“A Good Person Speaking Well” reviews the role of Eloquentia Perfecta in Jesuit Universities. Eloquentia Perfecta effects many aspects of our Jesuit education and the established curriculum, Ratio Studiorum, focusses on practical utility of rhetoric and the cultural enrichment of students. As a class, we discussed the ways in which we use rhetoric every day in our education and lives as well as the cultural background we have acquired in this course. The article defines rhetoric and describes the three different types of rhetoric as Human, Divine, and Heroic.
As a class, we dove into the definition of Eloquentia Perfecta and what it meant to us at Loyola. The class discussed how we studied Eloquentia Perfecta in order to speak with grace, respect, and direction. Mailloux defined Jesuit Eloquentia Perfecta as “an influential form of Christian rhetoric, a pedagogical elaboration of the classical ideal of the good person writing and speaking skillfully for the common good”. I hope that the class walked away from this question, reflecting on how Eloquentia Perfecta applied to their whole life and their whole education.
The role of virtue in Eloquentia Perfecta becomes a prominent part of its definition as the article continued. Coppens, the author of two prestigious books, declared that “it is the chief duty of education to make men virtuous” and that “far more important that any physical power in the orator, are the virtues”. The class discussion following these statements brought up the question of whether virtue is required or recommended in Eloquentia Perfecta. Many believed that one can still speak well without necessarily speaking the truth. However, we came to the realization that the question isn’t whether rhetoric must be virtuous or not, but what virtue is to every individual. We accepted that Eloquentia Perfecta can be interpreted differently to every student and educator and that in attempts to achieve perfect eloquence we must apply our own interpretation of virtue.
My hope is that, as the class continues their education, they consider their interpretation of virtue. I hope that students question the way in which they speak and write and that they choose to speak and write eloquently.
Eloquentia Perfecta 
December 5, 2016 at 6:16 pm
I really enjoyed our discussion about the necessity of virtue in elequentia perfecta. I personally came to the conclusion that virtue is required for eloquence in rhetoric but then struggled to define virtue. I couldn’t agree more that virtue is relative to the person speaking which therefore defines elequentia perfecta as relative to each individual. I would love to discuss how teaching a subject that has a relative definition is interpreted among all the different students. I imagine each member of the class gained something a little different from the class based on our difference definitions of elequentia perfecta and would love to know how my learned knowledge from this class relates to that of my classmates.
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December 5, 2016 at 7:55 pm
As with Ann’s comment above, the class discussion on the nature of rhetoric and our definitions of it was a very good capstone to our study of rhetoric. I personally chose to focus on Mailloux’s insistence on the nature of rhetoric being to make people more virtuous which seemed to run counter to the class’s definition. Over the course of the class we defined rhetoric as the manipulation of words and phrases to perform a rhetorical goal; we studied the rhetorical situations, techniques of style and arrangement, and other ways to achieve our goals. Rhetoric in a perfect world would be used for good, but it is not a perfect world and I disagree with his definition of rhetoric. We must become better rhetors to see and understand the rhetoric we are presented with so that we can make informed decisions.
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December 7, 2016 at 9:03 pm
Colin, I think your statement about rhetoric being used for good only in a perfect is very accurate. When I read the article myself, I first disagreed with Mailloux’s definition that rhetoric must be virtuous. I think that as much as we would like all rhetoric to be virtuous, it simply isn’t. Some of the best rhetoricians argue for unethical things. However, as the course of the discussion followed, the question comes to jurisdiction. Who gets to decide whether the rhetoric is virtuous? Who gets to decide what is virtuous? I hope that when everyone walked away from our discussion, these questions still lingered because there is no right answer. I believe that as rhetoricians ourselves, it is our responsibility to be virtuous by what we believe to be virtue.
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December 5, 2016 at 11:19 pm
It was very interesting to learn about and discuss rhetoric and eloquence in education. For instance, the different uses of rhetoric between practical utility and cultural enrichment. In our class, we practiced understanding and using a number of rhetorical devices. With writing prompts and assignments, as well as oral presentations, we were able to effectively use rhetoric. We also examined rhetoric in a cultural context. Learning about the history and origins of rhetoric not only gave us an understanding of WHAT it is and WHY it’s used, but how it connects to events today and our personal lives. A large focus of our class was on the 2016 U.S. election and how rhetoric was used by both candidates, and how it ultimately determined the results of the election.
Though it was brief, I also thought that the three different types of rhetoric outlined in the reading were interesting: human, divine, and heroic rhetoric.
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December 15, 2016 at 4:56 am
It was certainly very interesting to consider the implications of the ability to use rhetoric effectively, and I can understand why an education that taught rhetorical techniques should also have the responsibility to ensure that the students become virtuous people. With the ability to manipulate opinions and undermine beliefs in others, people trained in rhetoric can be very powerful, so it is important to make sure they don’t use this with bad intentions. I can understand in this sense why virtue is important to Eloquentia Perfecta. However, there is the question of what virtue is, and how the author meant the word “virtue”. As a non-Christian, my idea of virtue is certainly different from that of others in several ways. Are there some common traits that all people can hold up as virtues? From our study of the ancient world, this seems impossible, as Thucydides writes of how, in a time of hardship, people “reversed the normal meanings of words in assessing actions. ’Irrational audacity’ was considered ‘loyal courage’; ‘thinking before acting’ became ‘cowardice’”.
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