In: Psychology
What is the relevance of faculty psychology to the study of rhetoric in the Enlightenment/modern era?
Answer.
During Enlightenment, The psychological system of rhetoric focuses on the mind-message relationship that is grounded in psychological and epistemological theories particularly in faculty, rational, and common sense psychology. This new rhetoric utilized proofs or testimony experience based on consciousness and rational thought processes according to which listeners come to believe in order to build the connection between speaker and audience. Much before George Campbell’s Pioneer work on rhetoric, more profound and direct influence on rhetoric at the beginning of the seventeenth century was seen in Francis Bacon's theory of psychology. A theory of rhetoric soon emerged which focused on appealing to the mental faculties in order to persuade the audience and it helped in the development of discourses on different styles of communication and persuasion in reaching out to the listeners, thereby strengthening the development of a new rhetoric based on the rational, meaning making intellectual capacity of the listener.