ABSTRACT
The relatively recent rise of Composition and Rhetoric as a separate discipline in the United States has enabled a return of the popular definition of rhetoric to its classical roots as the art ultimately of knowing and living in a mediated world. This chapter looks at the historical and philosophical trajectory of what is called current-traditional rhetoric', as it is ascribed as a pedagogical result, in part, of a Ramistic view of rhetoric. It explores the historical and intellectual relationship between Ramist, Scottish Common Sense Philosophy, and Peircean method and rhetoric. The chapter provides support for a re-evaluation of Petrus Ramus' contribution to the evolution of Composition studies in the US Theoretical and philosophical similarities between Ramist rhetoric and Scottish Common Sense rhetoric have also been suggested in light of their later pedagogical fruits. There is a profound philosophical and logical relationship between the current-traditional practice of teaching the arts of language and Ramus' logical method.
