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Rhetoric as Philosophy. The Humanist Tradition

1969; Iter Press; Volume: 18; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.33137/rr.v18i3.12704

2293-7374

Ernesto Grassi, Michael Krois, Azizeh Azodi, Leonard Pennachetti,

Classical Philosophy and Thought

interpretation and discussion of these authoritative texts remained so little touched by political, social, and economic forces for change enables the author to study the corpus quite adequately within its own context, Maclean attributes the tenacity of the "outmoded" notion of woman within this universe of discourse to two factors, "the desire to foster and preserve the scholastic synthesis" and "the influence on thought of the institution of matrimony" (p.82), although the latter is not central to this particular study."The complexity of the notion of woman, and the dislocations which occur within that notion ... reflect well the hesitancies and incoherences inherent in Renaissance modes of thought" (p.3-4).Maclean uses carefully-structured sets of questions (worthy of the texts he is analysing) to lead his reader through the commonplaces about woman's "defective" and "inferior" nature as developed by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas from mis- interpreted Pythagorean dualities, and re-interpreted and reinforced through the interaction of all the major disciplines within the scholastic synthesis: theology, medicine, ethics, and law.Neither Protestant re-definition of marriage nor medical functionalism (Fallopio) nor neo-platonic idealism (Castiglione's Giuliano de 'Medi- ci) nor humanist legal historicism could dislodge the notion nor its effects, so that it still prevailed in the 17th century (and, it might be added, prevails in some quarters today).Besides those extra-intellectual factors Maclean encourages others to analyse, linguistic strategies such as paradox and humour, humanist relativism, neoplatonic spirituality, marianism, and representations of handsome, active women in the visual arts had some effect for change.In all of these, the defense of woman often "represents a strategy of discourse which is subversive in intention" (p.91) not only with regards to women but with regards to the scholastic systhesis as a whole.Thus Maclean carefully selects and effectively musters information about the Renaissance notion of woman, and about the flaws and the tenacity of the scholastic synthesis itself.Further, his documentation of the incredible force of linguistic commonplaces translated between disciplines within an authoritative but increasingly irrelevant synthesis suggest a model for the analysis of any rigid, restrictive or outmoded intellectual system.