Absolute truth is unknowable (and maybe doesn't exist). Truth has to be established on a contingent, situational basis. Language thus is constitutive; it makes truth/reality.

Corax (Syracuse, Sicily, ~465 B.C.E.)

Trained people to navigate the legal system.

Probability was central to his rhetorical system.  

Contributed the first formal organization of speeches into introduction, argument, conclusion (yes, someone had to invent that)

May have been fictional

Tisias (Athens, Greece, 5th century B.C.E.)

Corax's pupil

Brought rhetoric to mainland Greece

Protagoras (Athens, Greece, c. 480-411 B.C.E.)

Sophist (absolute truth is unknowable or non-existent--truth had to be established in each individual case)

Known for the statement "Man is the measure of all things."

Gorgias (Athens, Greece, c. 485-380 B.C.E.)

Sophist (absolute truth is unknowable or non-existent--truth had to be established in each individual case)

Known for his stance that we can't be certain anything exists, and even if it did, we can't know about it, and even if we could, we could communicate knowledge about it to others, and even if we could, we couldn't guarantee that it would be understood.

Isocrates (Athens, Greece, 436-338 B.C.E.)

Sophist (absolute truth is unknowable or non-existent--truth had to be established in each individual case)

Argued that rhetoric was the stuff of civic governance

Attacked what he saw as shady practices of other for-pay teachers.

Some form of truth exists. It is found through some means and communicated through language. Language is thus a tool of transmission or deception.

Plato (Athens, Greece, 427-347 B.C.E.)

Believed that truth was stable and eternal (this is his world of forms)

Rhetoric's job is to relay truth to others once it had been discovered through dialectic

Aristotle (Athens, Greece, 384-322 B.C.E.)

First formalized a rhetorical system in writing, including canons (although he omitted memory), branches, modes of persuasion, etc.

Drew from the Greeks (sophists and Aristotle) to further systematize a rhetorical system. After the Romans we had many of the elements still in place today (five canons, three types, three appeals).

Cicero (Rome, Italy, 106-43 B.C.E.)

Lived at the end of the Roman Republic (was a contemporary of Julius Caesar) when it was becoming an empire

Was a lawyer, orator, and statesman; lived at a time when language was a principle means to sociopolitical power

Held that the best rhetoric comes from those of high moral character

Quintilian (Rome, Italy, 35-100)

Lived during the Roman empire, when public language was more concerned with style and delivery than content.

Was a lawyer and educator

Believed like Cicero that rhetoric is the "good man speaking well."

Rhetoric was involved with religious preaching (although this was problematic), letter writing, and education. Rhetoric was part of the Medieval Trivium (rhetoric, grammar, logic) that was the core of education.

Augustine (North Africa, 354-430)

Lived at a time when rhetoric was considered a pagan art of ornamentation. This undercut contemporary religious hegemony.

Was a former rhetoric teacher before Christian conversion, and held that preachers needed rhetoric to teach, delight, and move an audience.

Interested in Classical learning. Participated in civic life, and viewed the human world as constructed and/or knowable by language. The human knower is the central piece in this paradigm.

Petrarch (Italy, 1304-1374)

Known as the "Father of Humanism"

Vico (Italy, 1668-1744)

Early example of systemic thinking (as opposed to the reductionism characteristic of Descartes) and constructivism (knowledge is made, not discovered)

Known for "verum esse ipsum factum" (truth itself is made as fact)

Sought objective, permanent, scientific truths. Viewed language as a tool of knowledge transfer.

Peter Ramus (France, 1515-1572)

Invention and arrangement is under the province of logic; only style and delivery are part of rhetoric

Principle rationalist figure

Known for "cogito ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am)

Enlightenment Period

Favored reason over dogma or superstition. Was a period of intellectual growth in many channels, and heavily influenced by rationalism. 

Francis Bacon (England, 1561-1626)

Claimed that sensory experience (the basis for empiricism) was subjective

Argued that "the duty of rhetoric is to apply Reason to Imagination for the better moving of the will."

Modern Period Epistemologists

United Classical rhetoric with contemporary findings in psychology (which was a new area at the time).

George Campbell (Scotland, 1719-1796)

Used psychological findings to make assumptions about a uniform human nature that could be moved through language.

Richard Whately (England, 1787-1863)

Built from Campbell and focused rhetoric on argumantation.

Modern Period Belletrists

Subjected the topic of beauty to critical analysis.

Hugh Blair (Scotland, 1718-1800)

Established the foundations for literary criticism

Introduced a particular concept of taste, which is when sensory pleasure and mental reasoning are in harmony.

Focused on delivery (which had languished) in public speech (preachers, lawyers, civic officials, etc.)

Thomas Sheridan (Ireland, 1719-1788)

Actor and author

Focused on proper speech for public life