Ancient Rhetoric and Poetic: Interpreted from Representative Works

Abstract

ANCIENT RHETORIC AND POETIC Aristotle's third item, which is one whole field of rhetoric, may indeed be mere logical fence, using terms and propositions as mere counters; but real skill in debate, the habit of seeing both sides and of analyzing sophistries and fallacies, tends to make truth emerge from current discussion.The fourth use of rhetoric, for self-defense, seems added merely for completeness and to rebut the common objection that rhetoric is abused. That, says Aristotle, is no argument against it.T he definition implied and sketched in Chapter I and formulated in Chapter II, may be summed up in the word persuasion, if we are careful to speak of persuasion not as achievement, but as method. Just as we ask of medicine, not that it shall infallibly heal-a degree of achievement impossible in human affairs-but that it shall discern and use all the means of healing available in the given case, so the true end of rhetoric is to induce such habitual skill as shall discern in any given case the available means of persuasion. s means of persuasion we must include both those that are extrinsic and those that are intrinsic,'^those that lie outside the art of rhetoric in the domains of subject-6 1355 b. ' 1355 b rb ivd€xf>tJ'tPOv nidavdv, or, as the preceding context puts it, rd virdpxovra irtdavd.' at fi^p drexvoi eicrtv ai 5' evrexvoi.Cope, Introduction, page 150, translates "unscientific and scientific"; Welldon, "inartistic or artistic"; Jebb, "inartificial or artificial." None of these translations is satisfactory in connotation. Scientific, or artistic, or artificial suggests associations not borne out by the context and ultimately misleading. Aristotle says simply "means that lie outside of the art and means that lie within it." The means that lie within are hardly, in fact or in his intention, scientific.They are artistic in the broadest sense of being attainable by art, not in the narrower sense of belonging to fine art, nor in the colloquial sense of being pretty. Artificial they are not at all, except when they are misapplied. each case within its own field as well as in its general relations to human nature. Aristotle's distinction here between general and special "topics" coincides with his earlier division (page 10) of the means of persuasion into intrinsic and extrinsic. The extrinsic means are knowledge, to be got by the methods of getting; the intrinsic means are utterance, to be given by the methods of giving.At this point, the opening of Chapter iii,^^Aristotle makes his scientific division of rhetoric by its fields. The three fields of rhetoric are: (1) the deliherative, persuasion 12 1358 a.13 1358 b.THE RHETORIC OF ARISTOTLE 15 in public assemblies as to matters of current discussion, looking to the future, urging expediency;(2) the forensic, accusation and defense in courts, looking to the past, urging justice; and (3) the occasional,^^praise or blame, looking to the present, urging honor. The underlying, general, or "final topics" of rhetoric, as distinct from the special topics that i...