not the most important
part of the learning process. The difficulty is to keep this perspective when
realizing that it is only by formal assessment that students attain their accredited
degrees. Here we have tried to duck this problem by stressing a stage of training
which is not formally assessed and leaving it to normal assessment procedures to
assign the grades. Our theory predicts that the revised rhetorical training
described in this book will produce a general rise in grades, but that will have to
wait for empirical confirmation.
As long as exams and essays are the basic materials of formal assessment,
there is always the temptation to see the attainment of grades as the important
thing rather than the road to their attainment. Motivation to achieve good grades
has pushed many a reluctant scholar to the books, the desk, the writing pad and
computer. So far so good. However, if grade motivation remains the force behind
academic work, then the attainment of the grade will coincide with a cessation of
the work.
A transformation of motivation is required. This happens already for those
lucky students who begin a course because they think it will be an easy grade to
make, but stay out of interest. Grades get them into the subject but do not keep
them there, either because making good grades becomes easy or because grades
cease to matter. However, if it turns out that without very much effort it is possible
to bring more students to realize the value of what they have studied and that
nothing prevents them from continuing after graduation, then more will gain the
life of the mind, a far more valuable possession than ephemeral academic
success. Our teaching opens up a world of ideas to the students along with the
power to move through it with increasing effortlessness and enjoyment.
No amount of preaching the value of a well-rounded education is going to
make very much difference to someone whose interests centre elsewhere. The only
way that humanities courses can prove themselves is by providing students with
an experience they cannot find elsewhere and one which, with time, becomes a
living interest. If we want people to think in the ways outlined in this book, they
must practise and experience them. These experiences of thinking are rather
mundane. They are the experiences of paraphrasing a paragraph, of writing out
the premisses of an argument, of making a summary or a précis. They are also
the experiences of role-playing in words, taking up different forms and
constraints, producing samples of different genres and styles, developing an
argument or assessing one. These and others like them make up the exercises by
which the mind is formed and strengthened.
This process also involves speaking to others in different contexts, from the
personal and intimate to the impersonal and formal. Students develop their
ability to speak to groups of various sizes as part of the learning process. How
this is to be brought about given present priorities and financial constraints is not
easy to see. What is needed are contributions from all relevant parties on the best
ways to proceed, the best experiments to try. In the end, experience will reveal
the means to encourage improvements in expressive and cognitive competence.
Once we take the lid off questions about the form and function of humanities
teaching, there is no telling in advance what gains can be made in educational
strategy. The one certain thing is that we can do better.
The open-ended task of providing a good set of activities and exercises to
improve verbal skills is matched by the task of reading, listening and
remembering. It is easier now to see writing exercises as only part of a much
wider process, embodying a number of different competences. Good research by
able investigators has gone into answering these questions already, but the work
has been fragmented by the lack of a unifying perspective. There are many books
and articles about how to write better, how to read, to listen, to remember and to
speak. They can now be brought together by the perspective developed in this
book.
It is also possible to bring in other research which at first sight does not appear
to apply to liberal arts students. For example, the work on aphasia, dyslexia,
dyspraxis and autism becomes relevant to our teaching practice, when we
remember that faulty actions, or parapraxses, extend into the normal population.
Students, in mild ways, suffer from analogous dysfunctions. By becoming
conscious of the impediments to thought we can begin to overcome them,
through trial and error, if in no other way. The point is to have an inclusive
educational goal at the forefront of any thought about teaching practice.
With this in mind let us consider the future of thinking. Unless there is a
restructuring of humanistic pedagogy along the lines of that projected in this
book, the prospects are bleak. As the world becomes increasingly saturated with
momentary images, the ability to think in a coherent and sustained way is bound
to fade. Language is at the heart of (textual) thinking and without concentration
and active participation in its work, the individual is cut off from the resources
necessary to form independent judgements and to contextualize the data which
are constantly coming in from all sides.
An anecdote may help to make this process clearer. At an institution of higher
education in California the bread-and-butter courses of the philosophy
department are those which satisfy the general education requirements.
Introductory courses in logic, ethics and the history of philosophy take in a great
number of students majoring in other subjects. Individual lecturers are normally
expected to teach over a hundred of these students each term, each of whose
work must be assessed. Because of the numbers, some of the teachers use
multiplechoice and short-answer questions to test the student’s knowledge.
Others use only student essays as the basis of assessment. My solution was to
devise a test with two parts: one a multiplechoice section, the other a short essay
of a couple of sides of paper. To my surprise, the students came up in great
numbers to complain about the essay part of the exam, claiming that they had
never before been asked to write one. Some said it was unfair, since in their
whole time in college they had been assessed by multiple-choice tests.
These students were missing those expressive and cognitive skills that only
competence in language can produce. They felt a lack in their education, though
the only way they found to express it was in a suspicion of essay-writing. They
were not at ease in the world of texts and the ideas expressed in them. The
mistakes they made on the knowledge side showed that their memories needed
work. How well they listened is anybody’s guess, because except for those who
choose to intervene in the discussion, there was no way to tell.
Silence means many things. Some silent students are indeed listening intently
and actively. Some are silently posing questions, making comparisons in their
minds, following trains of logic. Others merely daydream, doodle or ponder the
ironies of a system which puts them in a room from which they would rather be
absent. Others are simply bored or nonplussed.
Humanities or liberal arts subjects and topics are eternally contestable. There
are no final conclusions, only the latest conclusions. In history, literature (poetry)
and philosophy we enter a world of uncertainties, an unstable world constantly in
motion. Philosophy and the other humanities subjects are thus capable of
questioning their own presuppositions and foundations. They do not have to do
so but the capacity is always there.
The liberal arts are capable of self-renewal, of finding a better rationale for their
own existence. To some extent it is possible to overcome the fragmentation of
special subjects without giving up the results of scholarly research. The problem
is partly that there is a tension between the research demands of a professional

career and a teacher’s commitment to the educational needs of undergraduates.
Along with the sentiment that covers the college years in a haze of
irresponsibility goes the one which takes students seriously only at the graduate
level. This attitude is part of that which sees knowledge as the end of education.
The students come in empty and go out full. In between there is the reading of
texts, listening to the professor lecture, and passing formal assessment
requirements. The professor lectures to impart knowledge and information. To
the extent that scholarly knowledge remains the same from year to year, what is
imparted does not change significantly. No wonder large numbers of students
tend to disappear into a blur of terms.
This would not matter so much, except that it is professors who come to know
the material better by lecturing on it for years. As already mentioned, we tend to
remember our own productions better than those of others. Good lectures have a
place in any text-based course, but the point is to turn students into teachers
themselves, into teachers of themselves. The best way to do this is to sift and
share all relevant specialized knowledge under a common educational
imperative.
Our imperative is to turn out articulate human beings. This adjective captures
with some clarity those expressive and cognitive skills which our teaching
method is designed to build and enhance. Intuitively, an articulate person is one
who is at home in the world of words and signs. In the past, such a person
represented an elite, educated segment of society. This is still true to some extent,
though not to the same degree, and less so as more students have access to higher
education.
We argue that the charge of elitism should not make us give up the project of
extending the powers of language to the largest possible number of people. The
fact is that to be inarticulate in our society is to be rendered powerless to
intervene effectively in a course of events which demands making oneself heard.
This is not a good position in which to be. To make a difference you must be
able to engage with the means of expression. If the free and informed debate
characteristic of democracy is to continue, it is crucial that as many people as
possible achieve a high level of cognitive and expressive skill. Even as an ideal,
a full and open discussion will occur only if everyone contributing to the debate
can make a difference to its course.
Individuals and groups of people are marginalized if they are unable to
communicate effectively in a public forum. Access to language is necessary to
make oneself heard in the babble of a democratic society. It is a disadvantage to
be linguistically incompetent and unable to express oneself outside a narrow
range. But if we make the goal of turning out articulate human beings a high
priority of our educational policy, surely we can find a better way to use our
limited time and resources than we do at present. You do not have to be
articulate to go to heaven, but it is different on earth. The function of the
humanities in the next century will be to empower students with the best range of
textual activities we can devise. They will do the rest.
Another important feature of our approach is the perception that the best
teachers are happy teachers. The way things are structured now, it is often
strikingly difficult for teachers to find the leisure to carry on with their studies.
Administrative duties and the demands of grade production take a toll on the
time necessary to reflect upon and explore a subject.
Outside of a contract for pure research, there is no way to totally remove the
tedium of a teacher’s life. For those untenured staff who work in research
institutions there is the additional burden of the pressure to publish. Writing for
tenure is not exactly a leisure occupation. Nevertheless, the burdens of the
teacher are to be minimized. This means that the time spent in carrying out
mundane and repetitive activities is also to be kept to the minimum.
Teaching is an equation: teachers on the one side, students on the other. So far
the emphasis has rightly been put on the students and the prospects for their
intellectual growth. We tend to think that professors can take care of themselves.
But we can already see that this works both ways. If teaching is felt to be a
distraction from the real point of one’s work, the books and articles one hopes to
produce, then teaching suffers. The answer lies in the development of research
and teaching at the same time. Like the problem of promoting speech skills,
however, this admits of no easy solution.
The case of students and teachers is parallel. Students, we agree, need to
develop cognitive and expressive skills, taught together in the same class. They
need to think about something and learn to think about it at the same time. The
one feeds into the other. With the lecturer, the impetus of research ought to
provide the teaching with a stream of new ideas. Conversely, research ought to
be carried out with the question of how it might be taught or communicated
constantly in mind.
A problem at the moment is that where research is concerned, it is to one’s
peers that one writes. The same material is presented differently, first to one’s
colleagues and then to students. The gap between these audiences is very wide
and makes a great difference to how the material is considered. The difficulty is
to pitch it at the right level. The greatest difficulty lies in doing both at the same
time, without going over the heads of one audience or condescending to the
other.
Part of this problem lies in the assumptions we make about different
audiences. With a professional audience it is not necessary to waste very much
time on preliminaries. The level of common knowledge is assumed to be quite
high. But more than this, it is assumed that the members of the audience have
achieved a certain high level of competence in the field under discussion. With
introductory students it is just the opposite. One can assume very little about the
possession of relevant background knowledge. Hence the step-by-step approach
of many introductory courses, starting with the step each student takes from the
place he or she is standing.
It is unlikely that this gap can ever be closed completely, but it is better to
address the larger rather than the smaller audience, if there is a choice in the
matter. It is only proper that there should grow up a standard of excellence in any
field of enquiry which is taken to the level of professional competence. The work
that has already been done makes a certain shorthand perfectly in order. There is
simply no need to start over from the beginning. To play a game there must be rules,
and the rules for advanced debates are different from those of introductory
discussions. Nevertheless, it is possible to address a wide audience if the issues
have a general significance.
Teachers require leisure to develop their own ideas, to enter debates and to
contribute to current discussions. Something is wrong if, in the name of
efficiency and value for money, teaching structures, procedures and demands
systematically reduce leisure time. The same constellation of attitudes which
assigns the college years to a pleasant hiatus in the serious business of making a
living, and which counts knowledge as the end of the educational process, also
sees virtue in efficiency and full time-tables. Leisure time is seen as waste time,
much in the way as the colonists saw the land of Aboriginal inhabitants going to
waste, since it was left without improvements.
The life of thinking is not like this. There are none but arbitrary timetables in
the learning process, and that process has none but an arbitrary end. Individuals
grow up and start to learn different things. If they are lucky, they continue to
learn for their entire lives, and die learning. The unlucky finish learning at
graduation and spend the rest of their lives repeating and elaborating a moribund
conception of the world and the place of ideas within it. The same thing can
happen to professors. The whole academic enterprise becomes a chore and a
burden. The occupation of lecturer or professor is less and less fun as the
demands on time increase along with nagging questions about how satisfying
such a life really is.
So, we should make it a general rule never to introduce a teaching scheme
which increases the workload of teachers. This point has bedevilled the progress
of continuous assessment. However worthy as an ideal, it requires teacher time in
great measure. According to our imperative, formal assessment, whether
continuous or summary, should be kept to a minimum, for it contributes the
major part of academic drudgery. However, though the task of assessing student
work remains, it is worth-while to change the subject of assessment. Instead of
assessing the students’ work, we should assess the results of teaching practice.
This shift in the spotlight of assessment could help to reduce routine tasks and to
produce good results in that student work which is formally assessed.
If we take the general powers of articulation to be desiderata of rhetorical
pedagogy, then our practice should reflect this. We should devise, through our
collective imagination and ingenuity, experiments in teaching aimed to produce
students who can read, write, listen, speak and remember (texts) to a high order.
Without testing the students at every turn, we can test the experiments we make.
It is possible to assess the efficiency of the learning strategy advanced in this

book without involving students directly in the assessment procedures. We can
determine how well the pedagogy is working without initially submitting the
students’ work to direct judgement of worth. For example, it is possible to take
the anonymous sheets of paper produced each week in the workshop seminar,
number them, identify them by handwriting, not by name, and order them in the
succession of weeks in which they are produced. A parallel control group does
not participate in the exercises. Determinations can then be made about how each
group compares with the other, and how much individuals in the experimental
group improve from the beginning to the end of the course. Evidence of
accelerated improvement in the performance of the students in the workshop
seminar would provide some confirmation of the efficacy of rhetorical paidaeia.
If there is no change in their work, or if it gets worse, that will be the time to go
back to the drawing board. Our educational theory is inspired by a priori ideas,
but their use is not indifferent to empirical results.
We gain leisure time by turning our attention away from individual grades to
an assessment of the efficacy of the teaching practice. If it turns out that the
workshop seminar is a good way of promoting the acquisition of expressive and
cognitive skills, then it is no longer necessary to save and grade the students’
exercises, laboriously going over them each week with a red pencil. This job can
be done in class, by correcting mistakes once for everyone rather than one by
one. Students receive the benefits of having a close reading of their written work
in an economic environment which cannot support individual tuition.
Economic constraints are realities, and the revival of rhetorical education does
not shy away from them. The new pedagogy is not utopian except in the sense
that it is guided by an ideal of what a textual education can mean for the
individuals who take it up and do something with it in their lives. This process is
meant to be enjoyed, to be taken as a challenge, to stretch the mind. The
distinction between teachers and students is one of degree. Teachers are
advanced students. They, too, should enjoy the process, be challenged and stretch
themselves. We should strive to reduce the drudgery of teaching, while all the
time increasing the work of the students, not immediately under an onerous threat
of judgement, but as the exercise and play of newly developing minds becoming
conscious of the aspects of thought.
This is a useful fiction. Exercises are not graded, but grades must come in the
end. The relation between exercises and grades is indirect. The best way to prepare
for assessment is to explore and try out the various forms of language and
argument. The student will prepare indirectly in this way for the final assessment,
while feeling free to chance his or her arm in the exercises. This is all to the
good, since the point of education as we see it is to introduce students to the life
of the mind in such a way that they will take it up for themselves.
To sum up, teachers provide enjoyable and challenging activities for students
to try which are designed to convince them of the value of study through their
experience of texts and textual discourse. At the same time the teacher
disseminates the course contents, using them as the raw materials for student
work, rather than as a culminating knowledge. Thus, while it may appear that the
authority of the teacher is undermined by this approach, it is actually a liberation.
The weight of having to know, of being an expert, is removed.
The teacher is like a guide who undoubtedly leads the way, but nevertheless
accompanies the others on the journey. And though the guide knows how to go,
knows the general landmarks, there is still no escaping the contingencies of the
road. Besides this, the guide does not know everything about the route. Each trip
brings fresh discoveries. The guide shares a frontier of ignorance with the others.
To acknowledge that students must do the work for themselves, that no one
else can do it for them, is to put teachers clearly in the role of facilitators and
catalysts. Once this is conceded, it should not be beyond human wit to organize
teaching in such a way as to allow this role to be played with greatest effect. The
purpose of institutional regulations is to make the way straight, not to frustrate
the learning process. It is a case of designing requirements for the benefit of the
students and the teachers, not the other way around. If the results are as we
expect them to be, the clamour of suspicion and hostility towards the liberal arts
coming from the outside world would begin to die away.
It is true that the general public is most impressed by visible gains in
expressive competence. Graduates who are seen to have achieved a high degree
of literacy and articulateness, to be capable of structured writing, of producing
reports and notes, to be competent speakers, show that their higher education has
not been wasted. At the same time, though the cognitive side is more recondite,
everyone can see that it is better, on balance, to write and speak and think about
something significant than something insignificant. The transmission and
acquisition of (textual) knowledge is still important, though no longer defined as
the end of education.
With a secure raison d’être, the work of teaching can proceed without the
nagging feeling that the effort is not worth the result. If the real investigation is
held to take place by experts speaking at a very high level, then a question is cast
on the value of the project of teaching students who will never reach an advanced
level, whose thinking will remain somewhat superficial and introductory. If
serious discussion begins in graduate school, then the talk of undergraduates is
of little value.
This cannot be right. Whatever the level of one’s attainment of cognitive and
expressive skills, there is never a good reason for complacency. If talk and
discussion lie on a continuum between the beginner, the intermediate and the
expert, then all discussion is significant and the basis for further development.
As long as we can make it clear what we want to come out of it, an education
arranged on this basis puts the students first, while it gives them at the same time
the elements of their course studies.
To put it roughly, the ancients devised a system of education which came to raise
form over content, device over substance. The moderns devised a system which
raises content over form, resulting in a forgetfulness of the materiality of
language. The next step is to use the former to reanimate the latter, but in a way
of our choosing.
Our philosophy does not look backwards, seeking a return to some imaginary
good old days of a classical education, but the reverse. It is to make the resources
of language available to a larger number of people than ever imagined or
approved in the ancient world. It is to use what was a prop of social hierarchy to
the very different end of turning out human beings capable of partaking in the
debates of democratic societies, of effective communication. It may be that
democracy is a fiction, albeit a useful one, and the best we have, but it becomes
less of a fiction the more people gain advanced literacy through text-based
studies.
The future of thinking depends upon everyone who cares about the quality of
mental life, and, indeed, the existence of mental life. It will take a concerted and
co-operative effort to make the institutional structures we have inherited from the
past work for us, or to transform them into something new. We do not propose a
wholesale destruction of teaching practices in the humanities. It is possible,
beginning with the circumstances in which we find ourselves, to work in the
direction of a student-based, self-initiating, self-correcting process of learning
and discovery; one which gives students interesting and challenging work
assignments; one which reduces the burdens of the teachers.
Student activity is central to the learning process. This agreed, how the details
work out for subjects outside the two discussed in this book, philosophy and
literature, is a matter for others. It would be very interesting to see how an
activity-based course could be developed for history, art history, the history of
ideas, drama, drama criticism, cultural studies, minorities studies, women’s
studies and other textual interdisciplinary programmes.
This book succeeds if it raises a debate about the fundamentals of educational
practice. It does better if it convinces a significant number of people to produce
analogous teaching strategies for their own subjects. Teachers from all branches
of the humanities can contribute to an educational process that projects a
significant future for liberal arts education, before the liberal arts themselves
become ancient history. The genesis, development and termination of university
departments and courses does not bolster confidence in their immutability.
Critical thinking and composition courses, useful though they are as a stopgap,
are not intellectually fulfilling. They will preserve jobs but not job satisfaction.
Something must be done. This book argues what it is. Whether to take up the
challenge to invent a supplement of their own, or to produce something
altogether better—it is up to readers themselves to decide. Either way, the case
for an advance in educational strategy is made.
Bibliography
Aristotle (1976), Ethics, Middlesex: Penguin Books.

Calvino (1981), If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller, London: Secker & Warburg.
Cicero, De Oratore, Cambridge Mass.: Loeb Classical Library.
Crossman, R.H.S. (1937) Plato Today, London: Allen & Unwin.
Goethe, Johann W.von (1971), Italian Journey, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Irwin, Terence (1977), Plato’s Moral Theory: The Early and Middle Dialogues, Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
James, Henry (1934) The Art of the Novel, ed. Blackmuir, New York Scribner’s.
Murdoch, Iris (1977), The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists, Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
O’Brien, Flann (1960), At Swim-Two-Birds, London: MacGibbon & Kee.
Plato (1974), The Republic, Middlesex: Penguin Books.
Quintilian (1965), On the Education of the Citizen-Orator, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
Rossetti, Christina (1970), ‘Remember’, in A Choice of Christina Rossetti’s Verse, ed.
Jennings, London: Faber & Faber.
Schopenhauer, Arthur (1969), The World as Will and Representation, New York: Dover.
Smith, John H. (1988), The Spirit and Its Letter: Traces of Rhetoric in Hegel’s Philosophy
of ‘Bildung’, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
Vickers, Brian (1988), In Defence of Rhetoric, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Index
active vocabularies 26 reading aloud 79–82

activity-based courses 124–6 Augustinian theory of rhetoric 42
adversarial mode 23, 43
amplification 51, 73–4 body language 78
analogy:
computer model 62–3; Callicles (in Gorgias) 29, 114
physical exercise 57–8 Calvino 47–54
analysis (précis-writing) 27, 50–1, 59–61, Carnap, Rudolf 64
71–3 case studies (rhetoric and composition) 47–
analytic, Kant’s (paraphrase) 62–3 53
‘animal spirits’ 67 characters:
anonymity 59, 79, 84 invention of 63–5, 74–6;
answers (and non-answers) 17 in poetry 76–7;
appropriation (of text) 18–19, 46, 48, 68– writing for known 74–6
71 checking process 48–9, 69–70
Aquinas, Thomas 64 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 5, 36
argument 23, 43 citizenship 4–5
Aristotle 43; class reports 77, 80, 81–2
Ethics 86–91, 104, 109; classroom:
on pleasure 83, 86–91; exercises see samples and preliminary
Rhetoric 36 result;
Arnold, Matthew 75 reading aloud 79–82, 84–5
arrangement (dispositio) 43–4 close reading 18
art (sample exercise) 107–8 cognitive skills 8–9, 12, 14, 55, 57;
Art of the Novel, The (James) 55 grading system 110, 115, 123;
arts-sciences debate 6–7 priorities 118, 120–1, 123, 125;
aspects of thought 14–15; transferable 10, 11, 37, 42
listening 26–30; commentaries 39–40
reading 16–20; common ideology 56
speech 20–6; common interests 29
writing 30–2 commonplace (exercise) 42
assessment procedures 122–4; communication:
see also grading system see exploration 21–6;
At Swim-Two-Birds (O’Brien) 53–4 skills (transmission) 3–4
attack and defence (debate) 23 comparisons (using) 53–4
audience 44, 57, 121–2;
101
102 INDEX
composition see rhetoric and composition education system:

compositional skills 11, 13, 35–6, 37; learning process and 7–10;
dispositio and elocutio 43–7 paidaeia 6–7, 13, 36, 41, 46, 55–7, 76,
computer model analogy 62–3 123;
conference papers (delivery of) 22–3 scientific method 6–7;
confirmation (exercise) 42 skills approach see skills approach;
contemporary issues (response of dead syllabus 8, 11–12;
philosophers) 63–5 see also curriculum
content 4, 10–12, 45, 49, 112, 114, 125 Eliot, T.S. 75
controversy 22–3 elocutio 12, 43, 45–7
conversation: encomium (exercise) 42
as exploration 21–6; enquiry, conversation as 24–5
listening in 26–9 Erasmus, Desiderius 35, 37
copying (transcription) 48–9 errors (as learning process) 21, 63
course content 4, 10–12, 45, 49, 112, 114, essays 31, 32, 35–6, 38, 39;
125 dispositio and elocutio 43–7
critical: Ethics (Aristotle) 86–91, 104, 109
competence 54, 78, 80; ethopoeia 74–6
devils advocate 77–8; evaluation exercise 98–109
modes 39, 40–1; examinations (grading) 22, 110, 112–16
procedures (impersonation) 75–6; exercise analogy 57–8
thinking 10, 13, 15, 36 exercises see samples and preliminary
criticism 28, 37, 52–3 results
cross-questions 17 experiential learning 116–17
Crossman, R.H.S. 106 exploration (speech as) 21–3, 26
cultural vocabulary 25–6 expressive skills 8, 12, 14, 55, 57;
curriculum 1, 2, 11, 21; grading system 110, 112–13, 115, 123;
fragmentation 39, 56; priorities 118, 120–1, 123, 125;
rhetorical 35, 40 transferable 10, 11, 37
death (Schopenhauer on) 91, 93–7 face-to-face address 78

debate 20, 21–2, 23, 78 Feuerbach, Ludwig A. 64
defence and attack (debate) 23 fiction (literary studies):
democracy 9–10, 120 case studies 47–53;
deontologist 106 critical modes 40–1;
Derrida 64 dispositio and elocutio 43–7;
Descartes, René 32, 64–5, 66–7 problems with usual approach 38–40;
devil’s advocate exercise 77–8 progymnasmata 41–3
dialogue 51; figures of speech 43, 46
impersonation 52–3; Fire and the Sun, The (Murdoch) 107–8
listening 14, 21–2, 26–30; form 10–11, 12, 49, 125
speech 14, 20–6; future of thinking:
tense and person 49–50 experiential approach 116–17;
dipping 18 grading system 112–16;
discourse (style element) 45–6 priorities/prospects 118–26;
dispositio 43–4 study aims/strategies 110–12
drama 20
INDEX 103
Goethe, Johanne W.von 33 shared 25–6, 59

Gorgias (Plato) 29, 114 learning process:
gossip 24 and purpose 7–10;
grading system 22, 110, 112–16, 122–4 see also aspects of thought
grammar 4, 15, 16, 84–5 Leavis, F.R. 2, 75
lectures 27, 30, 83–4
happiness (Aristotle on) 83, 86–91 liberal arts:
Hegel, G.W.F. 64 binary oppositions 6–7;
Heidegger, Martin 64 dilemma and response 1–3;
‘human nature’ 7 future of thinking 110–26;
humanism-rhetoric relationship 3–6, 13 humanism-rhetoric relationship 3–6,
humanities, rhetorical training in see 13;
aspects of thought learning process 7–10;
rhetorical education 12–13;
ideas 28 skills approach 10–11;
If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller syllabus 11–12
(Calvino) 47–54 linguistic devices 78, 111
imagination: linguistic skills 5, 15–16, 26, 118–20, 125–
in amplification 51; 6
in impersonation see impersonation; listening 111;
writing in style of 65–6, 74–6 aspects of thought 14, 21–2, 26–30
imaginative synthesis 63–5 literary-scientific opposition 6–7
impersonation 48, 49, 52–3; literary exercises 37, 67;
ethopoeia 74–6; amplification 73–4;
prosospopoeia 63–5, 74–6; ethopoeia and prosopopoeia 74–6;
writing in style of 65–6, 74–6 memorization 68–71;
in-itself (of text) 18 précis, summary and paraphrase 71–3;
index (in questioning approach) 17, 18 secondary literature 77–8;
information 24, 112, 114 theme, plot and character 76–7
interpretation of text 17, 19, 49, 78; literary studies:
see also paraphrase; case studies 47–53;
précis; critical modes 40–1;
summary interrogative approach 16– dispositio and elocutio 43–7;
17, 18, 27, 66–7 problems with usual approach 38–40;
Irwin, Terence 106 progymnasmata 41–3
Locke, John 65
James, Henry, The Art of the Novel 55 logocentrism 3, 60
journal articles (study of) 77 Lukács, Giorgi 75
judgement 57, 82, 84
Marcus Aurelius 65
Kant, Immanuel 16, 62–4, 66, 94, 97 Marx, Karl 97
Kierkegaard, Søren 65 Marxism 35
knowledge 112, 113–14, 124, 125 meaning (of text) 62, 72
mechanical learning 3, 57, 126;
languages (types of) 71 of poetry (and transcribing) 68–71
learning: memory 14, 16–19, 111;
to learn 15, 111, 114; of listener 27, 28;
104 INDEX
mechanical learning 3, 57, 126; philosophical exercises 59–61;

transcribing exercise 68–71 questioning the text 66–7;
mental exercise 57–9 reading aloud 79–82;
metaphors 45 rhetorical paidaeia 55–7;
Mill, J.S. 64 secondary literature 77–8;
mimetic skill (development) 64 spoken word 78;
mimicry see impersonation summary and paraphrase 61–6
mind: philosophy 46;
-body dualism 67, 115; -rhetoric relationship 14–15;
computer model 62–3; Schopenhauer’s conception 91–7
exercise 57–9 physical exercise analogy 57–8
monographs 32 Plato 27, 32, 64–5, 83;
monologues 27, 29–30, 51 Gorgias 29, 114;
morality (sample exercise) 105–6, 109 Republic 104–8
motivation 17–18; pleasure (Aristotle on) 83, 86–91
grades 113, 116; plot (in poetry) 76–7
self- 58, 113 poetry:
Murdoch, Iris, The Fire and the Sun 107–8 literary exercises 67–77;
readings 20
narrator (person/tense) 49–50 Polemarchus (sample exercise) 104
natural goodness 5–6 possession (of texts) 18–19
Nietzsche, Friedrich 65, 97 précis 27;
non-answers 17 case study (Calvino passage) 50–1;
literary exercises 71–3, 77;
objectivity 11–12, 59, 74, 113 philosophical exercises 59–61
O’Brien, Flann 53–4 preliminary exercises (progymnasmata)
oral examination 20 41–3, 48
oration (structure of) 43 primary texts 39, 41, 46
‘original’, paraphrase and 62 progymnasmata 41–3, 48
pronuntiatio 42
paidaeia 6–7, 13, 36, 41, 46, 55–7, 76, 123 prosopopoeia 63–5, 74–6
papers (writing/delivery) 22–3, 32 proverbs 42
paraphrase 51; public life (education for) 4–5, 14, 36
literary exercises 71–3, 77; public speaking 20–6, 36, 42;
philosophical exercises 61–6 reading aloud 79–82, 84–5
passive approach (reading) 16, 70 punctuation 69–70, 73, 74, 80
passive vocabularies 26
person, tense and 49–50 questioning:
persuasion 4, 15, 21, 36, 42, 57 by listener 27;
philosophers: the text 16–17, 18, 66–7
response to current issues 63–5; questions, sample (student evaluation) 98–
writing in style of 65–6 104
philosophical conversation as Quintilian 5
exploration 21–6
philosophical and literary exercises 37; radical theorists 1, 6–7
exercise analogy 57–9; reading 22, 111;
literary exercises 67–77; aspects of thought 14, 16–20;
INDEX 105
passivity in 16, 70; conclusion 109;

rhetoric and composition 33–6; exercise (Aristotle) 86–91;
sequence 38–40 exercise (Schopenhauer) 91–7;
reading aloud 79–82, 84–5 sample exercises 104–9;
reading lists 38, 39 student evaluation 98–104
reducing procedure (poetry) 73 Sartre, Jean-Paul 79
reductive physicalism 115 scanning 36, 49
reflection (approach problems) 38–40 Schopenhauer, Arthur 32;
refutation 42 conception of philosophy 83, 91–7;
religion (Schopenhauer on) 91, 93–5, 97 The World as Will and Representation
repetition (in talking) 24 91–7
reported speech 51 science/scientific method 6–7
reports 77, 80, 81–2 secondary literature 77–8
Republic (Plato) 104–8 secondary texts 39, 41, 46
rereading 19–20, 80 self-consciousness 22, 23, 81–2
research (development) 120–1 self-conversation (writing) 31
rewriting 79 self-correction 21, 126
rhetoric: self-motivation 58, 113
-humanism relationship 3–6, 13; seminars 38, 39, 83–4;
-philosophy relationship 14–15 student evaluation 98–104
Rhetoric (Aristotle) 36 sentence structure (poetry) 72, 74
rhetoric and composition 33–4; shared learning 25–6, 59
case studies 47–53; shared references 22, 29
critical modes 40–1; signs (in conversation) 26
dispositio and elocutio 43–7; silence (meanings) 118–19
progymnasmata 41–3; skills approach 4, 6, 8–9, 10–11, 13;
reading, reflection and writing model see also cognitive skills;
38–40; compositional skills;
reading and writing 35–6; expressive skills;
subject specificity 36–7; linguistic skills;
usefulness 54; transferable skills;
using comparison 53–4 verbal skills
rhetorical curriculum 35, 40 skimming 18
rhetorical education 9, 12–13; Socrates 4, 27, 28, 29, 32, 104–6
see also aspects of thought sonnet structure 72, 73
rhetorical paidaeia 6–7, 13, 36, 41, 46, 55– sophistry/traditionalism 3–4
7 speech:
rhyme scheme 72, 74 activities 78–82, 111;
role-playing 117; aspects of thought 14, 20–6;
devil’s advocate 77–8 reading aloud 79–82;
Romantic movement 46 reported 51;
Rossetti, Christina 68, 73, 75 spoken word 78
rote learning 3, 17, 69 Spinoza, Baruch 32
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 64 spoken word 78
Russell, Bertrand 64 structure (composition) 43
students:
samples and preliminary results 83–5; activity (centrality) 124–6;
evaluation 98–109
106 INDEX
study: Tractacus (Wittgenstein) 65

as maturing process 114–15; traditionalism 1–4, 7
programme 58; transcendental psychology 63
skills 15 transcription 48–9;
style 70; and memorization of poetry 68–71
elocutio 12, 43, 45–7; transferable skills 10, 11, 36–7, 42
writing ‘in the manner of’ 65–6, 74–6 translation 48, 49;
subject specifity 36–7 see also paraphrase;
summary 50–1; précis;
literary exercises 71–3; summary
philosophical exercises 61–6 tropes 7, 43
surface meaning 72 typology 69–70
surrealist poetry 73
syllabus 8, 11–12 understanding:
synthesis (précis-writing) 27, 50–1, 59–61, appropriation and 18–19, 46, 69;
71–3 rereading and 18–19, 80;
talk for 21–6
talk (for understanding) 21–6
teachers: verbal skills 42, 117
dilemmas and responses 1–3; Vico, Giambattista 15
facilitator role 124–6; vocabulary (of speech) 25–6
and learning process (purpose) 7–10; vocal delivery 78, 80
leisure time 122, 123; voluntary assignments 84
research 120–1
tense, person and 49–50 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 64, 96;
text: Tractacus 65
appropriation 18–19, 46, 48, 68–71; words 18, 71–2
in-itself of 18; World as Will and Representation, The
interpreted see interpretation of text; (Schopenhauer) 91–7
meaning 62, 72; writing:
primary 39, 41, 46; apects of thought 14, 30–2;
questioning 16–17, 18, 66–7; for a known character 74–6;
reading of 16–20, 38–40; legible/grammatical 84–5;
secondary 39, 41, 46 ‘in the manner of’ 65–6, 74–6;
textual vocabulary 25–6 practice of see rhetoric and
theme (of poetry) 74, 76–7 composition;
thesis 32, 82; skills development 110–11;
defence of 20, 23 style (of student) 113
thinking/thought:
apects of see aspects of thought;
future see future of thinking;
learning to think 15, 111, 114;
style 85;
see also critical thinking
Thrashymachus (in sample exercise) 104–5
time factor 19, 25
topics of conversation 22, 24–5

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The Future of Thinking

Learning to think is a complex process made up of reading, writing, listening,

Jeff Mason and Peter Washington

London and New York

ISBN 0-203-97540-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-415-07318-9 (Print Edition)—ISBN 0-415-07319-7 (paperback)

but to enable students from any background to grasp the complexities of

A properly thought out curriculum provides material worthy to develop those

something is lost; namely, self-correction and error-making. Anyone who

Learning, in this context, amounts to the incorporation of the cultural and

If this happens in a face-to-face conversation, dialogue ceases. The reason that

The role of the listener in conversation is to be a repository of what the

There is far more of a positive element in art, that is to say,

READING AND WRITING

PROBLEMS WITH THE USUAL APPROACH

DISPOSITIO AND ELOCUTIO

Tense and person

Précis and summary

Monologue, dialogue, reported speech

It was the late summer, a humid breathless season that is inimical to

characterization in contemporary literary works of a high-class, advanced

HOW DOES IT HELP?

To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual

with a common ideology and a unified field of knowledge. Now, there is no

Précis is impossible, which is precisely why it makes a good exercise. We ask

SUMMARY AND PARAPHRASE

This restatement of Kant’s position is not wholly adequate, but it might be a

QUESTIONING THE TEXT

Remember me when I am gone away,

Most important of all, learning a poem is a way of appropriating it, and

arrive at college full of half-baked, half-understood theories but can hardly

Précis, summary and paraphrase

Ethopoeia and prosopopoeia

Theme, plot and character

It is neither desirable nor necessary to expound a complete manual of

THE SPOKEN WORD

application, nearly everyone can progress to a level of adequacy or competence

(p. 252: Book VII 1153a 9–15)

or rational) will result in pleasure which is the supervenient by-product of that

this nineteenth century is a philosophical one; though by this we do not

we, who are…aiming…at philosophy…at unconditioned knowledge of the

philosophy…considers the universal alone.

…according to my view, philosophy is nothing but a complete and

In my opinion, all philosophy is always theoretical, since it is essential to it

The genuine method of considering the world philosophically …is

completely satisfied in this life. Schopenhauer paints a picture of life being

[Socrates holds that only what contributes to a person’s happiness has a

If we count on a virtuous man to respect other people’s rights and promote

Plato gives to beauty a crucial role in his philosophy [but] he practically

art is always bad for us in so far as it is mimetic or imitative.

Art naively or wilfully accepts appearances instead of questioning them…

The real value of an undergraduate education in the study of texts is to

is partly that there is a tension between the research demands of a professional

It is possible to assess the efficiency of the learning strategy advanced in this

Aristotle (1976), Ethics, Middlesex: Penguin Books.

active vocabularies 26 reading aloud 79–82

composition see rhetoric and composition education system:

death (Schopenhauer on) 91, 93–7 face-to-face address 78

Goethe, Johanne W.von 33 shared 25–6, 59

mechanical learning 3, 57, 126; philosophical exercises 59–61;

passivity in 16, 70; conclusion 109;

study: Tractacus (Wittgenstein) 65

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