ABSTRACT
The two dominant strategies for the historical definition of rhetoric are both strategies of comparison, and both are unsatisfying. First, the quarrel, or at least the dialogue, of rhetoric and philosophy has sponsored a great deal of research as well as invective; second, the place of rhetoric in the Trivium, as independent of or dependent on grammar and logic, has been the organizational metaphor for much of the history of rhetoric as institution and of rhetorical pedagogy. Descartes most certainly is aware of the novelty of his treatise; he claims he is the first to attempt a complete taxonomy of the passions, and he also claims a “distance” between his effort and all previous efforts to classify. Again, while making no claim that Descartes consulted this text, the parallel account in classical medical literature is Galen’s On the Passions and Errors of the Soul.
