Bernard Lamy’s L’Art de Parler Addresses Religious Exigencies

Abstract

Bernard Lamy's view of rhetoric in L'Art de Parler may be explained as an attempt to address religious exigencies. Lamy advises about two religious roles: theologian and preacher. Theologians' attempts to overcome ignorance and preachers' attempts to overcome willful blindness and inattentiveness in congregations help to account for why Lamy views truth as a matter of certainty rather than probability, and argument as syllogistic rather than connected to style and audience beliefs. Since Lamy conceives of a traditional sense of rhetoric—copious eloquence—as a source of religious problems, he advocates a modernized view of rhetoric to address them.