Rise and decline of Rhetoric in the European education

Abstract

In this article are discussed the major marks of the Rhetoric´s historic route as an integrant discipline of education for the European cult. Its birth is presented in ancient Greece of referring particularly Plato and Aristotles, it should be noted, then, their transformation into Oratory in the Roman civilization and recalling Marcianus Capella, Comenius and the Napoleonic Lyceum, which respectively in medieval, modern and contemporary times, helped to substantiate the educational importance of rhetoric and install it into the school European curriculum. As to this last aspect is exemplified with the essential marks of what incidentally, occurred in the Portuguese teaching between the 16th and 19th centuries. There is, finally, the decline of contemporary Rhetoric and an attempt to its rehabilitation by Chaim Perelman and to a lesser extent, by the Portuguese pedagogue Álvaro Ribeiro. We conclude presenting two possible explanatory hypotheses of this contemporary decline of Rhetoric.