What is the Q Question?
What does Lanham mean by the "strong defense" and the "weak defense"?
I think if we can collectively answer these questions alone, we'll be able to move more readily to Lanham's arguments about curriculum and the rhetoric/philosophy split. And I do think re-articulating what Lanham has in mind in these early pages is difficult--so just give it a try.
Here' s a link to my framework for the Lanham reading with suggested additional pages for those of you who are interested in reading more.
Framing for Lanham Reading
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Not sure if I was really supposed to post, but writing it out helped me make sense of it and I figured since we have a prompt I might as well share.
*Disclaimer: This is just a record of my thoughts, I can't guarantee if this is on the right track!
Lanham begins by talking about how changes in technology prompt people to question change, often defending old ways. (i.e. Defending the book from the advent of the internet.) He asks the question “what are we trying to protect” which, while not the “Q” question, alludes to the idea that rhetoric/literature/education is in some way in danger. Lanham then introduces two key questions posed by Quintillian:
“Is the perfect orator a good man as well as a good orator?”
“If oratory serves only to empower evil then what has he spent his life doing?”
For me, these questions are definitely at the heart of the “Q” question. Quintillian was arguing that only good men could be orators and excel at rhetoric because bad men lacked the high morals needed to successfully support an argument. However, there are problems with this definition. These problems include defining who determines “good” and “bad”, and proving that good actually does triumph. Quintillian and others were concerned with training men in rhetoric because of the power rhetoric has over an audience. Power that has no limits except those put upon it by its user.
This brings me to the “Q” question as I see it. The question is not whether rhetoric is good or bad, but in whether it should be taught and how. Does rhetoric/language conduce to virtue more than vice? Or are teachers of rhetoric (or other similar disciplines?) contributing to the potential for rhetorical abuse by giving power to people regardless of their morality?
What Lanham calls the weak defense of the “Q” question says that rhetoric can be both good and bad. Rhetoric used for good causes is good, while rhetoric used for bad causes is bad. The flaw in this however, is in who determines a good cause from a bad. This defense only works when the situation suits.
The strong defense seems to deal with truth more than rhetoric. Man determines truth here, and rhetoric is what determines this truth. There is any number of truths and argument is open ended. I interpret this as saying that it is through the process of argumentation and rhetoric that truth is determined. Without rhetoric there would be no truths of good or evil.
As a side note, Lanham is claiming that he wrote this in the space of a day. I am not sure this is something to brag about. Clarity should not be abandoned, regardless of the complicated nature of your argument. Extra time spent cleaning up his ideas would not have hurt.
After reading and re-reading the selected pages from Lanham’s “Q” Question, I find I have more questions of my own than any type of answer. First, I understand the “Q” question to be whether or not we take literally Quintillian’s assertion that “no man, unless he be good, can ever be an orator.” So, this gets us back to Isocrates and his belief that the study of rhetoric will improve the student’s character/virtue/morality.
According to Lanham’s “Q” question, the challenge is to design a curriculum that re-integrates rhetoric and philosophy as they were before 16th century French humanist Peter Ramus separated them – to develop a humanities curriculum that integrates ethics/values/philosophy. This type of humanities education would go beyond the Writing Across the Curriculum that is used in many schools. I see this type of education as bringing questions of ethics and values into the computer science class and the business administration class. The goal would be to educate the whole person – intellect and character.
To implement this type of curriculum would take more resources than we currently have for education. And what will schools teach and how will they teach in a diverse society? And how will teachers be trained to teach this broad humanities curriculum?
The Weak Defense argues that good rhetoric is used in good causes, the bad rhetoric in bad causes. The Strong Defense says that truth is not determined so superficially, but is determined by hearing arguments and deciding which is the good argument, the argument for truth. And that brings me back to the “Q” question – we need an education that gives us the requisite tools for determining from listening to two opposing arguments – regardless of who is making those arguments and our assumptions – what the truth really is.
My stab at the Q question is this:
It's not really a question as much as a broad, complex problem. Qunitilian's question was whether the perfect orator must also be a good man. He of course answers "yes!" unconvincingly, even fallaciously, by noting that if the answer were "no," he would've wasted his life, and "nature" would've endowed us with a tool for evil. Such is the trap you set for yourself when you divide the world into black/white good/evil. So part of the problem is Quintilian's "nonanswer" to his own question.
Another part of the problem relates to teaching. If language is as powerful as teachers insist, and if teaching the proper use of it doesn't also teach virtue, how can we be sure we're not teaching our students something that is ultimately corrupting?
Yet another part relates to technology. Quintilian's "nonanswer" is resonant in our culture, so that whatever technology acts as the principal bearer of language is seen as sacred. That technology used to be the book, but the book is being replaced by digital forms of technology, so the book's sacredness is lost. This brings up Qunitillian's question again, only in a modernized format: must the bearer of language be "good"? And does that mean that whatever supplants it is "bad"?
Lanham makes the Q question confusing by first referring to it as a "problem" that encompasses everything in the essay's first paragraph, and then referring to it again as an actual question, which I (maybe wrongly) assume is the same as Quintilian's original question. He does this on p 156, in his discussion of the law courts, jurisprudence and the "Strong Defense," and throughout the essay.
The strong defense and the weak defense both answer "yes" to the Q question. The weak defense (155) has a sharply defined line separating good from bad, is the defense used by Quintilian, and is couched in intellectualism and doesn't run up against people who oppose it, like speech actually does. As far as I can tell, the weak defense is used by people sitting alone in their studies. The strong defense is used by people who deal with the messiness of speech every day. It doesn't so much recognize good and bad speech as it does truth and non-truth. Those words judged to be truthful literally become truth by setting a precedent by which future related instances are judged.
I think Lanham is saying that the weak defense is answering “no” to Quintillian’s assertion that only a good man can be a good rhetor. Having been conditioned by our post-sixteenth century western education to separate thought and speech, we can easily accept that both good and bad men can use speech to great effect. Rhetoric, after all, is just the cosmetic—the style and delivery. It has nothing to do with invention, argument, and arrangement. Answering "no" is the easy way out, and it makes rhetoric the scapegoat. We don’t need to teach rhetoric because it’s just window dressing. And clearly it can be used for evil purposes, so, in fact, we shouldn’t teach it!
Answering “yes” to Quintillian’s assertion is the strong defense because it involves piecing back together the two sides of rhetorical paideia that Ramis divided. Ramis’s separation allowed subjects to be compartmentalized and discreetly defined, making them easier to pin down and to understand. Rejoining rhetoric and philosophy means that we once again have to accept that there are multiple truths, each dependant on human experience, and that language and thought are inseparable. If we accept these ideas, suddenly everything is linked and movable. There is no absolute Truth—this is much harder to understand than Platonic/Ramist definitions and classifications, much less to explain or defend.
Claiming that a good orator must be a good man is a declaration that thought and speech are inseparable. It’s a stronger argument because it requires us to move out of our comfort zone and question the foundation of our current educational system. It relies on an intellect capable of understanding much deeper concepts than simple black-and-white, good vs. bad issues.
*THE FOLLOWING IS PROBABLY WRONG*
The "weak defense" of Western education/humanism follows a line of argumentation roughly equivalent to that of Plato/Socrates' critique of rhetoric: there is a right or "good" way to promote discourse for a desirable end, as well as a wrong or "bad" way of approaching _paideia_ for ends that are ignoble.
The "Strong Defense" allows rhetoric to be "determinative, essentially creative" (156). Argument is not fixed and formalized (as it would be in Plato's dialectic), but shifting and "open-ended" (156).
Basically, the "Q" question seems to boils down to the following (as previous bloggers have already noted): "What value(s) do we presuppose to confer to students in teaching them about the humanities?" Another question is implied, too: "What are the humanities, and do they somehow possess intrinsic values which are readily transmissible to students (and ourselves, if we happen to teach)?"
I haven't read the rest of Lanham's essay, but I would wonder whether all the texts which he surveys are, in fact, readily categorizable into one of the two available options.
I found the Lanham reading quite entertaining but at times a bit obtruse. I, like Lanham, saw the echoes of Isocrates in the "Q question." It seems that both the connection of ethics and virtue to rhetoric have been questioned time and time again! My interpretation of both readings is that the "Q Question" refers to teaching ethics and virtue (Paidea) in the context of rhetoric. The idea that only a good man can be a good orator (or rhetor) seems to be unanswerable and possibly unteachable.
I think it is humorous that Peter Ramus finds that "indeed that such a definition of an orator seems to me to be useless and stupid." I agree with his idea to 'cut' Rhetoric down to size by removing the philosophical nature that "big rhetoric" seems to want to encompass. After all of our readings, precisely because of this lingering (and frankly, FORCED) connection to making rhetoric equal virtue, I believe that only 'little rhetoric' is realistic.
Though I agree with Ramus's idea of removing the philosophy from rhetoric, I can't agree with his idea to put everything in a box where it is NOT allowed to mingle. This might have been possible before- when it was impossible to know what others in the field (or other fields) were doing. But now, in the midst of the information age, I think these distinctions cannot remain and would not be able to maintain their separateness. These false separations cause fragmentation and are not possible when the world, both people to people but also in academia, is trying to connect to each other by finding commonality.
I am consumed these days with teaching, so I read everything through the lens of pedagogy. What should I teach and how should I teach it? I come away from Lanham with this: in answer to the Weak Defense that rhetoric is divided into two parts, good and bad, and that WE teach the good kind, I will teach basic rhetorical skills and I will assume that my way is the right and good way. On the basic level of skills (how to organize an essay, how to write a complete sentence), I privilege my assessment of what is good vs. bad rhetoric because I have decided (with obvious support from the Institution of Education) that my students need to know how to organize their thoughts, show their understanding and communicate with an academic audience. I don’t worry about the question of good and evil. They can use their skills for whatever ends they deem appropriate when they are in the world. (And I secretly hope that the good will prevail, however naïve that hope may be.)
However, my teaching lens becomes murkier when focused on the Strong Defense. If “truth is determined by social dramas,” then I have to teach my students about Truth and truth. They need to understand social constructs, and the effects of historical and contemporary events on historical and contemporary thinking. And much more. However, I am not sure that they have to understand the mutability of truth before they can effectively use rhetoric as a “determinative, essential creative” force, at least in some ways. It is possible to modify a life by writing--I know this from personal experience. I have used writing to transform my life, both emotionally (through poetry) and materially (through academic writing). Now, I am not sure this is what Lanham is talking about, but using writing in this way is a powerful force and one that I am only beginning to teach. Right now I focus almost exclusively on skills and I am mandated to do so by the Federal Government in the guise of No Child Left Behind. If my students can’t answer the State’s questions in the form the State wants, my kiddos will be deemed Not Proficient and heads will roll. However, as much as I struggle with NCLB, I do believe that in order to get to the place where rhetoric can be determinative and creative, my students must first have some very basic skills. And this brings me to another Quintilian idea: that it takes a lifetime to educate a person. I only have so much time, and most of it is gobbled up by skills. So someone else, in another time and place, can, hopefully, teach my students how to use language in dynamic and generative ways.
Please! Please! Please! Richard, tell me your question! I counted three in the first paragraph:
1. Is the perfect orator … a good man as well as a good orator?
2. [Quintilian] reflects that if oratory serves only to empower evil … then what has he spent his life doing?
3. What has nature done to us, if she allows something like that? Turned language, man’s best friend, into a potential enemy?
I’m going to work on the premise that number 1 is the condensed version of the Q Question. Rather it is the question. I keep thinking about the word “perfect.” Perfection here is the sum of two decent or imperfect but well-intended parts: good man with good orator. In this equation, perfection is achieved through the marriage of a persuasive speaker with a virtuous person. I buy into this idea, because being a perfect orator is larger than being a good person. And I think being a perfect man is impossible, but achieving at least moments of oratorical perfection are possible.
I think it’s possible to be a good man while being a bad orator (e.g. deceased comedian, Mitch Hedberg) and to be a bad man while being a good orator (e.g. former governor of LA, Edwin Edwards). Good man plus good orator equals perfect orator (e.g. Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Lincoln).
I was also struck by the amount of ego and self-flagellation within Quintilian that Lanham turns up. Q. seems to suffer from delusions of grandeur as he worries about creating oratory, only to see it corrupted (155). Naturally, he worries about the abuse of the power of rhetoric, and this is inevitable. I parallel Quintilian’s line of thought with, should Wagner lament the music he wrote because Hitler embraced it? Should Billy Holiday lament ever singing “Gloomy Sunday” because a few people have committed suicide to the tune?
Quintilian articulated some ideas about rhetoric, but he didn’t invent “turned language” (155), and mother nature never invented anything.
Concerning the strong defense and the weak defense—you know what, I’m going to abandon my close reading of Lanham here and rely on my dicey reading comprehension. I’m going to shoot from the hip, because I don’t have the energy to go back and re-read this passage in the beginning of his essay and try to reconcile his arguments about the weak and the strong defense with the multiplicitous, singular question he posed in the beginning.
O Richard, when is your prose style going to catch up with the freshness of your ideas on prose style? When is your information going to be presented with an economy that is not bloated an indebted to Proust and gaseous translators like George Kennedy?
How is the Q Question “coming after us these days” in humanities departments (156)? Personally I am sick of justifying my interest and my study of arts and letters to engineers, computer programmers, former potential fathers-in-law, and physicists (bomb makers). I’ll even concede that they need me much less than I need them. They build the machines I use and design the roads I travel on. But I’m sure they can carry on without me if even if their memos and research papers are published unedited, of if they never learn the difference between and simile and a metaphor.
For me the topic of justifying the humanities is too political. Can’t we all just stop it? The U.S. oppresses liberal, performing, and visual arts and pushes math/science learning to ensure the perpetuation of its defense programs.
I think by the strong defense Lanham pleads or hopes for the acceptance of interdisciplinary studies, the inversion of Ramus’s prescriptive and rigid approach to subdividing the five canons of rhetoric. Can all the discipline’s just acknowledge a dependence on each other? I can appreciate what many engineers do, I don’t ask them to justify their existence, I don’t understand what they do, but I rely on it. Can the scientists and politicians stop asking us why we do what we do? Any defense of humanities is a weak defense. Are we the only field still trying to justify our existence!?
After reading through everyone's comments I find that my idea of the Q question was a bit different. I do agree that Lanham asks several questions. As I read through the article (well the selected pages) I was interested in his question regarding truth, it seems this question asks what or who determines truth. It seems like the weak and strong defense are both dealing with truth as an underlining issue that continues to creap up in later discussion. The strong defense is seeking truth from social dramas, asking the courts to find truth. The weak defense is split into two, the good and bad. Well, a bad orator is supposed to be a bad human and therefore doesn't appreciate truth?!?
I have to admit that I was also interested in the work Lanham does regarding technology. As I sit here and post my ideas about Lanham's rhetoric on a 21st century technology tool, I must consider the importance of technology on rhetoric, especially when considering audience and delivery. This new method of transmitting information is amazing, my thoughts will be available for public consumption in a matter of minutes. How does this change hte idea of truth or the good/bad orator. What will my writing provide that will help the audience judge whether I value truth or if I'm a good orator? Education now invests a great deal of time teaching students about invention, not only on paper but via technology. How do teachers decide what to teach students and does truth come into this equation? I think it does, I talk to my students about crediting their sources, doing the research necessary to support their ideas, and above all writing something that they believe is their best work. Lanham states that the Q question "clearly it applies not only to rhetoric, but to all teaching of the arts and letters, to everything we call the humanities. To design a humanities curriculum you must know how you get from a theory of reading and writing to a curriculum, and that requires having a theory of and writing in the first place." (156) This is incredibly interesting, how do we as teachers move from theory to practice? I think it is a topic that is increasingly important because technology is changing so rapidly there are so many more options for pedogogy. The web offers an incredibly easy way to access new information, new theories, and new ways to present information. I think the Q question is still a valuable question.
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