Note – I wrote a blog a while back on ancient writing – Discovering the Arguments: Artistic and Inartistic Proofs. You may want to read that after reading this, to go more in depth with the ancient modes (if that is of interest to you). http://classicalwriting.blogspot.com/2010/01/discovering-arguments-artistic-and.html
Many people ask us about the difference between the modern methods of writing and the ancient methods of writing. They further ask if ancient writing styles can be used today, and how to blend the two so you get an excellent writer (by all the skills the ancients have to teach) who can write for the modern college professor (towards whom where most of our kids are headed.)
In this blog, I will discuss the ancient means of supporting your thesis statement and then the modern means of supporting your thesis statement along with some ideas of how the two can be blended together into a strong modern persuasive style.
Let us say you are writing an essay. Your thesis statement is that the military life is similar to the monastic life in terms of the self-denying and disciplined life styles that both persons in the military and persons in a monastic setting subject themselves to.
You need to write, say, three paragraphs in support of this thesis statement. Typically each paragraph will sport one argument, so you need at least three strong arguments to support your assertion.
Before you can write your essay, you need to ‘invent’ these three arguments.
Aristotle discusses two types of arguments that can support a thesis statement.
1. Artistic proofs – arguments that the speaker must invent: arguments from definition, comparison, relationships, circumstances, testimony, notation and conjugates.
2. Inartistic proofs – quoting what others have said: laws, witnesses, contracts, or oaths.
By the term ‘inartistic’ proofs Aristotle is referring to arguments which are not supplied by the writer’s efforts, arguments which were already in existence, such that it takes no ‘art’ to produce them… hence the term IN-artistic. This would in ancient times have included testimony from witnesses, admissions under torture, written contracts, books that were written, etc.
By the term ‘artistic’ proofs, Aristotle is referring to arguments that the writer has to generate, arguments which take an ART to generate. It would take the skill of the writer to figure out how to frame these arguments through knowledge, synthesis, and logic.
Arguments by inartistic proof would be less persuasive, less artful, less valuable because a collection of facts (inartistic proofs) is just a collection of facts. Inartistic proofs are a raw collection of data. It takes a skilled rhetorician to study those facts and bring them together into an artistic proof , into a paragraph of writing that can deal with those raw data and make them interesting, persuasive, and useful to others.
In a very real way, Aristotle is completely correct. Your sources, your data, your documentation does not speak for itself. It requires context. You need to place the data you quote to support your thesis statement into the setting it came from (context) in order for it to have any meaning. You need to explain that data to your readers. It is your arguments interpreting these data that are the substance of rhetoric: your arguments alone belong to the art of rhetoric. Any fool can collect the data, not everyone can interpret it.
Modern writing respects that. Taking raw data, putting it in context, and interpreting that data is what research paper writing is all about. Moderns do it; ancients did it, so far, so good.
Where modern writing deviates somewhat from ancient writing is in the following places.
1. There is an overload of information in the modern electronic world. Many research papers are summary papers that attempts to synthesize vast bodies of data into one conclusion.
2. Modern writing is more data oriented. The closer you can get to the source, letting the source speak for itself, rather than analyzing the source, the more (seemingly) persuasive your arguments are. (I realize this is a broad statement, and not all may agree with it).
3. Quoting authorities who quote other authorities…references, quotations to authorities is hugely persuasive in modern writing where the ancients would have been less persuaded by statistics and more persuaded by cogent logical arguments.
This is a huge topic, and I will follow up on this with more detail, concurrently with editing our last two books (hand book on rhetoric and writing research papers – CW Demosthenes).
To conclude, let me say this: The ancients lifestyle was slower, more leisurely paced. Folks had and took the time to listen to a speaker (they did not have cell phones, tablets, computers, and iPods with 800 distractions glaring at their eyes and blaring in their ears). They lived in the moment. What they admired was a carefully crafted argument, which carefully defined the issue and used logic and appeal to basic human virtues to persuade.
We moderns (with all our electronic distractions) are more so persuaded by data. Studies show that _______________. A survey of 3000 people indicates _____________. The polls show ____________. Researchers investigated 300 cases of this and found that ______________. Numbers and data persuade most moderns more than appeals to carefully crafted arguments centering around virtue and morality. We are a math and science and technology oriented people.
This is not to make light of either type of culture. We live in modern times. This is where we have to function. There is no golden age where everything was better. And even if there were such an age, we can’t go back to it. NOR can we reconstruct it in our times. We take the best that each age has to offer, and hopefully, knowing ancient techniques, we can help teach our students to think more carefully, weigh arguments analytically but also with an eye towards virtue, and we will have given them an edge over the typical modern writing student. In particular the ancients approached writing instruction from a rigorous, systematic perspective that taught the student a METHOD by which he could write for any audience for any occasion on any topic, and that method is one we can import and train today’s students in.