Notes on Aristotle's On Rhetoric (Kennedy, trans.)

30 March 2013

Rhetoric Before Aristotle

From G. Kennedy’s (2007) translation:

“Rhetoric, in the most general sense, can be regarded as a form of mental or emotional energy imparted to a communication to affect a situation in the interest of the speaker” (p. 7).

”… rhetoric is a featre of all human communication, even of animal communication” (p. 7).

The development of rhetoric, as a form of study, embodies much of the “distinctive qualities” (p. 9) that formed in conjunction “with the development of democracy in Athens and some other Greek cities.” - “highly argumentative, contentious people” - city-states always at war amongst each other - if not at war, then they formed athletic competition - Greek democractic policies in 4th&5th century bce; invented the practice of voting (majority wins) for decisions; this also transfered into the law courts, where public speaking and civic engagement became a central part of being a citizen.

difference between Aristotle and Isocrates’ teachings

Aristotle emphasized “truth, knowledge of subject, and logical argument” (p. 13), while Isocrates was more inclined “to gloss over historical facts and his obsession with techniques of amplification and smoothness of style.” Isocrates also never used the term rhetoric or rhetorike in reference to his own teachings, while Aristotle and his “study of dialectic led him to realize that rhetoric, like dialectic, was an art, capable of systematic description, which differed from most other arts and disciplines in teaching a method of persuasion that could be applied to many difference subject matters” (p. 14).

Aristotle’s division of intellectual activity

1 “theoreticl sciences, where the goal is ‘knowing,’ knowledge for knowledge’s sake, and which include mathematics, physics, biology, and theology; 2. practical arts, where the goal is ‘doing’ something, including politics and ethics; and 3. productive arts of ‘making’ something, including architecture, the fine arts, the crafts, and also medicine (which produces health). (p. 16)

Passage 1.2.7 describes “rhetoric as a mixture” of method (dialiectic) and the practical arts – an “architectonic subject of politics” (Kennedy, p. 16).

(p. 18) “Aristotle, unlike Plato, was a formalist in the sense that he was interested in describing phenomena of the natural and social world on the basis of observation; he clearly became interested in rhetoric as a social phenomenon and potentially as a practical application of his theories of logic, and he was capable of giving a detached, objective account of it as of other subjects and of describing this to students.”