Reconsidering the Intention or Purpose of Aristotle's Rhetoric

Abstract

This essay engages two contemporary views as to the authorial purposes of the Rhetoric. Advocates of one view maintain that Aristotle valued democracy and understood rhetoric to be a form of positive civic or democratic discourse and that the Rhetoric was written to express this view, while others suggest that Aristotle's purpose in writing the Rhetoric was to instruct members of the Academy and Lyceum in the "necessary evil" of using rhetoric to deal with the ignorant masses. In response, I demonstrate that the first view is clearly not supported by the Aristotelian texts and that the second view needs to expand the contexts within which the Rhetoric is understood to include the long and turbulent transmission and editorial history of the Aristotelian corpus before any purpose or intent can be ascribed to Aristotle without so much qualification as to make the ascription essentially meaningless.