The deep ecology of rhetoric in Mencius and Aristotle : a somatic guide

332 Pages·2016·13.78 MB·English

by  Aristotle

THE DEEP ECOLOGY
OF RHETORIC IN
MENCIUS AND ARISTOTLE
SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture
Roger T. Ames, editor
THE DEEP ECOLOGY OF RHETORIC IN
MENCIUS AND ARISTOTLE
A SOMATIC GUIDE
DOUGLAS ROBINSON
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2016 State University of New York
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Production, Ryan Morris
Marketing, Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Robinson, Douglas, 1954– author.
Title: The deep ecology of rhetoric in Mencius and Aristotle : a somatic guide / Douglas Robinson.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2016. | Series: SUNY series in Chinese
philosophy and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015027115 | ISBN 9781438461076 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438461083
(e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Mencius—Criticism and interpretation. | Rhetoric, Ancient. | Aristotle—
Criticism and interpretation. | Persuasion (Rhetoric)—History—To 1500.
Classification: LCC B128.M324 R63 2016 | DDC 181/.112—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015027115
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface
1 Mencius and Aristotle as “Deep-Ecological” Theorists of Rhetoric
2 The Group Subject of Persuasion
3 Energy Channeled through Body Language
4 The Circulation of Social Value
5 Conclusion: Aristotle and Mencius on Ecosis
Notes
Glossary
References
Index
Preface
Scope of the Study
This book explores a confluence of five different fields of study, namely
rhetoric, deep ecology, somatic theory, Aristotle and ancient Greek philosophy,
and Mencius and early Confucianism:
rhetoric (§1.1) is traditionally the study of persuasion, and specifically
of the structures and forms of persuasive discourse; the deep
ecology of rhetoric suggests a broader and more holistic
understanding of persuasion, or “persuasivity” (to pithanon), as part
of the circulation through groups of evaluative affect-becoming-
conation (see the Glossary)
deep ecology (§1.1): as founded by the Norwegian philosopher Arne
Naess, deep ecology is the study of the “Self-realization” of the
ecological self, a concept derived from a number of sources,
including Zen Buddhism, Spinoza, and Gandhi; lurking behind his
conception of Self-realization as “realizing inherent potentialities,”
however, is Aristotle’s notion of the entelekheia or entelechy; qì-
driven moral maturation or self-realization is also Mencius’s focal
concern
somatics (§1.2): somatic theory studies the circulation of evaluative
affect through groups as the primary channel of social regulation; to
the extent that the deep ecology of rhetoric is an affective social
ecology, it is specifically a somatic ecology, or what I call in §4.12 a
somatic exchange
Aristotle (§1.2–3, §1.5): the Athenian philosopher (384–322 BCE),
considered the most important Platonist thinker after Plato himself,
and in many ways more important, as he turned his master on his
head—in ways that are remarkably reminiscent of Mencius, his
near-contemporary
Mencius (§1.3–5): the Chinese philosopher (ca. 372–ca. 303 BCE),
considered the most important Confucian thinker after Confucius
himself, and in many ways more important, as he expanded and
complicated the basic Confucian concepts in salutary ways
The sequence in which those fields appear in the list reflects something like
my expertise and argumentative priorities in this book: I admire Mencius and
Aristotle, consider myself something of a follower of both, but I am very far
from being an expert in either, or in classical Chinese or Attic Greek; I mostly
construct the two thinkers as guides to my main concern, namely the deep
somatic ecology of rhetoric. I do firmly believe that my reading of the two
contemporaries is fundamentally on target—that I am not willfully distorting
their thought to suit my argumentative purposes—but I am not a trained
Sinologist, Hellenist, or Sino-Hellenist. I have put in the requisite time with the
bilingual dictionaries and other lexical tools designed specifically for the study
of classical Chinese and Attic Greek, as well as with the last few decades of
scholarship (in English) on both thinkers; my research assistant Rico Chung and
various Chinese friends and colleagues have tracked down and in some cases
translated important scholarly sources for me in Chinese; I have engaged the
various English translations critically, even perhaps tenaciously, reading them
stereoscopically against both the originals and (here and there) their classical
commentators; and my Acknowledgments record my great debt to the scholars
of ancient Greek, classical Chinese, and both philosophical traditions who have
checked my claims about both the meanings of words and phrases in context and
the philosophical positions both thinkers adopt. My readings of specific passages
are on the whole tendentious, and perhaps lean more toward the radical than
toward the conservative; but I would not call them idiosyncratic. My reading of
Aristotle is closely aligned with the readings offered by Nancy Sherman (1989)
and Jeffrey Walker (2000, 2008), for example; and my reading of Mencius is