Secondary Sources | Reading Notes
Adam Kissel

--gets huge ratings from Wayne Booth in Philosophy and Literature 19:1 (April 1995).

Ch. 1: "Aristotle's political project is to maximize the active--energeia--side of rhetoric and so civilize the activity of influencing beliefs and judgments and convert into a minor irritant the role played by disreputable tactics such as playing on irrelevant emotions in the hearers" (40). "Once Aristotle shows that there is a rhetorical energeia, and that that activity is limited to argument, only then does the condemnation of emotion deserve to be treated as more than the expression of a preference, or a moral ideal" (38). Seeing R as energeia depends on understanding it as an art, in which the "guiding ends" (the internal goods) are separate from the "given ends" (the external goods). In this idea of "guiding ends," in which the form of the speech-act is its own accomplished end (when R is "successful" in realizing its internal goods), R is most similar to the virtues. (But the virtues are not arts.) At the same time, in R the form means nothing without the "given end" of the actual persuasion of an audience (even if theoretically). Successful transmission of the form, i.e. the proof, from speaker to audience is the practical civic goal of R.

There is always a conflating of meaning: R in general, as the finding and putting together of the means of persuasion; and R specifically, doing so when there is a given speech to be made. (R in the first sense is like the doctor trained in medicine who does not necessarily go on to heal anyone.) Since R has so much to do with the subject matter and with the audience, it looks very close to politics. But good R always also has its general sense in which the internal ends are pursued.

In a science, anybody could give the proof; in rhetoric, where the knowledge is more slippery, it is fundamental that the right person be giving the instruction (i.e. ethos is vital). Furthermore, the virtue of R is that it is actually used for good; we consider someone virtuous who knows how to find and give good advice and then seeks to give it to us where appropriate [the three characteristics of the good speaker]--R merely in the general sense lacks that third practical, civic element necessary to virtuous practice of the art of R. Here R becomes also a kinesis in which the external ends are considered. But, when R becomes focused only on the end, it turns scientific and becomes a professional art or "universal" art rather than a civic art.

Ch. 2: among other things, relates considerations of the Good, True, Beautiful to the ends of the different kinds of R.

     Other Interesting Things

"Aristotle gives us no reason to think that starting from the free competition of ideas, one can eventually hit up against truth and reality . . . such a picture, which conflates dialectical and rhetorical reasoning, produces a different relation between rhetoric and politics. Such rhetorical competition works in a good polis; it does not produce a good polis. Given a grounding in a knowledge of the state's aspirations, needs, resources, and laws, an advocate can argue for policies and judgments too specific to be laid down in advance by the laws, but there is no corresponding license to begin with advocacy and end with truth. There is no marketplace of ideas in Aristotle [or esp. his R]." Rhetoric serves the polis and its politics, dealing with the reasons that will persuade the people. The discovery of reasons, rhetoric, differs from the discovery of truths, dialectic (83). [But in practice these overlap.] "In Aristotle, practical arguments have the property we attribute to aesthetic arguments, and it is worth seeing how the topics allow practical argument to have this flexibility without being trivialized. . . . Topics prove opposites because their principles make no universal claims, and consequently leave untouched the principles of morals and politics" (103).

"Reasoning does not always persuade because practical reason and practical truth depend on character, and audiences consequently employ ethical standards in their judgments" (146).

     Ethics and Rhetoric (the last few chapters); Logos and Ethos

"The artful [and ethical] speaker still wants to win. The trouble with the sophists is not that they have external ends but that those are the only kinds of end they can have. But rhetoric has to embody character, and therefore ends, so that the speaker can apprehend particulars. Without ethos, argument will be pure calculation, and an art of argument nothing but technique. In both the Ethics and the Rhetoric, Aristotle has to show exactly how logos and ethos need each other, how it takes character to reason well and intelligence to pursue good ends" (184).