Abstracts
After Plato had severely criticized and blamed rhetoric, Aristotle raised it to the status of an “art”, i.e. a practice with defined methods and a rational core. He describes rhetoric as the production and efficient use of pisteis, motives for believing something or changing one’s beliefs. The rationality of rhetoric rests on the fact that it is possible to account for some of these pisteis, namely examples and enthymemes, by means of Aristotle’s own theory of reasoning, the “syllogistic” (which he called “analytics”). Nevertheless, it is important to notice that he did not intend to reduce rhetoric to a part of a logic, nor to make it a full-fledged science. In fact, rhetorical arguments (1) always refer to individuals ad particular situations, (2) they depend on the knowledge of some empirical facts and (3) on the collective recognition of some ends as valuable for the city. Features (1) and (3) link rhetoric with the theory of action and deliberation, while (2) and (3) connect rhetorical arguments with topoi (“places”), i.e. the kind of general patterns of arguments described in Aristotle’s Topics.
I borrowed my citations of Aristotelian texts from the “Revised Oxford Translation”, into which I made such changes as were required to match the interpretations that I want to defend. To avoid making my footnotes too cumbersome, I did not attempt to indicate and justify these changes. I hope that readers who would like to compare my citations with the ROT will easily understand what I have changed and why.
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- 1.
Significantly enough, the Gorgias begins with the words “war” and “fight”. That this opening is not fortuitous may be confirmed by a reference in the Philebus (58b), many years later.
- 2.
Laws IV, 722b ff.
- 3.
For instance in Philebus 58b–59d.
- 4.
Philebus, 57e–58d; Sophistes, 230b––231b (although the “Sophistes” in question remains unnamed, many details suggest that Plato had mainly Gorgias in mind).
- 5.
Gorgias, 462b.
- 6.
Gorgias, 465a.
- 7.
Gorgias, 465d–e.
- 8.
Art of Rhetoric I 1, 1354a 1–11; many characteristical phrases borrowed from the Gorgias passage occur in this chapter. The fact that rhetoric, which Plato paired with cookery, is matched here with dialectic, is particularly striking. But this is also due to the fact that Aristotle, for quite different reasons, downgraded dialectic from the most eminent position where Plato had put it.
- 9.
Art of Rhetoric I 1, 1354a 11–26.
- 10.
Art of Rhetoric I 2, 1355b 35–37.
- 11.
See Art of Rhetoric I, Chapter 15.
- 12.
Art of Rhetoric I 2, 1356a 1–4; I 3, 1358 a 37–b1.
- 13.
Jakobson (1960), p. 352–357.
- 14.
Art of Rhetoric III 1, 1403b 6–15.
- 15.
Art of Rhetoric I 1, 1355a 3–14.
- 16.
Barnes (1995), p. 264.
- 17.
That analytics must have been considered by Aristotle himself as a (compulsory) first stage of philosophical training, as it was later on in the late Antiquity and Middle Ages, is attested by several mentions in the Corpus.
- 18.
In Athens, as well as in many other cities of ancient Greece, penal courts were relatively large assemblies (for instance the 500 Heliasts who sentenced Socrates to death); Aristotle seems to feel that it is in some way inappropriate to call “judge” a single person : cf Art of Rhetoric II 18, 1391b 10–12.
- 19.
Art of Rhetoric I 1, 1354a 24–26, quoted above.
- 20.
“The only question with which these writers here deal is how to put the judge into a given frame of mind, while about technical pisteis they have nothing to tell us”. Art of Rhetoric I 1, 1354b 19–21.
- 21.
Art of Rhetoric I 1, 1354a 26–31.
- 22.
On the good and the ends of human life, see Chapters 5 and 6; on the relative values of goods, see Chapter 7; and also Chapters 13 and 14 for similar points about guilt and injustice.
- 23.
“This [= the ruling part of man] is what chooses. This is plain also from the ancient constitutions, which Homer represented : for the kings announced their choices to the people”. Nicomachean Ethics III 3, 1113a 7–9.
- 24.
Nicomachean Ethics III 3, 1112b 11–16.
- 25.
Maybe someone would wish to call that deliberation too – but then it is of a different kind : not about winning this match or contest, but about becoming a better sportsman.
- 26.
Politics I 2, 1252b 10–15.
- 27.
Notice that this “hypothetical” analysis, which Aristotle sometimes compares with the hypothetical mode of resolution of a mathematical problem, is entirely distinct from the kind of analysis displayed in the Analytics.
- 28.
Metaphysics Z 7, 1032b 6–9; similar views in Physics II 9, 200a 15–24, and Nicmoachean Ethics III 3, 1112b 11–27.
- 29.
Art of Rhetoric I 4, 1359b 2–16 (context : an introduction to the section of Chapter I 4 in which Aristotle lists the main topics about which a political orator must know at least some basic facts, which he will be able to use as premises).
- 30.
Nicomachean Ethics I 3, 1094b 11–27; Metaphysics ∝ 3.
- 31.
Metaphysics A 1, 981a 12–24.
- 32.
Nicomachean Ethics VI 9, 1142a 34 -b 9; cf. VI 5, 1140a 30 - b 10.
- 33.
Phaedo 99d – 100a.
- 34.
Giving the verb dedosthai its technical meaning of “to be granted” (said of a proposition).
- 35.
Gorgias 449 d–e.
- 36.
Gorgias 454b.
- 37.
Art of Rhetoric 1354a 1.
- 38.
Art of Rhetoric I 2, 1356a 30–31.
- 39.
Art of Rhetoric I 1, 1355b 8–9.
- 40.
Before Aristotle, it had been used by Plato, to express that very same character of dialectic (for instance Philebus 57e), even if Plato did hope that dialectic woud lead to a real science.
- 41.
See the celebrated prologue of the Metaphysics, A 1, 980a 21–22.
- 42.
He does not say that in so many words, but he claims that it is “nobler” and “more political” and blames his forerunners for having taught quasi-exclusively forensic oratory (I 1, 1354b 22–1355a 1).
- 43.
On this notion of a “focal meaning”, see Metaphysics Γ 2, 1003a 33–b 4, and its commentary in Owen (1960).
- 44.
These conditions are specified in Nicomachean Ethics III 3, 1112a 18–1113a 2; a similar but shorter list in Art of Rhetoric I 2, 1357a 4–7.
- 45.
Art of Rhetoric I 2, 1356b 28–1357a 1.
- 46.
“Ontology” and “poetics” appear here only as reminders. They are not mentioned in the above-quoted text from Bk I Chapter 4, and the questions of the relationships between poetics and rhetoric, and of course of dialectic with first philosophy, exceed by far the scope of this paper.
- 47.
Cf Crubellier and Pellegrin (2002), pp. 111–113 and p. 149.
- 48.
On the regressive course of analytics, see Crubellier (2008).
- 49.
Art of Rhetoric I 2, 1355b 31–32.
- 50.
“…how we may ourselves always have a supply of deductions in reference to the problem proposed”, Prior Analytics I 27, 43a 20–21.
- 51.
“…find a line of inquiry whereby we shall be able to reason from reputable opinions about any subject presented to us”, Topics I 1, 100a 18–20.
- 52.
The Greek word means “place” and in dialectical contexts it is generally rendered in English by “commonplace”. There is no real objection to this translation, except that in the course of this discussion I will have to mention a distinction between more and less common “commonplaces”, so I chose to keep the Greek word.
- 53.
Topoi are never mentioned in the Analytics; in the Topics the word sullogismos appears with the general meaning of “deduction”, and the characteristical form of the “syllogism” with its two premises and its middle term, never occur. That might suggest a later date for the Rhetoric; but it may also be the case that, for the purposes of a theory of public argument, he found it more convenient to treat the logical disciplines as one body of knowledge.
- 54.
Art of Rhetoric II 21, 1395b 12–14; cf. also II 18, 1391b 20–21, b 25–26.
- 55.
Art of Rhetoric I 2, 1356a 36–b 11.
- 56.
Art of Rhetoric I 2, 1357a 3–4.
- 57.
Art of Rhetoric I 2? 1357a 22-b 1.
- 58.
Hence the later definition of enthymeme as an incomplete (or rather partly implicit) syllogism, with the remade etymology : “contained inside the mind”. But in fact the verb enthumeisthai just means “to reflect”, so that the name enthumema may apply to any moment provided by the speaker for the reflection of the judge or audience.
- 59.
Prior Analytics II 24, 69a 13–19.
- 60.
Here he calls “middle” the term that has an intermediate extension, and not (as he usually does) the one which bridges between the terms of the conclusion.
- 61.
While Aristotelian induction is always based on class attributions, such as “man is long-lived”.
- 62.
Cf. Metaphysics A 1, 980a 8–9 ff.
- 63.
Metaphysics A 1, 980a 10–12, where empirical thought is opposed to art. Does that mean that Aristotle changed his mind between the Metaphysics and the Art of Rhetoric ? Not necessarily. The orator may possess an art, which enables him to devise proofs accessible even to laymen. 64 Prior Analytics II 27, 70a 13–16
- 64.
Prior Analytics II 27, 70a 10.
- 65.
See Metaphysics M 10, 1087a 8–21; On the Soul II 5, 417a 24–29.
- 66.
Including the activities of most animals, cf. The Movement of Animals and On the Soul III, 9–10.68I put the “conclusion” in italics (and without a “Therefore…”) to stress the fact that it is not a piece of knowledge, nor a proposition (even in the form of an order or a summon), but simply an action.
- 67.
Art of Rhetoric II 22, 1396a 4–7 ff.
- 68.
Art of Rhetoric I 4, 1359b 19 ff.; see also I 8, about constitutions.
- 69.
Art of Rhetoric II, 1–17.
- 70.
Art of Rhetoric I 5.
- 71.
Art of Rhetoric I 6.
- 72.
Art of Rhetoric I 9.
- 73.
Art of Rhetoric I 8.
- 74.
Art of Rhetoric I 6, 1362b 30. Although at 1362 b 29–30 Aristotle opposes “the things admittedly good” and “things whose goodness is disputed”, and enumerates in great detail the “admittedly good”, he gives no list of the disputed ones; from his examples, he appears to consider that controversies concern the application of the generally admitted notions of good to some particular object or action.
- 75.
Art of Rhetoric I 6, 1362b 30–1363a 4.
- 76.
Which are listed in Book I Chapter 7, with parallel passages in Chapter 9, 1367a 17–32 (for he epideictic genre) and in Chapter 14 (forensic).
- 77.
Brunschwig (1967), p. xxxix.
- 78.
It would take a long journey through Plato’s works to substantiate that conjecture (which could not be demonstrated with certainty anyway). The passage that lends the best support to it is Phaedo 99e – 100b ff.
- 79.
Topics I 6–8.
- 80.
Topics III 2, 117b 3–7.
- 81.
Art of RhetoricI 6, 1362b 30–31.
- 82.
Art of Rhetoric II 19; cf. also I 3, 1358b 16–17.
- 83.
In an unpublished paper read at Villejuif in June, 2006.
- 84.
Art of Rhetoric I 1, 1355a 38–b 2.
- 85.
Theaetetus 174a -175b; Gorgias 485c–486c.
- 86.
Gorgias 456c–457c, 486b–c, etc.
- 87.
Art of Rhetoric I 1, 1355b 2–7.
- 88.
Gorgias 456c ff.
- 89.
Art of Rhetoric I 1, 1354b 22–1355a 1.
- 90.
Art of Rhetoric I 1, 1354a 31–33.
- 91.
Aristophanes, Wasps, especially lines 545–630.
- 92.
Gorgias 500d–504e ff.
- 93.
Hintikka (1993), p. 22
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Crubellier, M. (2010). Aristotle on the Ways and Means of Rhetoric. In: Gabbay, D., Canivez, P., Rahman, S., Thiercelin, A. (eds) Approaches to Legal Rationality. Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, vol 20. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9588-6_1
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