Classical

August 28, 2008

Rhetoric

Analytic → Analysis

Heuristic → Production

Definitions

Aristotle: Rhetoric is "the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion.“

Cicero:  "Rhetoric is one great art comprised of five lesser arts: inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronunciatio."  Rhetoric is "speech designed to persuade.“

Quintilian:  "Rhetoric is the art of speaking well" or "...a good man speaking well."

Definitions

Kenneth Burke: "The most characteristic concern of rhetoric [is] the manipulation of men's beliefs for political ends....the basic function of rhetoric [is] the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents.“

Lloyd Bitzer: "...rhetoric is a mode of altering reality, not by the direct application of energy to objects, but by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action.“

Gerard A. Hauser: "Rhetoric is communication that attempts to coordinate social action. For this reason, rhetorical communication is explicitly pragmatic. Its goal is to influence human choices on specific matters that require immediate attention."

Classical Rhetoric: The Sophists

Corax and TisiasTisias contracts to pay Corax for instruction in rhetoric on the condition that he winshis first lawsuit.

•Corax instructs Tisias in rhetoric.•Tisias refuses to pay.•Corax sues Tisias in court for payment.

Classical Rhetoric: The Sophists

Tisias's argument•If I win, I do not need to pay.•If I lose, I should not have to pay. For if I lose, it proves that Corax's instruction is worthless.

Corax's argument•If I win, Tisias must pay.•If I lose, Tisias should have to pay. For if I lose, it proves that I have taught Tisias well.

Classical Rhetoric: The Sophists

•Language is ambiguous.•Knowledge is constructed by human beings.•There are at least two sides in every case—often more.•Persuasion does not deal in certainties but rather probabilities.•The need for action obviates the need for absolute truth.

Classical Rhetoric: The Sophists450 – 400 BC•Intensely disliked by Plato•Seen as “subjectivists” by Hegel•Were the postmodernists of their day

“…the sophists agree in an anti-idealistic concreteness which does not tread the ways of skepticism, but rather those of a realism and a phenomenalism which do not confine reality within a single dogmatic scheme but allow it to rage in all its contradictions, in all its tragic intensity” (Mario Untersteiner, I sofisti, 1949)

Classical Rhetoric: The Sophists

Philosophers Rhetoricians

Object of Study Nature/Natural Science

Men (in Society)

Methods Deduction from “First Principles”

Empirical, Evidenced-Based

Aim Discovery of Truth Successful Argument

Classical Rhetoric: Aristotle

Ars Rhetorica, The Rhetoric

Classical Rhetoric: Aristotle Aristotle named three rhetorical appeals

Logos: logical appeal

Pathos: emotional appeal

Ethos: ethical appeal

Classical Rhetoric: Aristotle

Classical Rhetoric: Aristotle

The Rhetorical Canon

Invention

Arrangement

Style

Memory

Delivery

Classical Rhetoric: Aristotle

Encompassing Terms

Kairos

Audience

Decorum

Classical Rhetoric: Aristotle

“Branches” of Oratory

Judicial

Deliberative

Epideictic

Classical Rhetoric: Aristotle

Branch Time Purposes Topics

Judicial Past accuse or defend justice/injustice

Deliberative Future exhort or dissuade

good/unworthy

Epideictic Present praise or blame virtue/vice