Ch Essay

Trace Doehrmann

Professor Chaput

Core Humanities 201

14 October 2015

A Matter of Ethics

Marcus Tulius Cicero and Marcus Fabias Quintilian might both have the same first name and might both be famous theorists and philosophers but they both have different views on education and rhetoric. To provide background, Cicero was not only a philosopher but also a politician, lawyer, orator, political theorist, and constitutionalist that came from a wealthy family that paid to educate him in rhetoric and philosophy. Even though he provided little new philosophy, he was an excellent translator and he translated many Greek ideas into Latin. Quintilian is known for his writings in education and rhetoric that was used as a strong influence in the schools in the Roman Empire. His method is a mix of speaking, reading and writing. They can be closely related and paralleled and I am going to compare who the better of the two is by rivaling their teachings on educating the ideal orator. I am going to point out a specific difference between the two philosophers and explain which philosopher will take us down the better path in present day society.

To make a decision on which philosopher has a superior philosophy than the other, we must first fully understand the teachings of both philosophers. Based off of the text, I grasped that Cicero’s teachings said that the ideal orator would have to be very knowledgeable on all subjects including law, politics, history, literature, ethics, warfare, medicine, and even arithmetic and geometry. He basically said that an orator must become well rounded in all these subjects to become a worthy orator. The problem with Cicero’s outlook on the ideal orator is that he would demand the orator to have a natural ability to be educated in all these subjects. In the text when Crassus speaks of training, he brings up the fact that even though rhetoric may be an art and a gift, there is still room for practice to avoid miscommunication in the real...