SOURCE: "The Outmoded Psychology of Aristotle's Rhetoric," in Western Journal of Speech Communication, Vol. 54, No. 2, 1990, pp. 204-18.

[In the following essay, Brinton examines the canonical status of Rhetoric, defending it against those who would reject the text as dated due to the "emergence of the social-scientific study of communication in the twentieth century." Brinton argues that the psychological conceptions found in Rhetoric are, unlike some psychological theories, "not the kind which perish …" and that the text remains relevant to students of rhetorical theory.]

However rhetoric ought to be defined, the great rhetorics of the past have, whatever their defects, at least some claim to the name. They may also deserve respect as relics of the past. But how importantly, if at all, ought they to figure in the education of students of rhetorical theory? And to what extent, if any, is it appropriate for contemporary rhetorical theorists to work from, say, Aristotle's Rhetoric as a basic text, to address questions in rhetorical theory for modern readers in its terms? However (and whether or not) rhetoric ought to be defined in conceptual terms, during any given period certain texts help to define it for the student and for the scholar, if not always for the practitioner. That is to say, there is for students and scholars, for good or ill, a sort of de facto canon of texts, however loosely identified, in whose terms they conceive the rhetorical. In times of theoretical unrest, the canonical status of particular works is one of the things which comes into question. In times of extreme theoretical unrest, such as the present, the very notion that ancient texts ought to be definitional at all is at least questioned and perhaps supplanted by a tendency to think in terms of a rolling canon, or a loose canon, or no canon at all (even, conceivably, to the point of canonizing anti-canonical texts). It is not my intention in this essay to justify the de facto practice of defining rhetoric in terms of particular texts, nor even to argue in favor of the perpetual canonical status of particular classical texts. My concern is rather with the tendency to reject certain texts, to expel them from the de facto canon, on the grounds that they are outmoded. If works such as the Rhetoric tend to evoke reverential attitudes from some (as they surely do) simply on the basis of their antiquity, they also tend, on the same basis, to evoke dismissive attitudes, if not contempt, from others. "Aristotle's Rhetoric," writes Gary Cronkhite in a recent article,

contains little of value for the contemporary technical student interested in communication, or for students of any other practical persuasion. The kindest evaluation is that it is one of Aristotle's weakest works. Were it not for the fact that it was produced by one of the western world's greatest intellectuals …, and were it not for the desperate search for legitimacy conducted by the founders of our discipline, it would have been recognized long since as the historical curiosity which it is. Some of its prescriptions are useful only in the cultural context in which it was written, others are obvious to any casual contemporary observer, and the rest are ill advised.)¹

Cronkhite has a number of bones to pick with the Rhetoric, not all of which relate to its antiquity. But some of his complaints do have to do with just that. The "pernicious trisection of proof into 'logos,' 'pathos,' and 'ethos,'" for example, he sees as undermined by recent social-scientifically oriented work on "the functions of sources in communication in terms of the myriad ways in which they facilitate listeners' goal-achievement in specific situations" (p. 287). Cronkhite's critique of the Rhetoric as outmoded grows increasingly vociferous over its few pages:

Need I make embarrassing comparisons between Aristotle's discussion of the constituents of happiness and some of the more contemporary treatments cited in public speaking textbooks, a notable example being Maslow's hierarchy of primary and secondary needs? Must I point out what mental gymnastics are required to wrest the treatment of laws, witnesses, contracts, tortures, and oaths out of ancient Greek culture and apply it in any meaningful way to twentieth century American politics and jurisprudence? (p. 288).

Cronkhite ends his piece by commending to students the Nicomachean Ethics, on the other hand, as a work "of more than historical interest" (p. 289).

There are some substantive theoretical objections which Cronkhite raises in this article and in others against some of the theoretical conceptions of the Rhetoric. However, what concerns us at the moment is this other aspect of his critique, the implication that on account of its being a product of ancient Greek culture, and on account of the emergence of the social-scientific study of communication in the twentieth century, Aristotle's Rhetoric is of little importance to contemporary students of rhetoric, that it is merely an historical artifact.

In a more subtle and influential critique of Aristotelian conceptions, published some years earlier, Edwin Black also complained about the "misplaced antiquarianism" of relying upon ancient rhetorical principles:

… we can hardly expect the principles of rhetoric formulated two thousand years ago to be unifornly germane today. The nature of political institutions and the modes of communication have drastically changed in twenty centuries. It would be naive to suppose that there would not be concomitant changes in the character of rhetorical discourse.… The world changes, and the uses of language with it.²

Aristotelian rhetoric, Black also charged, and neo-Aristotelian criticism, are "founded upon a restricted view of human behavior …" (p. 131). In a more general criticism of classical rhetorics in the influential first issue of Philosophy and Rhetoric, Douglas Ehninger complained that, "hampered by the primitive psychology and epistemology with which they worked, as a group the classical writers tended either to scant or to present a patently naive account of the relation between the speech act and the mind of the listener."³ Major deficiencies of the classical rhetorics were corrected, Ehninger went on to observe, by the "new" rhetorics of the eighteenth century, but these too, grounded as they were in faculty and associationist psychologies, are "now largely dated" (p. 52).⁴

There is little reason to think that Black or Ehninger (or even, perhaps, Cronkhite) meant to suggest that the careful study of older rhetorics in general, or of Aristotle's Rhetoric in particular, is a waste of time for contemporary students. But their comments do tend to encourage a dismissive attitude toward the rhetorical "classics" and lend themselves to the view that ignorance about works such as Aristotle's Rhetoric, Cicero's De Inventione, and Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria on the part of contemporary rhetorical theorists is at least excusable.

The serious issue is not the one which Cronkhite's article ostensibly addresses, whether Aristotle's Rhetoric ought to be used as a textbook in introductory courses. The question is whether serious study of such works is essential to rhetorical education and scholarship. But the narrower question which I wish to examine is whether what might appear to be grounds for taking the Rhetoric lightly really are so. And, in fact, there are two prongs to this aspect of the indictment of the Rhetoric which might seem to allow us to circumvent the need for even pausing to refute it. One is the notion that because of its antiquity, because it was written by an ancient Greek for ancient Greeks, it cannot be applicable for, or of much interest to, modern American rhetoricians. The other is the notion that Aristotle's rhetorical conceptions are outmoded on account of being grounded in outmoded psychological conceptions. This latter observation (like the former) we can make without ever reading a line of the Rhetoric. And we can safely assume, it would seem, without bothering to look at any of Aristotle's works, that his psychological conceptions are hopelessly antiquated. Psychology as a social science, with real theories, was not even invented until more than two millennia after Aristotle. In what follows, I want to comment briefly on the first of these prongs and then to deal with the second at somewhat greater length.

II

It is of course undeniable that Aristotle's Rhetoric is the product of a time and culture whose rhetorical situations were remarkably different from our own. Indeed, it would be unreasonable to expect it or other works from antiquity to be "uniformly germane today." Aristotle's Rhetoric, that is to say, is a product of, and a response to, its own rhetorical situation. It is, in fact, patently, even paradigmatically (if not perfectly) so. The same is true for Gorgias's Helen, for Cicero's De Inventione, and for a variety of other works which have been, or which according to some historians of rhetoric deserve to have been, of enduring interest to students and historians of rhetoric. Strange though it might seem at first glance, though, it is the very "datedness" of such works which makes them of enduring importance. The point is this: Any reasonable attempt to understand what rhetoric is requires attention to rhetorical acts and rhetorical situations, and any reasonable attempt to develop a meaningful understanding of what rhetorical theory is requires attention to theoretical constructs of the appropriate kind, as well as attention to the contexts in which they arose. Late twentieth century rhetorical theorists (to say nothing of their students) are in an extraordinarily weak position with respect to assessing the great theoretical rhetorical constructs of our time in relation to the rhetorical situations to which these constructs are a response. We stand to learn more about the nature of rhetoric and rhetorical theory by studying works such as Aristotle's Rhetoric, that is to say, than by studying any particular theoretical artifacts produced by our contemporaries. We can be surer in our identification of the great works of the past, and (according to no meaner authorities than Aristotle's critics) those works were the products of a much simpler culture, responses to a much simpler rhetorical situation. This is one reason, I take it, why scholars such as Black and Ehninger take Aristotle's Rhetoric seriously, even if they inadvertently (by making disparaging remarks) encourage their readers to do otherwise.

III

A second possible reason for relegating older rhetorics to the status of historical relics is that at least some of them seem to be grounded in other sorts of theories, in particular in psychological theories, whose outdatedness and whose inadequacy as theories of their type are well established. Rhetorical theories have from the beginning had important connections with other kinds of theoretical frameworks—most conspicuously with psychological and ethical theories. Such connections are required for a true art of rhetoric, according to Plato's Gorgias. And it seems clear that Aristotle and his successors were consciously concerned to trace out and establish such connections or dependencies. But some kinds of theories seem to be more susceptible to becoming outmoded than others. Let us call those theoretical frameworks which are especially susceptible to becoming obsolete endangered theories. An endangered theory, then, is the sort of theory which is susceptible to theoretical extinction.

Ethical theories have almost never been regarded, at least by serious ethical theorists, as "endangered" in this sense, except in those instances in which they have been grounded in an "endangering way" in other theories which are.⁵Psychological theories, on the other hand, have typically been so regarded by psychological theorists.⁶ The Nicomachean Ethics, for example, is still, in a sense, a "serious contender" in 20th Century moral philosophy; but De Anima is not, for contemporary psychologists, even in the ratings.⁷

Now, what are we to say of the great rhetorics of the past? Should we think of them as moral philosophers (and even Professor Cronkhite) think of the Nicomachean Ethics, or should we have the sort of attitude toward them that psychologists have toward De Anima? Is it simply anachronistic for a twentieth century rhetorical theorist to make use of the Rhetoric in the ways in which contemporary philosophers continue to make use of Aristotle's ethics, to work with its conceptions and to sometimes begin their inquiries by asking what Aristotle had to say on a subject? The question is not whether Aristotle's rhetorical conceptions are mistaken or inadequate, but whether they are inevitably so on account of being grounded in a psychological point of view which is inadequate by the standards of contemporary psychological theory.

Aristotle himself seems consciously to have accepted and responded to the demand of Plato's Gorgias that a true art of rhetoric requires "knowledge of the soul." That is to say, Aristotle's rhetoric is in some sense grounded in his psychology. But Aristotle's theory of the soul is, let us grant, outmoded from the point of view of psychological theory. The question we have to face, then, is whether it follows that his rhetorical theory is also outmoded.

The view that the conceptions of Aristotle's rhetoric and of other "classics" in the rhetorical tradition are outmoded on account of their grounding in outdated psychological conceptions was vigorously advanced in a series of articles published by Charles H. Woolbert early in this century. A main target in Woolbert's assault was the conviction-persuasion dichotomy, a well-worn distinction in classical rhetoric, one presupposed by Aristotle's. classification of rhetorical proofs into logos, ethos, and pathos, as well as by Cicero's classification of "ends" of rhetoric. The thesis of Woolbert's 1917 article, "Conviction and Persuasion: Some Considerations of Theory," is that "any division of appeal and speech into conviction and persuasion is unsound from the point of view of psychology and unnecessary from the point of view of rhetorical theory."⁸ As to whether conviction and persuasion ought to be regarded as two things or one, Woolbert's claim was that we cannot expect an answer from rhetoricians. Since this is a question which has to do with influencing the minds of others (so to speak), its answer "is to be found in psychology alone" (p. 253). If what psychologists tell us on the matter seems to conflict with ordinary usage, so much the worse for ordinary usage: "once we submit our problems to the court of psychology, we must abide by the decisions and the laws of evidence enforced in that court" (p. 255).⁹ The main thrust of Woolbert's attack relies on the concept of action. The offending duality and its related concepts involve a bifurcation of belief and action; but for psychologists, claims Woolbert, "there is only one concept that describes what happens when an organism is stimulated in any and all possible ways, and that concept is expressed in the term action, or its synonyms, activity and reaction—as the psychologist uses them-all mean fundamentally the same thing" (pp. 253-254). "The psychologist," he goes on to say, "cannot today make any distinction between 'physical' action and 'mental' action; to him it is one and the same thing" (p. 255). The theorist of communication, then, ought to defer to psychological theory and accept the fact that the distinction between proving and moving, between convincing and persuading, is no longer viable.

These moves are, of course, part of a larger agenda. The details of psychological theory with which we find Woolbert to be enamored are precisely the kinds of details which become dated, and we find not only that he regarded classical rhetorical theory as grounded in outmoded psychological theory, but that he also meant to recommend adopting the conceptions of current psychological theory as the basis for understanding rhetorical phenomena. The larger agenda was to turn speech theory away from classical rhetoric and toward the social sciences (as conceived in recent times), turning to them for the justification, clarification, and elaboration of basic rhetorical concepts and assumptions. The observation that this is a turn which has been taken by many in the decades following the publication of Woolbert's "Conviction and Persuasion" and related articles does need to be documented.¹⁰

Our question is not about the legitimacy of the social-scientific study of rhetorical phenomena, however, but about whether the terms in which Aristotle addressed the questions which he was concerned to investigate (and which many of us are still concerned to investigate) are linked in an endangering way to endangered (and now defunct) psychological conceptions. A related question is about the appropriateness of the kinds of conceptions whose character is such as to "endanger," about their appropriateness for the kinds of inquiry in which classical rhetorical theorists have been engaged.

IV

What is it which endangers conceptions? Or, better yet, what is it that preserves conceptions from endangerment? Why and how is it, for instance, that the conceptions of ethical theory (of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, for example) are so much less likely ever to come to be regarded as obsolete by moral philosophers? Why are they not "dated" in the way in which the doctrines and conceptions of De Anima are for psychologists? The answer relates partly to fundamental differences between subject-matters. Aristotle's explicit comments about the subject-matter and method of ethical studies are helpful in this context. "Precision," he says in Chapter 3 of Book I of the Ethics, "is not to be sought for alike in all discussions." But "fine and just actions," which he identifies as the subject-matter of ethical studies, "admit of much variety and fluctuation of opinion." We must, as a result, be satisfied, he says, "in speaking about things which are only for the most part true, and with such premises, to reach conclusions which are no better."¹¹

His own method involves working from common conceptions and ordinary manners of speaking, attempting to develop a theoretical framework which in a sense begins from ordinary ethical experience and in the end has to square with it. His sketch of the "good" in Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics, for example, begins with observations about the different sorts of lives people actually lead and about their conceptions of the good. Then he says, after completing the sketch, that it must be evaluated "in the light not only of our conclusions and our premises, but also of what is commonly said" (1098b). The point is that ethical conceptions themselves have their origin in moral experience. Whatever • refinements might be suggested, and whatever the attempt might be to ground them in some more technical or artificial theoretical framework, the discussion of ethical theory itself is conducted by Aristotle, as by Plato and nearly every other important moral philosopher, in terms of ordinary moral conceptions such as virtue, goodness, obligation, responsibility, right and wrong—and also in terms of ordinary non-moral conceptions such as action, passion, voluntariness, habit, the will, reason, and the like. Unless and until there are radical changes in the character of moral experience, much more radical changes than there have been from Aristotle's time to our own, the main conceptions of the Nicomachean Ethics are not in danger of becoming outmoded. There have, no doubt, been very great changes in ways of thinking and feeling about morality, but the persistence of the basic terms of inquiry testifies to how firmly entrenched these conceptions are in human experience.

Now some of the non-moral conceptions in question are psychological ones, but they are again conceptions which arise fairly directly out of ordinary experience. Psychologists may declare, perhaps with good reason, that there are no parts to the soul, or that there is no such faculty of mind as the Will. But ordinary people and moral philosophers will continue, with even better reason, to worry about conflicts between reason and emotion and to be troubled about weakness of the will. The terms of ordinary discourse, which are essentially the terms in which moral inquiry is conducted, are not the terms of psychological theory. Nor are the conceptions of ordinary discourse and of moral philosophy in competition with those of psychological theory—not any more than physiological descriptions of human behavior are in competition with psychological descriptions of the same behavior.¹² The one may in some respects inform the other, may suggest insights and whatnot, but this is (to exaggerate just a little) as far as it goes.

When Aristotle says, for example, that virtue has to do with actions and passions, with how people act and with how they are acted upon, his thought may very well be inspired by the more general dichotomy in his metaphysics between actuality and potentiality; but serious students of the Ethics have not been tempted as a result to think that Aristotle's ethical views stand or fall with the doctrines of the Metaphysics or the Physics.¹³ They have not been so tempted because it is a straightforward fact about human existence that we act and are acted upon, and because the concepts of agency and patiency, of acting and being acted upon, seem essential to moral theory.

Ethical theory (or "meta-ethics," as it is sometimes called) is an examination of ethical conceptions, of the conceptions of ethical practice and evaluation. If an ethical theorist were to start out by suggesting that there are really no such things as agents or actions, or that the conception of moral responsibility or of a person's character is outmoded, it is hard to conceive of what would come next. If the Epicureans, for example, having declared that reality consists in nothing more than atoms, the swerve, and the void, insisted on carrying out their ethical discussions in those terms, what would have remained to be said? Of course they did not; they carried on their ethical discussions in terms of human actions and passions and beliefs. In the same way, the language of stimulus and response, which could conceivably be adequate for the purposes of psychological theory (not to suggest that it is), could never suffice for ethical theory. Moreover, the strangeness and radical inappropriateness of the language of stimulus-response for ethical theory has nothing to do with inadequacies in either behaviorism or ethical theory; it has to do with differences in, to use Gilbert Ryle's terminology, "conceptual territory."

There is a good deal of psychology in the Nicomachean Ethics; but that it is of a different character from the more technical discussions of De Anima, the Metaphysics, and certain other of Aristotle's works is in effect acknowledged when he says that the student of ethics "must know somehow the facts about soul"—that is, as he says, "to the extent [and in the way, we might add] which is sufficient for the questions we are discussing" (EN 1102a). On the question of parts of the soul, for instance, he goes on to say in the same passage that

Some things are said about it, adequately enough, even in the discussions outside our school, and we must use these, e.g. that one element in the soul is irrational and one has a rational principle. Whether these are separated as the parts of the body or of anything divisible are, or are distinct by definition but by nature inseparable, like convex and concave in the circumference of a circle, does not affect the present question.

The Nicomachean Ethics is not in danger of becoming obsolete on account of its psychological conceptions, because its psychological conceptions are not the conceptions of psychological theory."¹⁴

The nature of "moral psychology," that is, is quite different from the nature of psychology as conducted (quite rightly) by the psychologist as social scientist, even if and when there is to some extent shared terminology. Terms and distinctions which are adequate for either one may be inadequate for the other. In particular, conceptions that become outmoded for the social scientist may be alive and well for the moral philosopher, and may in fact be indispensible. This is why it is not nonsense (though it may be open to debate) for a contemporary moral philosopher to make the claim that students will learn more about ethics by reading Aristotle than by reading any particular book written in the twentieth century. In the same way, I want to suggest, it is not ludicrous to say that students are likely to learn more about rhetoric from Aristotle's Rhetoric than from any particular book written in the twentieth century.

V

I have already, without saying much of anything about rhetoric, given my reason for rejecting the notion that rhetorical theories die with their psychological conceptions: their psychological conceptions are not the kind which perish along with dying psychological theories. At least this is true of rhetorical theory as practiced in the great classics of the rhetorical tradition, though it may not be true of the field of communication studies, conceived and practiced as a social science. The problem, as it appears in the Woolbertian assault on the conceptions of classical rhetoric, lies in the tendency to conceive of the kind of inquiry which goes on in the works of classical rhetorical theorists and that which goes on in the new social science of communication as competitors, as if both are up to the same things, with the former suffering under the disadvantage of being equipped with outmoded psychological conceptions. Woolbert's assault is particularly interesting, because of his influence in the early development of communication as a discipline, and because he so boldly confuses categories. The nature of the confusion is most apparent in a final collapsing of psychological distinctions on physiological grounds. This move is repeated in his later attack on the distinction between the rational and the nonrational in "The Place of Logic in a System of Persuasion," on the grounds that "Inferences, judgments, logical connections, are made in neuromuscular patterns" (p. 39), and on the grounds that the neuro-muscular patterns underlying so-called "nonrational" thinking are governed by the same physiological laws and are just as lawlike as those which underlie socalled "rational" thinking. "Ten propositions," he writes in a later article, "mean ten sets of movements."¹⁵

I draw attention to the physiological aspects of Woolbert's reductibn in order to portray more graphically the kind of confusion which I believe also characterizes his reduction of rhetorical theory to psychological (or "social-scientific") theory. Rhetorical theory is, at least in part, an examination of the conceptions of rhetorical practice and evaluation. In this respect it is akin to ethical theory. With respect to the ethical or moral, there is a kind of theoretical inquiry about human values and attitudes, a kind of empirical inquiry, which is categorically different from the kind of inquiry which goes on in the Nicomachean Ethics or in other works in moral philosophy. The empirical kind of inquiry about values is rightly pursued as a kind of social science. Some of its products attain the status of "findings," and may be appropriately appealed to as such. These "findings" are, however, subject to disconfirmation. They, and the technical conceptions and distinctions in terms of which they are formulated and promulgated, are endangered in the sense we referred to earlier. What suits them for social-scientific inquiry is precisely what endangers them. But moral philosophy is an inquiry of a radically different kind. In the same way, there is a kind of inquiry about matters rhetorical which is categorically different from the social-scientific study of rhetorical phenomena. Aristotle, Isocrates, Cicero, Quintilian, and others among the great classical rhetorical theorists are generally concerned with the practice of public persuasion and with the evaluation of rhetors and rhetorical acts. Conceptions which are adequate for the purposes of that kind of inquiry may not be (and should not be expected to be) at all adequate for social-scientific inquiry—and vice-versa.

But still, Aristotle's rhetoric, like his ethics, does involve psychological conceptions, and the question whether the conceptions of Aristotle's Rhetoric are adequate for discussing its problems in rhetorical theory is in a way a question about the adequacy of the psychology of that work. But what exactly is the psychology of the Rhetoric, this psychology which is supposed to be adequate for a theoretical discussion of rhetorical practice and rhetorical evaluation?

VI

There are three identifiable components to the psychology of Aristotle's Rhetoric, and they constitute nothing like a psychological theory in the social-scientific sense. The first component is developed in Chapters 5-7 of Bk.I. "Every individual man," Aristotle says, "and all men in common aim at a certain end which determines what they choose and what they avoid. This end, to sum it up briefly, is happiness (eudaimonia) and its constituents."¹⁶ Aristotle is interested here, of course, in what motivates people, in what they identify as goods to be pursued, since the orator will need to make reference to these goods (and to corresponding evils). But what Aristotle offers us in this part of the Rhetoric is nothing like a psychologist's theory of motivation. It is more akin to the discussion of the good in Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics, except that here he is more exclusively concerned with what are perceived as goods by the likely members of audiences. The "goods" he identifies are things like health, wealth, friends, fame, power, and virtue, goods which people do in fact seek and which they are likely always to seek.

The second component of the psychology of the Rhetoric is the treatment of the passions (pathe) in Chapters 2-11 of Bk.II. This is the closest we come to real psychological theorizing in the Rhetoric. Aristotle has what we would now call a "cognitive" view of the emotions. He examines a variety of particular emotions or passions in terms of (1) the state of mind of the person who experiences the emotion, (2) the sorts of persons or objects toward which it is felt, and (3) the grounds on which it is felt. Now, if the cognitive view of the emotions taken in the Rhetoric is the closest Aristotle comes in the work to proposing a psychological theory, it is also the aspect of the psychology of the work which is most likely to be of enduring interest to psychological theory.¹⁷ That is, however, a matter mainly of Aristotle's having observed and taken note of one feature of emotional life which is of critical importance in the development of psychological theories of emotion, namely the fact that emotional experience typically involves cognition and often follows it. However, the main concern in this part of the Rhetoric is with how, and under what circumstances, and in the light of what beliefs, and in what sorts of persons, particular emotions are aroused. The details of this part of the Rhetoric are more a matter of astute observations by a careful observer of human nature than either entailments of or empirical supports for a psychological theory of human emotion. Aristotle agrees with Plato that the orator must have a knowledge of sorts about the soul; but what we are told about the soul here, as well as elsewhere in the Rhetoric, gives us no reason to believe that Aristotle thinks that the orator requires a metaphysical or "scientific" knowledge of the soul.

The third component of the Rhetoric's psychology is the discussion of types of characters in Chapters 12-17 of Bk. II. This consists in "character sketches," more or less akin to what we find later worked out in more detail in the Characters of Theophrastus and in similar works written in the 17th and 18th centuries. In other words, Aristotle's main concern in these chapters is to make practical observations about how differences in age, for example, or social position, affect people with respect to the other two components of the psychology of the Rhetoric. Again, there is nothing like a psychological theory, in the psychologist's sense, in this part of the Rhetoric. In fact, all three aspects of the psychology of the work present us with relatively uncontroversial data of which psychological theory must take account. Moreover, in the Rhetoric, even more clearly than in the Ethics, there is no dependence upon the doctrines of the soul which are developed in Aristotle's "scientific" works. Whether the soul is a substance, for example, or whether it literally has parts, has no bearing on the discussions of the Rhetoric.

Maybe a more theoretical psychology than is provided in the Rhetoric is desirable for the grounding of the kind of theoretical activity which goes on in that work. But if this is so, this more theoretical psychology will be of a piece, I suggest, with the moral psychology of the Ethics; it will consist, that is, in an analysis and synthesis of ordinary psychological conceptions. We ourselves will find more of it, in the 20th Century, in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society than in the proceedings of the American Psychological Association.

VII

In closing, let me make some more general observations about the relevance of the classics in rhetorical theory to modern students and scholars. Narrowly technical fields of study, whose ends are narrowly practical, engineering for example, do just fine without a historical component. The well-rounded person who happens to be an engineer will probably have some knowledge of the history of the subject, but familiarity with the written works of the masters of bygone eras of engineering is absolutely not required for good engineering. An engineer who insisted on engineering on the basis of the De Architectura of Vitruvius or the pseudo-Aristotelian Mechanica would be some kind of a crank. The study of old engineering "classics" would be at best an especially fitting hobby for an engineer. Technical rhetoric (the practice of rhetoric, that is), very narrowly conceived, is not quite like engineering in this respect, however, for two reasons. One reason is that the rhetorical treatises of Aristotle, say, or of Cicero, are themselves rhetorical artifacts, of a most unusual and interesting kind, rhetorical artifacts produced in response to rhetorically loaded, self-consciously rhetorical situations. Another reason is that at least some of them are written by unusually astute and perceptive observers of human nature; as a result, some of these treatises (Aristotle's Rhetoric, for example) abound (to a much greater extent, some would argue, than do contemporary communication textbooks) in particular observations and insights which are directly relevant to rhetorical practice.

Most communication teachers and scholars are, of course, loath to think of their discipline in such narrow technological terms. On the other hand, there is some inclination to think in social-scientific terms. The tendency to think of works like Aristotle's Rhetoric as historical artifacts and the tendency to think of the history of rhetoric as a separate field of study are manifestations, I believe, of a too narrowly social-scientific way of thinking about the study of rhetoric and of rhetorical theory. But even the social scientist who wants to think clearly about the nature of social-scientific theory, and who wants to see currently accepted views for what they are, needs to pay some attention to their antecedents, even to antecedents which may be very justly said to be outdated or antiquated. The education of a university level psychologist or sociologist who is uninformed about the history of psychology or sociology may with equal justice be said to be incomplete. There is a significant hole in such a scholar's competence. Such a scholar has an incomplete understanding of the character of his or her subject matter. Such a scholar simply inherits whatever theoretical constructs are passed along with assurances that these constructs supercede those which came before. The hole is not adequately filled by a few observations about foreshadowings or inadequacies in the works of antiquity.

But for the rhetorical theorist, as opposed to the mere (or pure) social scientist of communication, matters are still more complicated. Even the reflective social-scientist is aware that there are questions about the social sciences which are not themselves social-scientific questions, that some of them are philosophical, and that the language in which these questions are addressed is in some sense a different language from the language in which the "findings" of social-scientific research are reported and interpreted. But for the rhetorical theorist, concerns which are clearly not social-scientific are more immediate and harder to relegate to some other field of inquiry. The language which is adequate for addressing these concerns is not the language of social science. The language and conceptual apparatus of psychology as a social science, for example, are inadequate for exactly those aspects of rhetorical theory which make the rhetorical treatises of an Aristotle or a Cicero or a Quintilian of enduring interest. It is, therefore, as inappropriate for the rhetorical theorist to submit conceptions to the court of psychology as it would be for the psychologist to send conceptual problems in psychology to the biology department for adjudication. (This is not to say that an understanding of Aristotle's scientific works has no relevance to the interpretation of his Rhetoric.¹⁸) In particular, an adequate conceptual apparatus for rhetorical theory must provide for critical judgments about rhetorical acts. In this respect rhetorical theory is akin to logical theory, ethical theory, and aesthetic theory. One of the demands on rhetorical theory is, moreover, that it should provide for some account of relationships among the rhetorical, the logical, the ethical, and the aesthetic. This could not be done by a theory whose most fundamental conceptions were social-scientific. What sorts of discussions can we expect from theorists armed only with the concepts of social science on topics such as the ends of rhetoric, the character of the orator, or the legitimacy of appeals to authority or of the arousing of the passions of an audience? It is with respect to questions such as these that the conceptual framework of Aristotle's Rhetoric is alive and well. And it is on account of their ongoing relevance to these sorts of questions, and not simply on account of their degree of influence on later theorists, that certain works stand out as especially worthy of study by the historian of rhetoric, the same sorts of works which the contemporary rhetorical theorist cannot afford to neglect.¹⁹

Notes

¹ Gary Cronkhite, "Aristotle's Rhetoric as an Historical Artifact, Being a Response to the Suggestion it be Used as a Textbook," Communication Education 36 (1987): 286.

² Edwin Black, Rhetorical Criticism: A Study in Method (1965; Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1978) 125, 124.

³ Douglas Ehninger, "On Systems of Rhetoric," Philosophy and Rhetoric 1 (1968): 131-144. Rpt. in Contemporary Rhetoric: A Reader's Coursebook, ed. Douglas Ehninger (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1972) 51.

⁴ Compare Stephen W. Littlejohn's comment in Theories of Human Communication, 2nd ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1983):

Aristotelian theory probably was effective in its day. Its problems result primarily from modern-day applications. Because the theory employs a linear model in which a strong distinction is made between rhetor (source) and audience (receiver), it leaves little room for interaction among communicators. As such it neglects the process nature of communication.…

Aristotelian theory has also been criticized because of its three-fold analysis of ethos, pathos, and logos. In actual practice separating information into these categories is difficult. Any argument or appeal may, and probably does, involve a combination of personal regard, feelings, and logic. Aristotle presents these three elements as descriptors of message parts, but they probably more accurately relate to dimensions of perception that do not correspond perfectly with specific message appeals (136).

Notice the imposition of modern-day jargon on Aristotle: "linear model," "source-receiver," "descriptors of message parts." Also, notice that the second criticism is not well-grounded in the text of the Rhetoric; Aristotle does not in fact sort out ethos, pathos, and logos in terms of message parts, either in his treatments of the three modes of proof in Bks. 1-II, or in his discussion of the parts of a speech in Bk. III. See, also, Kenneth E. Andersen's Persuasion: Theory and Practice (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1971): "Aristotle typifies the approach in which a person analyzes communication and then sets forth his estimation of the key factors without empirical verification" (220).

⁵ Ethical theories which have been seriously built upon the foundations of endangered theories typically have not stood the test of time. Herbert Spencer's "evolutionary" ethical theory (See his Principles of Ethics, 2 vols. (London: 1892-93)) is a clear case of this, even though evolutionary theory is alive and well among biologists. The point is that Spencer's ethics is adjudged to involve a kind of confusion, and thus not really to be a theory of the type it is supposed to be. In other words, what is wrong with it, from the moral philosopher's point of view, is not that the evolutionary theoretical framework is deficient as a theory of its type, but that there is a confusion of types. For a brief but incisive critique of Spencer's theory, see John Hospers, Human Conduct: An Introduction to the Problems of Ethics (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1961).

⁶ Though not by Aristotle, who devotes the second chapter of De Anima to a review of the views of his predecessors, "in order that we may profit by whatever is sound in their suggestions and avoid their errors," trans. J. A. Smith (Oxford: Clarendon, 1956) 403b.

⁷ I oversimplify, of course, by referring just to De Anima. Also, I should make it clear that it is psychologists to whom I am referring. Certain aspects of Aristotle's psychology are still taken quite seriously by philosophers, especially by moral philosophers.

⁸ Charles H. Woolbert, "Conviction and Persuasion: Some Considerations of theory," The Quarterly Journal of Public Speaking 3 (1917): 249.

⁹ See also Mary Yost's "Argument from the Point-of-View of Sociology," Quarterly Journal of Public Speaking 3 (1917): 109-127: "The generally accepted theory of argument as expressed in the text-books … is based on a psychology not in harmony with the modern ideas of the way the mind works.… Almost all of the textbooks state that an argument effects its end by means of conviction and persuasion.… Now this explanation of the terms conviction and persuasion was formulated when the belief held sway that the mind was divided into three compartments, the reason, the emotions, the will—roughly the assumptions of the old faculty psychology. Today, however, the leading psychologists have found these assumptions inadequate to explain the phenomena of the mind" (110-111).

¹⁰ Other important related articles by Woolbert in The Quarterly Journal of Speech include "The Place of Logic in a System of Persuasion," 4 (1918): 19-39; "Persuasion Principles and Method," 5 (1919): Part I, "Underlying Principles," 12-25; Part II, "Analysis," 101-119; and Part III, "Synthesis," 212-238. On the significance of Woolbert's attack on the Aristotelian framework, see Carroll C. Arnold and Kenneth D. Frandsen, "Conceptions of Rhetoric and Communication," in Handbook of Rhetorical and Communication Theory (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1984) 10. For more recent expression of the Woolbertian view, see Gerald R. Miller's "On Being Persuaded: Some Basic Distinctions," Persuasion: New Directions in Theory and Research, Michael E. Roloff and G. R. Miller, eds. (Beverly Hills: Sage 1980):

… some writers … have explored the wisdom of distinguishing between convincing and persuading—the so-called conviction-persuasion duality.… While this distinction has unquestionably influenced some of the research carried out by contemporary persuasion researchers …, its utility seems dubious at best. Attempts to crisply conceptualize and operationalize distinctions between logical and emotional appeals have been fraught with difficulty.… Faced with these considerations, it seems more useful to conceive of persuasive discourse as an amalgam of logic and emotion.… Furthermore, the motivation for distinguishing between conviction and persuasion rests largely on value concerns for the way influence ought to be accomplished.… (14-15).

See Cronkhite on the conviction-persuasion dichotomy as well (1987, 287). Miller goes on to make, however, the very point whose converse I want to emphasize in defending the conceptions of the Rhetoric: "… conceptual distinctions that make for sound ethical analysis may sometimes make for unsound scientific practice …" (1980, 15). See also Andersen's comment in Persuasion: Theory and Practice: "The separation between persuasion and conviction or emotional appeal and logical appeal has lost ground among contemporary persuasion theorists. This division has been discarded on the grounds that psychological theory no longer supports a "faculty" concept, and, further, the separation has been difficult to operationalize… (1971, 221; emphasis mine).

¹¹The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, trans. D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon, 1925) 1094b. Further reference will be to "EN."

¹² The classic discussion of this matter is to be found in Gilbert Ryle's Dilemmas (London: Cambridge U P, 1954). See especially Ch. V, "The World of Science and the Everyday World," and Ch. VI, "Technical and Untechnical Concepts."

¹³ I bring the Metaphysics into the picture here since it is in its metaphysical aspects, in part, that the endangeredness of Aristotle's psychology seems to lie. On the action-passion dichotomy, its metaphysical connections, and its significance in Aristotle's ethics, see L. A. Kosman, "Being Properly Affected: Virtues and Feelings in Aristotle's Ethics," in A. 0. Rorty, ed., Essays in Aristotle's Ethics (Berkeley: U of California P, 1980) 103-116.

¹⁴ This is another oversimplification. There are some aspects of the Nicomachean Ethics which do seem to be "endangeringly" grounded in psychological theory, most conspicuously the discussion of "the good for man" in Chapter 7 of Bk. I.

¹⁵ Woolbert, "Underlying Principles" 17. The upshot is that there is no special appeal to logos, from which other kinds of rhetorical appeals can be distinguished. However, propositions are logical, not physiological phenomena; the theoretical activity of a logician who had to submit conceptions and distinctions to the "court of the physiologist" would be stopped short. The language and the conceptions of the physiologist are no more adequate for logical or rhetorical theory than they are for ethical theory. The physiologist can never provide us, for example, with a conception of reasons for action or belief (as opposed to in some sense providing us with an account of their causes).

¹⁶The Rhetoric and Poetics of Aristotle, trans. W. Rhys Roberts, with an introduction by Edward P. J. Corbett (New York: Random House, 1984) 1360b.

¹⁷ For a discussion of Aristotle's theory of the emotions and its relevance to modern discussions, see William Lyons's Emotion (Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1980) especially Chs. 2-4. See also W. W. Fortenbaugh's Aristotle on Emotion: A Contribution to Philosophy, Psychology, Rhetoric, Poetics, Politics, and Ethics (London: Duckworth, 1975).

¹⁸ Ray D. Dearin makes a good case for the relevance of De Anima to the interpretation of the Rhetoric, in "Aristotle on Psychology and Rhetoric," Central States Speech Journal 17 (1966): 277-282. The one informs the other. But Dearin puts it too strongly when he says in conclusion that "the theory of persuasion enunciated in the Rhetoric rests firmly upon the psychological foundations of De Anima" (282). Dearin also unfortunately illustrates the tendency of some contemporary communication theorists to adopt the social-scientific mode of inquiry and expression in the ways in which he appeals to the work of other scholars, as evidenced in the use of forms of expression such as the following: "… since Werner Jaeger and others have shown that …," "Thonssen has shown that …," "… according to Griffin …," and the like. A comparative rhetoric of appeals to authority would make an interesting study. The social-scientific mind appeals to "findings": so-and-so has been established and now defines the parameters of our inquiry; we may proceed without much concern about how these conclusions (now assumptions of inquiry) were established, without attention to the arguments. This mode of appeal seems odd, at least, when carried over into other kinds of inquiry and argument (into ethical discourse, for example).

¹⁹ I am grateful to Carole Blair and to Michael Leff, as well as to two anonymous referees, for very helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft.