Aristotle and Isocrates
CIV 101-02
Sept. 21, 2015
Aristotle on Rhetoric
• FOUR REASONS THAT RHETORIC IS USEFUL
– To uphold the truth
– To teach
– To analyze issues thoroughly, both sides (and
more)
– To defend oneself (and the right)
Aristotle on Rhetoric
• Utilitarian rather than ideal
• Amorality: Can be put to good use
– Protects against the bad guys
– Promotes the good/truth
• Effective Political leadership
• Effective Education
– Not everyone is an expert (and can use
demonstration). One must also teach the masses.
Aristotle on Rhetoric
• THE ART OF DISCOVERING IN ANY GIVEN
CASE WHAT ARE THE MEANS OF
PERSUASION.
– Art (principles flexibly applied)
– Discovery (focused on the research, not on the
performance)
– Persuasion (toward effective speech)
– In any given case (always flexible to the event,
needs, audience, etc.)
• Audience Analysis is crucial
Aristotle on Rhetoric
• Artistic Proofs
– Those that come from the speaker
• Ethos (Speaker Credibility)
• Pathos (Emotions)
• Logical Argument
• Inartistic Proofs
– Can be used, but come from outside the speaker
and are less important.
Aristotle on Rhetoric
• Logical Argument
– Enthymeme
• Truncated syllogism
• Call to audience participation
• Relief from detail
• Topoi
– Common topics
– Special topics
– Lines of argument
Types
Audience
Times
Ends
Means
forensic decision past fact justice.
maker
accusation/
defense
deliberative
persuasion/
dissuasion
decision future
maker
fact
epideictic spectator present
adv/disa
d
noble/s praise/bl
ame
hame
Isocrates
• When one educates, one works via
– Students’ natural abilities
– educated training
– extensive practice
– instruction by the teacher
– modeling via teacher performance.
• His curricula:
– Science, math, writing, debate, classical prose and
poetry (literature), philosophy, and history.
• The Father of Liberal Education
Isocrates
• Education must combine theories, models,
practice, with teacher instruction and
demonstrations.
– progymnasium (analysis, practice, and delivery of set
speeches drawn from history and/or the master)
– declamatio (debate).
– He sent his students to the courts and the legislature
to observe the best speakers.
• Check (correct) negative models
• Encourage positive models
Isocrates
• What is rhetoric
– The work or science of persuasion which is a
branch of philosophy able to alter our perception
of things as we dispute with others and seek
knowledge
– Men have imperfect knowledge so struggle with
probabilities (rather than ideals)
– Rhetoric is useful in everyday affairs and those
of state. It teaches, persuades, and leads toward
knowledge.
Isocrates
• We ought, therefore, to think of the art of
discourse just as we think of the other arts, and
not to form opposite judgements about similar
things, nor show ourselves intolerant toward
that power which, of all the faculties which
belong to the nature of man, is the source of
most of our blessings. For in the other powers
which we possess, as I have already said on a
former occasion, we are in no respect superior
to other living creatures; nay, we are inferior to
many in swiftness and in strength and in other
resources;
Isocrates
• but, because there has been implanted in us
the power to persuade each other and to
make clear to each other whatever we desire,
not only have we escaped the life of wild
beasts, but we have come together and
founded cities and made laws and invented
arts; and, generally speaking, there is no
institution devised by man which the power
of speech has not helped us to establish.