The Relationship Between Ethics and Rhetoric in Higher Education and its Ramifications

Abstract

ABSTRACT This project traces the historical relationship between ethics and rhetoric in higher education. It selectively utilizes influential people and periods to demonstrate how Western rhetorical education’s relationship to ethics has been shaped. This history starts in ancient Greece, with the philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, then travels through Quintilian to the Renaissance and Peter Ramus, whose influence carries into the founding of universities in the United States. The thesis demonstrates how, as American society evolved, the influences of religion, politics, the founding fathers, and The Scottish Enlightenment helped shape not only American universities but also the relationship between ethics and rhetoric in US higher education. It then shows how as the US population expanded, the effects of the Civil War, World War II, and public discourse around education further shaped US higher education and its purpose. Finally, it tracks the effect of 20th-century rhetoric and writing teachers, the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), The New Critics, The New Rhetoric, and the general organization of university departments, revealing how these affected the make-up and content of rhetorical instruction in higher education and its relationship with ethics as it exists in the present moment.