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Abstract
This essay offers a discussion of Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Its main thesis is a development of Aristotle’s remark that “there is a natural disposition for the true.” If there is such a disposition, most current interpretations that emphasize either the idea that rhetorical arguments are an exception to logical arguments or the idea that logical arguments are rhetorical in nature can be proved false. If so, arguments in political assemblies and courts of law need not be considered in any diminished way— they are no more and no less rational than any other arguments.
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Notes
1. In this essay I use and almost always follow George Kennedy’s annotated translation of the Rhetoric published as Aristotle on Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007)
. Bekker page number references are included in text.2. Aristotle Topics 100a25 as translated by G. Kennedy, 264.
3. In what follows, taking my cue from Aristotle, I will not directly appeal to any notion of literature (or, for that matter, of law), and will not consider what Peter Geach calls the “historicist” objections against “looking for any answer to modern problems, right or wrong, on the part of [ancient] writers,” since, like him, I find them to have, in this case, developed “theories about the same problems.” See Peter Geach, Reference and Generality (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962
; emended edition 1968).4. Chapter 1 of Book 1 is often considered to be at odds with the rest of the work, and indeed a good instance of the sort of theory about rhetoric that discourages taking seriously any theory of rhetoric. See Kennedy 29–30 and Robert Wardy, “Mighty Is the Truth and It Shall Prevail?” in Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, ed. A. O. Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 56–87, esp. 82–83 n.6.
5. Although in general he retains “epideictic,” Kennedy inserts parenthetically “demonstrative” in its first occurrence (48). The precedent was set by Cicero, who translated epideiktikon genos as genus demonstrativum (Inv. 1.12).
6. Kennedy, like Freese before him, translates here “dynamis” as “ability.” I prefer to retain the original term for reasons that will become apparent below. See F. E. Peters, Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon (New York: New York University Press, 1967), 42–45
.7. See Kennedy 48, n.76. Rudolf Kassel argues that this “disruptive insertion” does not come up in Cicero’s otherwise accurate paraphrase of the passage. See his Der Text der aristotelischen Rhetorik: Prolegomena zu einer kritischen Ausgabe (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1971), 125
.8. The latter phrase is used by David Mirhady also as a translation for “dynamis.” See Mirhady, “A Note on Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.3 1358b5–6,” 28 Philosophy & Rhetoric 405–09
.9. Later (1.1366a), Aristotle considers in passing the possibility of praising “seriously or in jest,” “not only a man or a god … but inanimate objects and any random one of the other animals.” I will not consider that possibility here.
10. Eth. Nic. 2.1109a.
11. As well as another, more subtle, implication that poets are ultimately speechwriters and are appreciated for that, id., which is similar to what Plato says (and deplores) in the Republic (see Rep. 3.392c–398b).
12. This has been remarked and discussed by M. F. Burnyeat, “Enthymeme: Aristotle on the Rationality of Rhetoric,” in Rorty, supra note 4, at 93, 94–96.
13. The metaphor is antistrophos, antistrophe, which Kennedy does not translate, indicating in a note that it can mean “counterpart,” “correlative,” “coordinate,” or “converse” (Kennedy 30 n.4). See Jacques Brunschwig, “Aristotle’s Rhetoric as a ‘Counterpart’ to Dialectic,” in Rorty, supra note 4, at 34–55.
14. Indeed Aristotle writes that “example is an induction,” though he qualifies it almost immediately by defining paradeigma as “rhetorical induction,” and so as a species of induction. This is one of the two meanings of “a species of ” that Burnyeat discusses, namely “a species … distinguished from other species by its own mark of difference” (94) (as opposed to “only a sort of,” id.).
15. This is one of the passages that seem to indicate, contra Kassel, that the problematic sentence in 1.1358b is genuine.
16. Though he uses it in passing in the Politics (1.1259a).
17. Cf. The Peloponnesian War, 3.16. For the various uses of the word, see the very instructive Liddell-Scott-Jones, s.v. ‘Epideixis [έπίδειξις]’, whose suggestions I have followed.
18. Cf. also a very similar argument in Ion, 530d, also concerning hapless Ion’s epideixis. At the beginning of the Hippias Minor, Socrates insists on interrogating Hippias on some points of his epideixis (363a–c), again with disastrous results for the orator. In 3.1404a Aristotle suggests that “the majority of the uneducated think such speakers speak most beautifully” and his example is Gorgias. However, for Aristotle, Gorgias’ style is that of all who “acquire their reputation through their lexis,” a direct descendent of the poets, “silly talkers [legontes euêthê]” all.
19. Thus Quintilian famously disagreed with Cicero’s translation of epideiktikon as demonstrativum and claimed that “for me έπιδεικτικόν has not so much the strength of a demonstration as it looks like ostentation [ostentatio],” “exhibition of rhetoric” (Inst. 3.4.13). This is why, as Heinrich Lausberg remarks, unlike Cicero, he uses genus laudativum for genus demonstrativum. All passages in this note quoted by Heinrich Lausberg in Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik (D. E. Orton & R. D. Anderson, eds., M. T. Bliss, A. Jansen & D. E. Orton, trans., G. A. Kennedy, introduction, Handbook of Literary Rhetoric: A Foundation for Literary Study (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 641). ´ on
20. “Demonstrationen in Sinne der militärischen Kunstsprache,” Ath. Frg. 82 in Charakteristichen und Kritiken-I. Kritische Neuausgabe, ed. H. Eichner (München: Schöning, 1967), 2:177. The analogy here cannot be one between the future-oriented activities of military demonstration and the, at best, part-future-oriented activity of epideictic speech (1.1358b). It is rather about badgering off certain people by using certain means. The sense in which praise or blame can be a form of torture is not the point here. Rather, it is the eloquence of the epideictic orator that reduces audiences to impotence or tears—in Schlegel’s words, “no little rhetorical effect.”
21. Isocrates describes one such contest in the Panegyricus (4.45) but begins the Panegyricus by deploring the scarcity of such contests (4.1). G. Norlin, ed. & trans., Isocrates with an English Translation in three volumes (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980).
22. An important difference is, of course, that whereas the first and third sources focus on something inferred by the audiences, the second focuses directly on what happens to the audiences, on the emotions caused by the speech.
23. See Robert Wardy’s discussion of the topic, namely his idea that the inconsistency between Rhet. 1.1 and the remainder of the treatise is to be understood relative to Aristotle’s “earnest engagement in the Gorgias/Gorgias problematic” (83 n.6).
24. Wardy calls it the “neo-Parmenidian conviction that truth prevails in persuasion,” and though he finds it “profoundly important” he also finds it “intensely problematic” (81).