Since people are most strongly convinced when they suppose that something has been proven Rhet. In Aristotle's view an orator will be even more successful when he just picks up the convincing aspects of a given issue, thereby using commonly-held opinions as premises.
Since people have a natural disposition for the true Rhet. Of course, Aristotle's rhetoric covers non-argumentative tools of persuasion as well. It is understandable that several interpreters found an insoluble tension between the argumentative means of pertinent rhetoric and non-argumentative tools that aim at what is outside the subject. It does not seem, however, that Aristotle himself saw a major conflict between these diverse tools of persuasion—presumably for the following reasons: i He leaves no doubt that the subject that is treated in a speech has the highest priority e.
Thus, it is not surprising that there are even passages that regard the non-argumentative tools as a sort of accidental contribution to the process of persuasion, which essentially proceeds in the manner of dialectic cp. His point seems to be that the argumentative method becomes less effective, the worse the condition of the audience is. This again is to say that it is due to the badness of the audience when his rhetoric includes aspects that are not in line with the idea of argumentative and pertinent rhetoric.
The prologue of a speech, for example, was traditionally used for appeals to the listener, but it can also be used to set out the issue of the speech, thus contributing to its clearness. Similarly, the epilogue has traditionally been used to arouse emotions like pity or anger; but as soon as the epilogue recalls the conclusions reached, it will make the speech more understandable.
The systematical core of Aristotle's Rhetoric is the doctrine that there are three technical means of persuasion. Further, methodical persuasion must rest on a complete analysis of what it means to be persuasive. A speech consists of three things: the speaker, the subject that is treated in the speech, and the listener to whom the speech is addressed Rhet.
It seems that this is why only three technical means of persuasion are possible: Technical means of persuasion are either a in the character of the speaker, or b in the emotional state of the hearer, or c in the argument logos itself. If the speaker appears to be credible, the audience will form the second-order judgment that propositions put forward by the credible speaker are true or acceptable. This is especially important in cases where there is no exact knowledge but room for doubt.
But how does the speaker manage to appear a credible person? Again, if he displayed i without ii and iii , the audience could doubt whether the aims of the speaker are good. Finally, if he displayed i and ii without iii , the audience could still doubt whether the speaker gives the best suggestion, though he knows what it is. But if he displays all of them, Aristotle concludes, it cannot rationally be doubted that his suggestions are credible.
It must be stressed that the speaker must accomplish these effects by what he says; it is not necessary that he is actually virtuous: on the contrary, a preexisting good character cannot be part of the technical means of persuasion. Thus, the orator has to arouse emotions exactly because emotions have the power to modify our judgments: to a judge who is in a friendly mood, the person about whom he is going to judge seems not to do wrong or only in a small way; but to the judge who is in an angry mood, the same person will seem to do the opposite cp.
Many interpreters writing on the rhetorical emotions were misled by the role of the emotions in Aristotle's ethics: they suggested that the orator has to arouse the emotions in order i to motivate the audience or ii to make them better persons since Aristotle requires that virtuous persons do the right things together with the right emotions.
Thesis i is false for the simple reason that the aim of rhetorical persuasion is a certain judgment krisis , not an action or practical decision prohairesis. How is it possible for the orator to bring the audience to a certain emotion? Aristotle's technique essentially rests on the knowledge of the definition of every significant emotion.
According to such a definition, someone who believes that he has suffered a slight from a person who is not entitled to do so, etc. If we take such a definition for granted, it is possible to deduce circumstances in which a person will most probably be angry; for example, we can deduce i in what state of mind people are angry and ii against whom they are angry and iii for what sorts of reason. Aristotle deduces these three factors for several emotions in the chapters II. With this equipment, the orator will be able, for example, to highlight such characteristics of a case as are likely to provoke anger in the audience.
In comparison with the tricks of former rhetoricians, this method of arousing emotions has a striking advantage: The orator who wants to arouse emotions must not even speak outside the subject; it is sufficient to detect aspects of a given subject that are causally connected with the intended emotion.
For Aristotle, there are two species of arguments: inductions and deductions Posterior Analytics I. A deduction sullogismos is an argument in which, certain things having been supposed, something different from the suppositions results of necessity through them Topics I.
The inductive argument in rhetoric is the example paradeigma ; unlike other inductive arguments, it does not proceed from many particular cases to one universal case, but from one particular to a similar particular if both particulars fall under the same genus Rhet. At first glance, this seems to be inconsistent, since a non-necessary inference is no longer a deduction.
If the former interpretation is true, then Aristotle concedes in the very definition of the enthymeme that some enthymemes are not deductive. But if the latter interpretation which has a parallel in An.
For Aristotle, an enthymeme is what has the function of a proof or demonstration in the domain of public speech, since a demonstration is a kind of sullogismos and the enthymeme is said to be a sullogismos too.
In general, Aristotle regards deductive arguments as a set of sentences in which some sentences are premises and one is the conclusion, and the inference from the premises to the conclusion is guaranteed by the premises alone. Since enthymemes in the proper sense are expected to be deductive arguments, the minimal requirement for the formulation of enthymemes is that they have to display the premise-conclusion structure of deductive arguments.
This is why enthymemes have to include a statement as well as a kind of reason for the given statement. The reason why the enthymeme, as the rhetorical kind of proof or demonstration, should be regarded as central to the rhetorical process of persuasion is that we are most easily persuaded when we think that something has been demonstrated.
Hence, the basic idea of a rhetorical demonstration seems to be this: In order to make a target group believe that q , the orator must first select a sentence p or some sentences p 1 … p n that are already accepted by the target group; secondly he has to show that q can be derived from p or p 1 … p n , using p or p 1 … p n as premises. Given that the target persons form their beliefs in accordance with rational standards, they will accept q as soon as they understand that q can be demonstrated on the basis of their own opinions.
Consequently, the construction of enthymemes is primarily a matter of deducing from accepted opinions endoxa. That a deduction is made from accepted opinions—as opposed to deductions from first and true sentences or principles—is the defining feature of dialectical argumentation in the Aristotelian sense.
Thus, the formulation of enthymemes is a matter of dialectic, and the dialectician has the competence that is needed for the construction of enthymemes. However, in the rhetorical context there are two factors that the dialectician has to keep in mind if she wants to become a rhetorician too, and if the dialectical argument is to become a successful enthymeme.
First, the typical subjects of public speech do not—as the subject of dialectic and theoretical philosophy—belong to the things that are necessarily the case, but are among those things that are the goal of practical deliberation and can also be otherwise.
Second, as opposed to well-trained dialecticians the audience of public speech is characterized by an intellectual insufficiency; above all, the members of a jury or assembly are not accustomed to following a longer chain of inferences.
Therefore enthymemes must not be as precise as a scientific demonstration and should be shorter than ordinary dialectical arguments. This, however, is not to say that the enthymeme is defined by incompleteness and brevity. Rather, it is a sign of a well-executed enthymeme that the content and the number of its premises are adjusted to the intellectual capacities of the public audience; but even an enthymeme that failed to incorporate these qualities would still be enthymeme.
In a well known passage Rhet. Properly understood, both passages are about the selection of appropriate premises, not about logical incompleteness. The remark that enthymemes often have few or less premises concludes the discussion of two possible mistakes the orator could make Rhet. The latter method is unpersuasive, for the premises are not accepted, nor have they been introduced.
The former method is problematic, too: if the orator has to introduce the needed premises by another deduction, and the premises of this pre-deduction too, etc. Arguments with several deductive steps are common in dialectical practice, but one cannot expect the audience of a public speech to follow such long arguments.
This is why Aristotle says that the enthymeme is and should be from fewer premises. Just as there is a difference between real and apparent or fallacious deductions in dialectic, we have to distinguish between real and apparent or fallacious enthymemes in rhetoric.
The topoi for real enthymemes are given in chapter II. The fallacious enthymeme pretends to include a valid deduction, while it actually rests on a fallacious inference. Note that neither classification interferes with the idea that premises have to be accepted opinions: with respect to the signs, the audience must believe that they exist and accept that they indicate the existence of something else, and with respect to the probabilities, people must accept that something is likely to happen.
However, it is not clear whether this is meant to be an exhaustive typology. But there are several types of sign-arguments too; Aristotle offers the following examples:.
Sign-arguments of type i and iii can always be refuted, even if the premises are true; that is to say that they do not include a valid deduction sullogismos ; Aristotle calls them asullogistos non-deductive. Sign-arguments of type ii can never be refuted if the premise is true, since, for example, it is not possible that someone has fever without being ill, or that someone has milk without having given birth, etc.
Now, if some sign-enthymemes are valid deductions and some are not, it is tempting to ask whether Aristotle regarded the non-necessary sign-enthymemes as apparent or fallacious arguments.
However, there seems to be a more attractive reading: We accept a fallacious argument only if we are deceived about its logical form. So it seems as if Aristotle didn't regard all non-necessary sign-arguments as fallacious or deceptive; but even if this is true, it is difficult for Aristotle to determine the sense in which non-necessary sign-enthymemes are valid arguments, since he is bound to the alternative of deduction and induction, and neither class seems appropriate for non-necessary sign-arguments.
Cicero, Brutus , 46—48 and Isocrates. Aristotle's book Topics lists some hundred topoi for the construction of dialectical arguments. These lists of topoi form the core of the method by which the dialectician should be able to formulate deductions on any problem that could be proposed.
Most of the instructions that the Rhetoric gives for the composition of enthymemes are also organized as lists of topoi ; especially the first book of the Rhetoric essentially consists of topoi concerning the subjects of the three species of public speech. It is striking that the work that is almost exclusively dedicated to the collection of topoi , the book Topics , does not even make an attempt to define the concept of topos.
According to this definition, the topos is a general argumentative form or pattern, and the concrete arguments are instantiations of the general topos. That the topos is a general instruction from which several arguments can be derived, is crucial for Aristotle's understanding of an artful method of argumentation; for a teacher of rhetoric who makes his pupils learn ready samples of arguments would not impart the art itself to them, but only the products of this art, just as if someone pretending to teach the art of shoe-making only gave samples of already made shoes to his pupils see Sophistical Refutations b36ff.
By recalling the houses along the street we can also remember the associated items. At least within the system of the book Topics , every given problem must be analyzed in terms of some formal criteria: Does the predicate of the sentence in question ascribe a genus or a definition or peculiar or accidental properties to the subject?
Does the sentence express a sort of opposition, either contradiction or contrariety, etc.? Does the sentence express that something is more or less the case? Does it maintain identity or diversity? Are the words used linguistically derived from words that are part of an accepted premise? Depending on such formal criteria of the analyzed sentence one has to refer to a fitting topos. For this reason, the succession of topoi in the book Topics is organized in accordance with their salient formal criteria; and this, again, makes a further mnemotechnique superfluous.
More or less the same is true of the Rhetoric —except that most of its topoi are structured by material and not by formal criteria, as we shall see in section 7. Other topoi often include the discussion of iv examples; still other topoi suggest v how to apply the given schemes. Often Aristotle is very brief and leaves it to the reader to add the missing elements. In a nutshell, the function of a topos can be explained as follows. First of all, one has to select an apt topos for a given conclusion.
The conclusion is either a thesis of our opponent that we want to refute, or our own assertion we want to establish or defend. Accordingly, there are two uses of topoi : they can either prove or disprove a given sentence; some can be used for both purposes, others for only one of them. Most topoi are selected by certain formal features of the given conclusion; if, for example, the conclusion maintains a definition, we have to select our topos from a list of topoi pertaining to definitions, etc.
Once we have selected a topos that is appropriate for a given conclusion, the topos can be used to construe a premise from which the given conclusion can be derived. If the construed premise is accepted, either by the opponent in a dialectical debate or by the audience in public speech, we can draw the intended conclusion.
It could be either, as some say, the premise of a propositional scheme such as the modus ponens, or, as others assume, as the conditional premise of a hypothetical syllogism. Aristotle himself does not favor one of these interpretations explicitly. But even if he regarded the topoi as additional premises in a dialectical or rhetorical argument, it is beyond any doubt that he did not use them as premises that must be explicitly mentioned or even approved by the opponent or audience.
This topic was not announced until the final passage of Rhet. II, so that most scholars have come to think of this section as a more or less self-contained treatise. The insertion of this treatise into the Rhetoric is motivated by the claim that, while Rhet. In the course of Rhet. After an initial exploration of the field of delivery and style III. The following chapters III. Chapters III. Again metaphors are shown to play a crucial role for that purpose, so that the topic of metaphor is taken up again and deepened by extended lists of examples.
Chapter III. The philosophical core of Aristotle's treatise on style in Rhet. Originally the discussion of style belongs to the art of poetry rather than to rhetoric; the poets were the first, as Aristotle observes, to give an impulse for the study of style. Clarity again matters for comprehension and comprehensibility contributes to persuasiveness.
In prose speeches, the good formulation of a state of affairs must therefore be a clear one. However, saying this is not yet enough to account for the best or excellent prose style, since clear linguistic expressions tend to be banal or flat, while good style should avoid such banality.
It will be plain by now, from what has been said, 1 in what frame of mind, 2 with what persons, and 3 on what grounds people grow angry. In that condition, a man is always aiming at something.
Whether, then, another man opposes him either directly in any way, as by preventing him from drinking when he is thirsty, or indirectly, the act appears to him just the same; whether some one works against him, or fails to work with him, or otherwise vexes him while he is in this mood, he is equally angry in all these cases.
Hence people who are afflicted by sickness or poverty or love or thirst or any other unsatisfied desires are prone to anger and easily roused: especially against those who slight their present distress. Thus a sick man is angered by disregard of his illness, a poor man by disregard of his poverty, a man aging war by disregard of the war he is waging, a lover by disregard of his love, and so throughout, any other sort of slight being enough if special slights are wanting.
Each man is predisposed, by the emotion now controlling him, to his own particular anger. Further, we are angered if we happen to be expecting a contrary result: for a quite unexpected evil is specially painful, just as the quite unexpected fulfillment of our wishes is specially pleasant.
Hence it is plain what seasons, times, conditions, and periods of life tend to stir men easily to anger, and where and when this will happen; and it is plain that the more we are under these conditions the more easily we are stirred. These, then, are the frames of mind in which men are easily stirred to anger. The persons with whom we get angry are those who laugh, mock, or jeer at us, for such conduct is insolent.
Also those who inflict injuries upon us that are marks of insolence. These injuries must be such as are neither retaliatory nor profitable to the doers: for only then will they be felt to be due to insolence. Also those who speak ill of us, and show contempt for us, in connection with the things we ourselves most care about: thus those who are eager to win fame as philosophers get angry with those who show contempt for their philosophy; those who pride themselves upon their appearance get angry with those who show contempt for their appearance and so on in other cases.
We feel particularly angry on this account if we suspect that we are in fact, or that people think we are, lacking completely or to any effective extent in the qualities in question. For when we are convinced that we excel in the qualities for which we are jeered at, we can ignore the jeering.
Again, we are angrier with our friends than with other people, since we feel that our friends ought to treat us well and not badly. We are angry with those who have usually treated us with honor or regard, if a change comes and they behave to us otherwise: for we think that they feel contempt for us, or they would still be behaving as they did before.
And with those who do not return our kindnesses or fail to return them adequately, and with those who oppose us though they are our inferiors: for all such persons seem to feel contempt for us; those who oppose us seem to think us inferior to themselves, and those who do not return our kindnesses seem to think that those kindnesses were conferred by inferiors.
And we feel particularly angry with men of no account at all, if they slight us. For, by our hypothesis, the anger caused by the slight is felt towards people who are not justified in slighting us, and our inferiors are not thus justified. Again, we feel angry with friends if they do not speak well of us or treat us well; and still more, if they do the contrary; or if they do not perceive our needs, which is why Plexippus is angry with Meleager in Antiphon's play; for this want of perception shows that they are slighting us -- we do not fail to perceive the needs of those for whom we care.
Again we are angry with those who rejoice at our misfortunes or simply keep cheerful in the midst of our misfortunes, since this shows that they either hate us or are slighting us. Also with those who are indifferent to the pain they give us: this is why we get angry with bringers of bad news. And with those who listen to stories about us or keep on looking at our weaknesses; this seems like either slighting us or hating us; for those who love us share in all our distresses and it must distress any one to keep on looking at his own weaknesses.
Further, with those who slight us before five classes of people : namely, 1 our rivals, 2 those whom we admire, 3 those whom we wish to admire us, 4 those for whom we feel reverence, 5 those who feel reverence for us : if any one slights us before such persons, we feel particularly angry.
Again, we feel angry with those who slight us in connection with what we are as honorable men bound to champion-our parents, children, wives, or subjects. And with those who do not return a favor, since such a slight is unjustifiable. Also with those who reply with humorous levity when we are speaking seriously, for such behavior indicates contempt.
And with those who treat us less well than they treat everybody else; it is another mark of contempt that they should think we do not deserve what every one else deserves. Forgetfulness, too, causes anger, as when our own names are forgotten, trifling as this may be; since forgetfulness is felt to be another sign that we are being slighted; it is due to negligence, and to neglect us is to slight us. The persons with whom we feel anger, the frame of mind in which we feel it, and the reasons why we feel it, have now all been set forth.
Clearly the orator will have to speak so as to bring his hearers into a frame of mind that will dispose them to anger, and to represent his adversaries as open to such charges and possessed of such qualities as do make people angry. Since growing calm is the opposite of growing angry, and calmness the opposite of anger, we must ascertain in what frames of mind men are calm, towards whom they feel calm, and by what means they are made so.
Growing calm may be defined as a settling down or quieting of anger. Now we get angry with those who slight us; and since slighting is a voluntary act, it is plain that we feel calm towards those who do nothing of the kind, or who do or seem to do it involuntarily.
Also towards those who intended to do the opposite of what they did do. Also towards those who treat themselves as they have treated us: since no one can be supposed to slight himself. Also towards those who admit their fault and are sorry: since we accept their grief at what they have done as satisfaction, and cease to be angry. The punishment of servants shows this: those who contradict us and deny their offence we punish all the more, but we cease to be incensed against those who agree that they deserved their punishment.
The reason is that it is shameless to deny what is obvious, and those who are shameless towards us slight us and show contempt for us: anyhow, we do not feel shame before those of whom we are thoroughly contemptuous. Also we feel calm towards those who humble themselves before us and do not gainsay us; we feel that they thus admit themselves our inferiors, and inferiors feel fear, and nobody can slight any one so long as he feels afraid of him.
That our anger ceases towards those who humble themselves before us is shown even by dogs , who do not bite people when they sit down. We also feel calm towards those who are serious when we are serious, because then we feel that we are treated seriously and not contemptuously. Also towards those who have done us more kindnesses than we have done them. Also towards those who pray to us and beg for mercy, since they humble themselves by doing so.
Also towards those who do not insult or mock at or slight any one at all , or not any worthy person or any one like ourselves. In general, the things that make us calm may be inferred by seeing what the opposites are of those that make us angry. We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.
Again, we feel no anger, or comparatively little, with those who have done what they did through anger: we do not feel that they have done it from a wish to slight us, for no one slights people when angry with them, since slighting is painless, and anger is painful.
Nor do we grow angry with those who reverence us. As to the frame of mind that makes people calm, it is plainly the opposite to that which makes them angry, as when they are amusing themselves or laughing or feasting; when they are feeling prosperous or successful or satisfied; when, in fine, they are enjoying freedom from pain, or inoffensive pleasure, or justifiable hope.
Also when time has passed and their anger is no longer fresh, for time puts an end to anger. Again, men become calm if they have convicted the offender; or if he has already suffered worse things than they in their anger would have themselves inflicted upon him; for they feel as if they were already avenged.
Or if they feel that they themselves are in the wrong and are suffering justly for anger is not excited by what is just , since men no longer think then that they are suffering without justification; and anger, as we have seen, means this. Hence we ought always to inflict a preliminary punishment in words : if that is done, even slaves are less aggrieved by the actual punishment. We also feel calm if we think that the offender will not see that he is punished on our account and because of the way he has treated us.
For anger has to do with individuals. This is plain from the definition. Plato's Charges Against Rhetoric. American Rhetoric by Michael E. While much of the material was previously published, the seams don't show. The Introduction begins by presenting the "Principal Claims of the Book. Much turns on making sense of the proper grounds of conviction. Proper grounds must be proper by norms of the art of rhetoric itself, not some external moral criterion.
He finds those proper grounds in the political function of rhetoric. Next, he claims that "If the arousal of the passions is part of rhetoric, thus understood, Aristotle must hold, second, a particular view of the passions: he must think that they are representational states, in which the subject takes things to be the way they are represented" 1. He divides the book into ten chapters organized into three main parts; the first five chapters show how the proper grounds for conviction rest on the political function of rhetoric, contributing towards good judgments in law courts and political assemblies 9 ; the next two show how the arousal of emotions can constitute a proof, and defends that interpretation against Aristotle's explicit statements that seem to reject appeals to the passions; and the final three erect a theory of the passions as they operate in the Rhetoric.
The first chapter gives the background for the Rhetoric in alternative contemporary views of the handbook writers on the one hand and Plato on the other. The second chapter, the longest in the book, turns to the Rhetoric itself to show how Aristotle's conception of rhetoric can be, like Plato and unlike the sophists, normative, but with the difference that for Plato rhetoric aims at "the production of virtue in the souls of listeners; for Aristotle, it is well-founded judgments in the listeners" The third chapter turns from explicating Aristotle's idea to showing how one might, and how Aristotle does, defend it.
Dow raises the crucial question, in what is rhetorical expertise an expertise? He argues that Aristotle distinguishes himself from the handbook writers not by advocating a moral approach to rhetoric in opposition to their neutrality, but by showing rhetoric's function in the state. There are some obvious things he might have pointed out about irrelevant speaking -- that it produces miscarriages of justice, vindicating the guilty and condemning the innocent, and that it produces poor political decisions.
The emphasis on proper roles of speaker and hearer is critical. Not only is restrained and methodical rhetoric of benefit to the state, and not only does it not harm the judges by manipulating them, but its practice rebounds to the benefit of the practitioner by letting him know when he's right and when wrong. The success of the speaker depends on the success of the judges. Although the method of deliberative and judicial rhetoric is the same, and although deliberative subjects are finer and more important to the state than private transactions, [the handbook writers] have nothing to say about the former, and all try to describe the art of speaking in lawcourts, because it is less serviceable to speak of things outside the subject in deliberative situations.
Placing deliberation at the center of the art of rhetoric is the missing move that strengthens Dow's case that rhetoric's normative dimension comes from its role in the state. Neglect of the enthymeme and concentration on judicial rhetoric go together. Similarly, in arguing that pistis has a normative dimension, he could have mentioned the two definitions of the function of rhetoric, which emphasize the difference between that function, finding the available means of persuasion, and actually persuading a given audience.
Just as pistis is normative, so too is the "available" endechomenon means of persuasion, and endoxon , reputable premises as well. Has he merely changed the subject? Why couldn't they return the favor and claim that Aristotle was talking about something else, maybe dialectic, but not rhetoric?
Dow's answer:. In any genuine attempt to persuade, speakers themselves seem to aim not merely at getting people to their point of view in most cases, speakers would not consider that coercive means would do just as well , but at convincing their listeners in a way that endorses the correctness of their case Dow could add the definition of rhetoric at the end of I.
He could also draw a connection between the endorsing he sees here and the issue he raises in the last part of the book, on whether the emotions involve endorsement. Chapter 5, "The Interpretation of Aristotle's Rhetoric ," is only six pages long.
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