Practical Paideia

Summit Christian Academy

Summit Christian Academy

What are the stages of the trivium?

The three stages of the Trivium are grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. 

What is Rhetoric?

Rhetoric is the faculty of observing in any given case all of the available means of persuasion.

How should rhetoric be used?

I should think, write, and speak in such a way as to bring others to embrace truth, beauty, and goodness as God intended.

What is our responsibility as rhetoricians?

Rhetoric liberates the student “to handle the world, to remake it, if only a little, and to hand it to others in a shape which may influence their actions.” | Richard Weaver

To establish ethos, what must the speaker communicate?

The speaker must communicate arete (good moral character), eunoia (goodwill), and phronesis (good moral sense).

What is pathos governed by?

Pathos is governed by imagery.

With respect to the appeals, how should a speech be ordered?

A speech should be ordered by ethos, logos and then pathos.

What is the substance of persuasion?

Enthymeme is the substance of persuasion; it is at the heart of Aristotle’s Rhetoric.

What are the five canons of rhetoric?

Invention, organization, style, memory, and delivery.

What are the five common places of invention?

The five common places of invention are definition, comparison, relationship, circumstance, and testimony.

How should we deliver a speech?

“Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature…  hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature ..” | William Shakespeare, “Hamlet”