Rereading Aristotle’s Rhetoric PDF
Preview Rereading Aristotle’s Rhetoric
Page iii Rereading Aristotle's Rhetoric Edited by Alan G. Gross & Arthur E. Walzer Page iv Copyright © 2000 by the Board of Trustees, Southern Illinois University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 03 02 01 00 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Rereading Aristotle's Rhetoric / edited by Alan G. Gross and Arthur E. Walzer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. 1. Aristotle. Rhetoric. 2. Rhetoric, Ancient. I. Gross, Alan G. II. Walzer, Arthur E., 1944– . PN173.A7R47 1999 808.5—dc21 9930460 ISBN 0809322676 (cl. : alk. paper) CIP The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.481992. Page v Alan Gross would like to dedicate his portion of the volume to his three children: Jessica, Joshua, and Sarah. Arthur Walzer dedicates his portion to his wife, Ginny. Page vii CONTENTS Preface ix On Book 1 of the Rhetoric 1. Aristotle's Rhetoric and the Contemporary Arts of Practical Discourse 3 Robert N. Gaines 2. What Aristotle Meant by Rhetoric 24 Alan G. Gross 3. Aristotle on Speaking "Outside the Subject": The Special Topics and 38 Rhetorical Forums Arthur E. Walzer On Book 2 of the Rhetoric 4. The Contemporary Irrelevance of Aristotle's Practical Reason 57 Eugene Garver 5. Pathos and Katharsis in "Aristotelian" Rhetoric: Some Implications 74 Jeffrey Walker 6. Aristotle's Enthymeme As Tacit Reference 93 Thomas B. Farrell 7. Two Systems of Invention: The Topics in the Rhetoric and The New Rhetoric 107 Barbara Warnick 8. The Aristotelian Topos: Hunting for Novelty 130 Carolyn R. Miller On Book 3 of the Rhetoric 9. Aristotelian Lexis and Renaissance Elocutio 149 Lawrence D. Green 10. Aristotle and Theories of Figuration 166 Jeanne Fahnestock 11. Aristotle's Rhetoric: A Guide to the Scholarship 185 Arthur E. Walzer, Michael Tiffany, and Alan G. Gross Literature Cited 204 Contributors 227 Index 231 Page ix PREFACE Whitehead's observation that the history of philosophy is one long footnote to Plato can for us be transferred to the Rhetoric: All subsequent rhetorical theory is but a series of responses to issues raised by that central work. But the link between philosophy and rhetoric represents more than the appropriation of a convenient trope. This volume appears at a time when philosophers are beginning to show a genuine interest in the Rhetoric. This attention is both new and welcome. Half a century ago, David Ross saw the Rhetoric as "a curious jumble of literary criticism with secondrate logic, ethics, politics, and jurisprudence, mixed with the cunning of one who knows well how the weaknesses of the human heart are to be played upon" (1949, 275). The verdict at century's end could be just as dismissive. In 1995, Jonathan Barnes affirms that "modern philosophy does not greatly occupy itself with rhetoric" and justifies this neglect by affirming that despite all contention to the contrary, rhetoric is not an Aristotelian art (Barnes, 1995a, 259, 264). Two recent collections within philosophy, one edited by David J. Furley and Alexander Nehamas, the other by Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, are far more sympathetic. But their perspective remains, no doubt appropriately, philosophical. Amélie Rorty describes the motive behind her volume in terms that speak for both collections: "to reclaim the Rhetoric as a philosophical work, to analyze its relation to Aristotle's ethics, politics, and poetics; his psychology and logic; his account of practical reasoning; his views on how styles of language affect persuasive arguments" (1996, ix). The essays in both collections reflect this emphasis. For these scholars, the Rhetoric is a minor work in the Aristotelian corpus. Though no longer an embarrassment, it is not regarded as particularly significant. Their interest lies largely in showing how the Rhetoric illuminates the corpus as a whole. Their method is systematically to interpret the more philosophically oriented passages in the Rhetoric in ways that cohere best with Aristotle's philosophy. Doctrines Aristotle advances in the Rhetoric are contrasted with those in the Ethics and Politics, or they are treasured for the light they cast on other works, such as the Topics. Where there are inconsistencies between what Aristotle says in the Rhetoric and ideas he advances in other treatises (and there are many), these latter works are given priority, and the apparent discrepancies in the Rhetoric are explained as resulting from its earlier composition or its having been written for a popular audience. The perspective of the contributors to Rereading Aristotle's "Rhetoric," for the most part scholars in speech communication, rhetoric, and composition, contrasts markedly with those of the philosophers featured in the other two collections. Our Page x theme is not that the ancient quarrel between philosophy and rhetoric has been renewed but that a healthy division of labor must be assumed: Purely rhetorical issues are genuine and must be explored. For such explorations, the Rhetoric is central. Because Aristotle situates his reflection in opposition to Platonic and Sophistic versions of rhetoric, even those who might have preferred a different starting point have tended to frame their views with reference to his positions. There is no comparable situation in any other discipline: No other discipline would claim that a single ancient text so usefully informs current deliberations on practice and theory. The essays in Rereading Aristotle's "Rhetoric" reflect on questions basic to rhetoric as a humanistic discipline while simultaneously interpreting the meaning of its central concepts. Some essays explore how the Rhetoric can help us understand the nature of the art. On this issue, the tensions within the Rhetoric often provide a direct passageway into our own conflicts. What does it mean to say that rhetoric is generative or epistemic as distinguished from instrumental or managerial? Should we think of rhetoric as the basis for an art of civic deliberation? Within this volume, Miller's exploration on topical invention within the Aristotelian tradition has implications for the first question; Gross's exploration of the meaning of tekhnê for the second. What does it mean to say that rhetoric is a contextualized, culturally situated art in contrast with arts such as logic and dialectic that have made more universalistic claims? Walzer's exploration of the special topics and Warnick's comparison of Aristotelian topical system to Perelman and OlbrechtsTyteca's are informed by this question and contribute to answering it. Other essays show how a rhetorical perspective is distinguished from others. When Walker finds that Aristotle's account of the passions in the Rhetoric is not completely compatible with some typical Aristotelian attitudes, his impulse is not to explain away the inconsistency but to reflect on what this distinctive account suggests about rhetoric. In a similar vein, Farrell's probing of the enthymeme does not privilege logic's syllogism; rather, it attempts to understand what "validity' might mean in a rhetorical context. The influence the Rhetoric's treatment of style had on subsequent understandings of rhetoric, the concern of Fahnestock's essay, is, or ought to be, near the center of our disciplinary concerns. This is equally true of John Kirby's essay on metaphor, originally meant for this volume but now readily available (see Literature Cited). As do philosophers, then, we probe the Rhetoric to understand our own discipline. Nevertheless our concerns are as distinctive as the disciplines themselves are. Our commitment to the Rhetoric as a document of continuing relevance to our work as teachers and scholars does not imply a consensus on its meaning and use. Our differences may perhaps be best understood by means of Edward Schiappa's distinction between historical reconstruction—the attempt to capture the concepts and details of a work in its own terms—and contemporary appropriation—the attempt to infer contemporary applications (Schiappa, 1990, 193–94). Within this volume, Gaines faces the issue directly, warning us of the dangers of irrespon Page xi sible appropriation, while Garver's essay demonstrates that even responsible appropriation is problematic. For his part, Green puts the issue into historical perspective by demonstrating how it was contested even in the interpretative practices of the Renaissance. It is probably true that none of the contributors to this volume would embrace historical reconstruction for its own sake; nor would those interested in extending or applying the Rhetoric deny the necessity of grounding their interpretations in Aristotle's words or concepts. This volume, we hope, contributes to the progress of the discipline not by implying an unreasonable consensus but by raising the standards of what constitutes responsible disagreement. We hope that scholars in philosophy and classics who have an interest in Aristotle will read and review this volume. We think that we have something to say to those two communities of scholars to whom we are, and will remain, heavily indebted. We also hope that our audience will include the rising numbers of scholars in other disciplines—history, philosophy, anthropology, and law, to name a few—who have found a rhetorical perspective useful in their own work. Our primary audiences are, nevertheless, scholars in rhetorical studies, including most prominently scholars in speech communication and composition, two disciplines that together embody a tradition characterized by a concern with rhetorical performance that stretches back unbroken to the Sophists, the first teachers of rhetoric. In these disciplines—two traditions of practice separated in American universities by historical accident rather than by a divergence in fundamental aims—everyone has meditated on the Rhetoric in search of a firmer disciplinary identity. Within this tradition, the Rhetoric is by consensus the chef d'oeuvre, the fountainhead, of such meditations. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from the Rhetoric are from Aristotle on Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, translated by George A. Kennedy (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). Quotations from other Greek and Latin texts are from the Loeb editions unless otherwise noted. Page 1 ON BOOK 1 OF THE RHETORIC Page 3 1— Aristotle's Rhetoric and the Contemporary Arts of Practical Discourse Robert N. Gaines Although the contemporary reception of Aristotle's Rhetoric has been the focus of substantial scholarly attention in Europe and America, there has been little consideration of what is arguably the most significant influence of the work in the twentieth century—namely, its application in the theory, criticism, and pedagogy of the practical arts of discourse. Accordingly, the present essay describes and provisionally assesses the principal ways that contemporary thinkers have used the Rhetoric in this connection. Within the essay, special attention is paid to applications of the Rhetoric in the disciplines of communication and English composition. Introduction The place of Aristotle's Rhetoric in twentiethcentury thought has recently received treatment in two surveys, Natali (1994) and Leff (1993). Natali surveys European scholarship since 1950, focusing on the relation of Aristotle to "philosophical aspects of the modern revaluation of rhetoric." On Natali's account (367–70), the recent reconsideration of rhetoric originates in the works of Perelman and Gadamer, both of whom see Aristotle as offering a rhetorical mode of practical deliberation, one which may replace the scientific mode of formal reasoning associated with Descartes. 1 But whatever these theorists might share, Natali observes, they differ in their conceptions of rhetorical deliberation, for Perelman understands it as a means of inward reflection and preparation for reasoning to good decision, while Gadamer considers it a form of power and a means of shaping civic conscience (369). Natali argues that much European research on rhetoric after Perelman and Gadamer has developed in response to their views. He points, for instance, to Gadamerian proposals that as a model of practical rationality, rhetoric is essentially democratic (370– 71, 377–78).2 He also discusses positions more consistent with Perelman's stance, where rhetoric is conceived as a generative art that enriches common sense in discovering matters and arguments (371–72).3 Ultimately, Natali
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