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On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse

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The footnotes on this text are great. A lot of the wording can be heavy for a first read-through of Aristotle, and Kennedy does his best to make Aristotle more accessible to people who are new to Rhetoric.

I read these works for a graduate seminar on Aristotle.
Definition of Rhetoric- capacity of persuasion. Plato is critical of the Rhetoric and the tragic poetry. Rhetoric is approach to political public speeches in the forum. Plato thought that they clouded the mind and thus created a part of his critique of democracy in general. Plato thinks Socrates was killed by rhetoric used by the Athenian democracy. Plato feared the danger of democracy. Poetry appeals to the base human emotions rhetoric, and poetry block rational truth according to Plato. Rhetoric is psychological force of language vs. logical force of language. Psychology leads people to believe things based on emotions. Speech must appeal to the masses in a democracy. Psychology is persuasion, logic is truth. Deduction and induction is arguing logically. Plato says rhetoric is not a technç, (craft) nor is poetry, because they are undisciplined and not uniform in design. Thus, appeal to psychology and emotion can never be done away with in a democracy, thus Plato abhors them and democracy. Plato calls it sophistry this psychological appeal and democracy requires this to exist, so the problem persists. Plato is clear and consistent in his abhorrence of sophistry and democracy.

Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics are an alternative to Plato. Aristotle's rhetoric tries to strike a middle position. Aristotle says rhetoric and poetry are a technç, the Rhetoric is a handbook. Aristotle says speaker needs to appeal to appropriate information for the particular setting. Much like a lawyer's argument, not just relying on facts, need to appeal to people's emotions. Aristotle does understand that rhetoric can be used in a harmful way.

Aristotle lays out three features in rhetoric:
1. Ethos= character of the speaker, also charisma, speaker earns the audience's trust, use of body language.
2. Pathos= condition of the hearer.
3. Logos= essential bearing on political persuasion, truth.

Thus, Plato's concern by definition excludes speech because it deals with emotion. These three conditions must be in play for a speech to be successful. The rhetoric contains a detailed analysis of the different human emotions and how to elicit them in a speech. Aristotle knows the speaker must be a good student of human nature to tap into human emotions.

Epistçmç is scientific knowledge. Phronçsis is the capacity of the soul for using education, experience and habit all this is in the ethics. This is the same in political world so politics is not an episteme no scientific reasoning. The things that come up in politics are not deduced scientifically. In politics, humans use deliberation between several possible outcomes unlike math where there is only one correct answer. Political speech is contentious because the nature of politics is contentious.

There are two circumstances in rhetoric.
1. Judicial rhetoric has to do with the past like in a court case.
2. Deliberative rhetoric has to do with the future, what decision should we make in political policies.

I recommend Aristotle's works to anyone interested in obtaining a classical education, and those interested in philosophy. Aristotle is one of the most important philosophers and the standard that all others must be judged by.

"Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion" (pg. 4).
Logic, human character & emotions deep understanding are the key ingredients of Aristotle's receipt and, despite it was written quite some time ago, it will never be out-of-date for all of us who are involved into human interactions.

SECOND EDITION ARISTOTLE'S ON RHETORIC TRANSLATED BY GEORGE A. KENNEDY
If this is the `scholarly edition' that is `the most faithful English version ever published' and `informed by the best modern scholarship', it is vastly disappointing has not only self-censured from the first edition references to Martin Heidegger on pages ix and 124, note 7, as well as the index, but totally ignored the publication of GA 18 Grundbegriff der aristotelischen Philosophie by V. Klostermann in 2002 and translated by Metchalf and Tanzer as BASIC CONCEPTS OF ARISTOTELIAN PHILOSOPHY, Indiana university Press, 2009, which deals extensively in detail with Aristotle's RHETORIC starting at page 78 and going to page 176 in the main. In the first edition, Kennedy uses Heidegger to raise the philosophical importance of the RHETORIC. In the second edition he is doing something else, maybe hiding with his tail between his legs because someone accused him of being a Nazi lover. The political aspect of the RHETORIC, though, is overwhelming in its importance, and Aristotle's own declaration that it can be used for good or evil is evaded and downgraded by Kennedy. Heidegger's fundamental insight relevant here, which is truly fearful in its perception, is that all philosophy, all human knowing, is some kind of political process of trying to persuade someone else of what is the truth of the case of the facts of the matter. Even talking about a rock, then, since you are talking to someone else, has thereby a political aspect since you are trying to make a change in the social structure of knowledge.
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Kennedy's censorship therefore SUPPORTS Heidegger's illustration from Jacob Burckhardt with his statement from PARMENIDES, `Here lies concealed the primordial ground of that feature Jacob Burckhardt presented for the first time in its full bearing and manifoldness: the frightfulness, the horribleness, the atrociousness of the Greek ðüëéò. Such is the rise and fall of man in his historical abode of essence - apolis -far exceeding abodes, homeless, as Sophocles calls man [Antigone]. it is not by chance man is spoken of in this way in Greek tragedy. For the possibility and necessity of "tragedy" itself has its single source in the conflictual essence of aletheia. There is only GREEK tragedy and no other besides it. Only the essence of Being as experienced by the Greeks has this primordial character that `the tragic' becomes a necessity here. In the introduction of his lectures on the history of Greek culture, Jacob Burckhardt knowingly inserts a thesis he heard as a student from his teacher in classical philology at Berlin, Bockh, and it runs as follows: "the Hellenes were more unhappy than most people think." Burckhardt's presentation of the Greeks . . . was constituted entirely on this insight . . .', page 90, translated by Schuwer and Rojcewicz, Indiana University Press, 1992[Vittorio Klostermann 1982, GA 54].
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Anyone familiar with the savagery of the unrepublican, essentially unconstitutional in our modern sense, legally unfettered Athenian democracy in Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War that the American founding fathers and English parliamentarians hated so much should be depressed by Kennedy's evasion of Heidegger's challenge to Kennedy's bright and pretty picture of things as they are EVEN AS NOW our own political figures are describing modern American politics as self-cannibalism [Senator Arlen Specter, see 'In final Senate speech, Specter slams political `cannibalism'].