SOURCE: "The Rhetoric of Aristotle," in Ancient Rhetoric and Poetic, Peter Smith, 1959, pp. 6-21.

[In the following excerpt from a work originally published in 1924, Baldwin examines both the construction and content of Books I and 2 of Rhetoric. He maintains that in this work, which should be regarded as a philosophical survey rather than a manual, Aristotle demonstrates "the full reach of his intelligence."]

The only art of composition that concerns the mass of mankind, and is therefore universal in both educational practise and critical theory, is the art of effective communication by speaking and writing. This is what the ancients and most moderns call rhetoric. More ample and exact definition, though unnecessary for elementary practise, is demanded for fruitful theory; and the theory of rhetoric has always concerned so many more people than the theory of any other art as to be part of every pedagogy. Here the practise of education not only may be guided by philosophy; it must be. For any coherence in its teaching, rhetoric must be comprehended not only in its immediate functions, but in its pervasive relations to other studies. It is at once the constant in educational schemes and the art among sciences. How we are in a given time and place to learn or teach rhetoric depends on how we understand its function and scope in specific relations.

The importance of a theory of rhetoric in this aspect was discerned by the greatest philosopher of antiquity. In Aristotle's comprehensive survey of thought and action rhetoric is not merely included; it has substantive place. Aristotle's Rhetoric,¹ though professedly more analytical than constructive, has a consecutive development. Neither his ethics nor his politics receives more scrutiny or shows more penetration and grasp. As if he dared not slight it, he shows in this work, comparatively brief though it is, the full reach of his intelligence. In detail it has been questioned; but in conception and plan, in direction of thought and order of presentation, it has remained fruitful.

Book I

Book I surveys by definition and division the opportunity of the public speaker. (i) Rhetoric is the complement of logic (dialectic). It is the art of persuasion formulated by investigating the methods of successful address; and its object is to promote a habit of discerning what in any given case is essentially persuasive. Proof as contemplated by rhetoric proceeds by such means as may be used in public address. Instead of the syllogism, which is proper to abstract logic, rhetoric typically uses the enthymeme, that approximate syllogism which is proper and necessary to the actual concrete discussion of public questions. Thus rhetoric serves as a general public means (1) of maintaining truth and justice against falsehood and wrong, (2) of advancing public discussion where absolute proof is impossible, (3) of cultivating the habit of seeing both sides and of exposing sophistries and fallacies, and (4) of self-defense. (ii) The means of persuasion outside of rhetoric … are witnesses, documents, and other evidence; the means within the art of rhetoric … are the moral force of the speaker, his adaptation to the disposition of the audience, and his arguments. (iii) The three fields of rhetoric are: (1) deliberative address to a popular assembly, discussing the expediency of a proposal for the future; (2) forensic address to a court, discussing the justice of a deed in the past; and (3) panegyric, commemorating the significance of a present occasion. The eleven remaining chapters of this book analyze each of these fields in its main aspects, or fundamental topics, e. g., wealth, happiness, government, crime, virtue, etc.²

The bare digest will show that Aristotle's Rhetoric is hardly a manual. In fact, it is rather less a manual than is his Poetic. It is a philosophical survey. The scope of rhetoric is measured not by any scheme of education, but by the relations of knowledge to conduct and affairs. To be comprehended, this great work should be read consecutively, for it is not merely systematic; in spite of parts undeveloped, it is progressive, and its chief significance, perhaps, is from its total development. The following discussion presupposes a fresh and consecutive reading.

About rhetoric Aristotle would first of all have right thinking, conceptions large enough to be suggestive and distinct enough to be true. So the definition in his first chapter is slowly inductive. First we are to distinguish rhetoric from logic.³ As modes of thought the two are alike general, both applicable universally, neither having its own subject-matter. As modes of utterance they differ typically in that while logic is abstract, rhetoric is concrete; while the one is analytic, the other is synthetic; while the one is a method of study, the other is a method of communication.

Rhetoric, no less than logic, has subject-matter in every given case. Only its perverters teach it as merely an art of dealing with persons, of reaching an audience. No less than logic, it is a means of bringing out truth, of making people see what is true and fitting. But rhetoric contemplates having truth embraced. It is the application of proof to people. Its distinction from logic is here, in the typical mode of proof. The type in logic is the syllogism; the type in rhetoric Aristotle calls the enthymeme.⁴ By this he means concrete proof, proof applicable to human affairs, such argument as is actually available in current discussion. The enthymeme is not inferior to the syllogism; it is merely different. Actually, public address on current public questions cannot be carried on by syllogisms or by final inductions. That by which it can be carried on, the strongest proof possible to actual discussion, Aristotle calls enthymeme.

From this typical mode of rhetoric Aristotle gathers its fourfold function: first and foremost, to make truth prevail by presenting it effectively in the conditions of actual communication, to move; second, to advance inquiry by such methods as are open to men generally, to teach; third, to cultivate the habit of seeing both sides and of analyzing sophistries and fallacies, to debate; and finally to defend oneself and one's cause. That truth does not always prevail shows the need of effective presentation. The first function, then, of rhetoric is to make truth prevail among men as they are. Truth cannot be learned by the mass of men through scientific investigation; for that demands special training. A second direction, then, of rhetoric is to make the results of investigation generally available, to teach truth in general human terms. Debate, Aristotle's third item, which is one whole field of rhetoric, may indeed be mere logical fence, using terms and propositions as mere counters; but real skill in debate, the habit of seeing both sides and of analyzing sophistries and fallacies, tends to make truth emerge from current discussion. The fourth use of rhetoric, for self-defense, seems added merely for completeness and to rebut the common objection that rhetoric is abused. That, says Aristotle, is no argument against it.⁵

The definition implied and sketched in Chapter I and formulated in Chapter II, may be summed up in the word persuasion, if we are careful to speak of persuasion not as achievement, but as method. Just as we ask of medicine, not that it shall infallibly heal—a degree of achievement impossible in human affairs—but that it shall discern and use all the means of healing available in the given case, so the true end of rhetoric is to induce such habitual skill as shall discern in any given case the available means of persuasion.⁶

As means of persuasion we must include both those that are extrinsic and those that are intrinsic,⁷ those that lie outside the art of rhetoric in the domains of subject-matter and those that lie within, the facts of the case and the technic of making them tell. For rhetoric has to include subject-matter, the forces of knowledge. Though this is extrinsic in the sense of lying outside the art of rhetoric, it is essential. Rhetoric is an art, as Aristotle is careful to show; but it differs from other arts in the degree of importance it must always attach to its subject-matter. The division here into extrinsic means and intrinsic means as both necessary to persuasion is not merely the obvious one into matter and manner, substance and style; it is a division of the springs of composition, the sources of effectiveness, into those that lie outside and those that lie inside of utterance, or presentation. It frankly accepts rhetoric as more than artistic, as never self-sufficient and absolute, as always relating presentation to investigation.

Equally philosophical is the following division⁸ of the intrinsic means of persuasion into: (1) those inherent in the character or moral potentiality … of the speaker, (2) those inherent in his actual moving of the audience, and (3) those inherent in the form and phrase of the speech itself. That the three are not mutually exclusive is evident and must have been deliberate. Aristotle is telling us that rhetoric as an art is to be approached from these three directions and in this order. The division is comprehensive not only as being satisfying psychologically, but as constituting an outline for the whole work, the headings of the development in three books: first, the speaker himself; secondly, the audience; and finally, in the light of these two, and as the bringing of the one to bear on the other, the speech. Book I deals with the speaker as himself the prime means of persuasion. Rhetoric, Aristotle implies, is necessarily ethical in that everything consecutively imparted or communicated, as distinct from the abstractions of geometry or logic, is subjective. Moreover, in making the speaker the point of departure Aristotle admits that other trend of classical pedagogy which made rhetoric a cultivation of personality. Book II, proceeding to the second item of the division above, deals with the audience, with knowledge of human nature, especially of typical habits of mind; for rhetoric in this aspect too is ethical. It deals with the interaction of moral forces in speaker and audience, and also with the direct arousing of emotion. The speech itself, the final utterance, which is the subject of Book III, has thus been approached as the art of adjusting the subject-matter of a given case through the intelligence and emotion of the speaker to the intelligence and emotion of the audience. This is the only book of very specific technic; and it comes last psychologically.

Aristotle's division and its order are the division and the order not merely of analysis, but of much the same synthesis as underlies the actual processes of composition. I begin with myself; for the subject-matter else is dead, remaining abstract. It begins to live, to become persuasive, when it becomes my message. Then only have I really a subject for presentation. A subject, for purposes of address as distinct from purposes of investigation, must include the speaker. It is mine if it arouses me. I consider next the audience, not for concession or compromise, but for adaptation. What is mine must become theirs. Therefore I must know them.… My address becomes concrete through my effort to bring it home. The truth must prevail-through what? Against what? Not only through or against reasoning, but through or against complexes of general moral habit and the emotions of the occasion. I must establish sympathy, win openness of mind, instruct in such wise as to please and awaken, rouse to action. My speech is for these people now. Only thus am I ready to consider composition; for only thus can I know what arguments are available, or what order will be effective, or what style will tell.

This is the philosophy of presentation. What is its practise? Rhetoric ranges for subject-matter most often in the fields of social ethics and politics, tempting its professors, Aristotle adds acutely, to assume the mask of politics.⁹ It deals with "the ordinary and recognized subjects of deliberation,"¹⁰ with matters still in dispute and doubt. Thus dealing with social and political conduct, it can neither proceed, as logic does, by absolute propositions nor arrive at logical demonstration. Its premises are not universals, but generally accepted probabilities. That is, to resume his previous distinction, the mode of rhetoric is not the syllogism or induction proper to logical formulation, but the enthymeme or instances proper to actual presentation. The mode of scientific induction emerges to-day in the "gas laws" or the formula of the velocity of light; the mode of rhetoric emerges in Huxley's "Piece of Chalk." Abstract deduction is summed up in the syllogism;¹¹ concrete deduction, in the enthymeme. By enthymeme, as Aristotle has now made fully clear, is meant a "rhetorical syllogism" in the sense of a deduction available concretely for presentation, as distinct from a deduction formulated abstractly for analysis. His enthymeme is deductive method used constructively. It is not mere popular reasoning, logic modified for popular consumption, but public reasoning, such reasoning as is available with the public for building up public opinion and policy.

Therefore the headings, or "topics," of rhetoric are not peculiar to a particular field of investigation, but general or "common topics" such as justice or expediency, which express common human relations. To deviate from these into the method peculiar to a given subject-matter, physics for example, is to pass¹² from rhetorical method for presentation over to scientific method for analysis; and this, of course, the speaker must do to the extent of mastering his subject-matter before he presents it. Though he must not forget that his ultimate task is to present to an audience and therefore concretely, neither can he forget that what is to be presented must be acquired. In so far as he investigates he will follow scientific method, the analysis proper to the field, the "special topics." Thus for his education he needs some study of the "special topics" of those sciences that furnish most of his subject-matter, the "special topics" of ethics and politics. Of these he must have, as part of his equipment, a practical or working knowledge, the orator's equipment for considering each case within its own field as well as in its general relations to human nature. Aristotle's distinction here between general and special "topics" coincides with his earlier division (page 10) of the means of persuasion into intrinsic and extrinsic. The extrinsic means are knowledge, to be got by the methods of getting; the intrinsic means are utterance, to be given by the methods of giving.

At this point, the opening of Chapter iii,¹³ Aristotle makes his scientific division of rhetoric by its fields. The three fields of rhetoric are: (1) the deliberative, persuasion in public assemblies as to matters of current discussion, looking to the future, urging expediency; (2) the forensic, accusation and defense in courts, looking to the past, urging justice; and (3) the occasional,¹⁴ praise or blame, looking to the present, urging honor. The underlying, general, or "final topics" of rhetoric, as distinct from the special topics that it uses from other studies, are thus seen to be expediency (including practicability), justice, honor, and their opposites; and the special topics drawn by rhetoric from philosophy, ethics, and politics may be grouped in a speaker's compend of these studies according as they apply to the deliberative, the forensic, or the occasional field.

In deliberative oratory¹⁵ the speaker deals with good and bad, not in the abstract as the philosopher contemplates virtue or happiness, but in concrete matters of doubt and dispute. So his topic of possibility is not abstract, as in mathematics, but concrete, in relation to human will. So in general Aristotle disclaims for his classification of the ordinary subjects of deliberative oratory any attempt at scientific division or scientific method of investigation. Those he follows in his other works; here the analysis that he provides is avowedly practical. Since in politics,¹⁶ for example, the public speaker needs to know something of finance, war, commerce, legislation, Aristotle gives him a suggestive summary of what he should learn. In our modern educational systems such a summary has far less importance; but the correlation remains vital. Pedagogically as well as philosophically, deliberative oratory must be correlated with its natural subject-matter. So to-day college courses in rhetoric demand correlation with college courses in history, sociology, economics, and politics. The professors of these subjects train for investigation, teaching the scientific method proper to each; the professor of rhetoric trains for presentation, teaching general methods, Aristotle's general or "final topics," for handling all such material. But unless each method of training can make use of the other, both will suffer. Rhetoric must lean upon such real knowledge of a given subject-matter as is furnished by the studies dealing with that subject-matter scientifically, i. e., by its "special topics." Meantime Aristotle's summary is intended not to explore these special topics, but to show what they are.

Similarly the student of deliberative oratory needs such a survey of philosophy¹⁷ as will acquaint him with current ideas concerning happiness, whether of rank, offspring, wealth, honor, health, beauty, or strength, and concerning a good old age, friendship, fortune, and virtue. Therefore Aristotle, summarizing these conceptions, supplies¹⁸ a cursory examination of good in general and of goods, or good things, in particular, proceeding¹⁹ both by definition and by comparison, and not limiting his discussion to the deliberative field. To the latter, and to politics, he reverts in the concluding chapter²⁰ of this section by enumerating briefly the common forms of polity: democracy, oligarchy, aristocracy, and monarchy.

Since occasional oratory²¹ demands an equipment primarily ethical, Aristotle provides a summary of moral nobility²² by definition and comparison. This is applied more specifically than the preceding section to rhetorical method, in this case to the method of enhancing or heightening and to the method of comparison.

For forensic oratory²³ Aristotle provides as a speaker's compend of philosophy a survey of the objects and conditions of crime. He makes no specific mention of what we now call criminal tendencies; and his division of "extrinsic proofs," i. e., of legal evidence (laws, witnesses, contracts, tortures, the oath) is for the modern lawyer neither scientific nor significant.

Book II

As Book I is the book of the speaker, Book II is the book of the audience. The audience is not merely discussed; it furnishes the point of view. As Book I considers the necessities and opportunities of the speaker, so Book II considers the attitude of the audience. Book I is rhetoric as conceived; Book II is rhetoric as received.

Since rhetoric is for judgment-for even deliberative speeches are judged, and forensic is [concerned entirely with] judgment-we must see to it not only that the speech shall be convincing and persuasive, but also that the judge shall be in the right frame of mind. For it makes a great difference to persuasion, especially in deliberative speeches, but also in forensic, how the speaker strikes the audience—both how the hearers think he regards them, and in addition how they are disposed toward him. How the speaker strikes the audience is of more practical concern for deliberative speeches; how the hearer is disposed, for forensic. The effect is not the same on a friendly audience as on a hostile one, on the angry as on the tranquil, but either different altogether or different in degree.… Three [impressions] constitute persuasiveness—three, that is, outside of the arguments used: wisdom, virtue, and good will [i.e., a speaker's persuasiveness, in the sense of his personal effect on his hearers, depends on their believing him to be wise, upright, and interested in them].… From what sources [in moral habits…], then, the speaker may strike his hearers as wise and earnest we must gather from the analysis of the virtues, whether his immediate purpose be to make his audience feel thus and so or to appear thus and so himself; but good will and affection we must discuss now under the head of the emotions.… By emotions I mean any changes, attended by pain or pleasure, that make a difference to men's judgment [of a speech]; e.g., anger, pity, fear, etc., and their opposites. The consideration of each emotion—anger, for instance—must have a threeforld division: (I)how people are angry, (2) what they are angry at, and (3) why; for if we should know only one or two of these, not all three, it would be impossible to excite anger, and so with the other emotions.²⁴

In this way Aristotle proceeds to analyze, in Chapters ii-xi, the common emotions: anger, love, fear, shame, benevolence, pity, envy, emulation, and their opposites. The relation of these to the formation of character leads to six chapters on character in youth, in age, in the prime of life, and on the typical dominant traits of character seen respectively in persons of social rank, of wealth, of power, and of good fortune.²⁵ The classicifaction here will be more satisfying as psychology if we remember that it analyzes the common types of character and emotion in a crowd. Aristotle is attempting neither an analysis of mental operations nor a science of human nature, but such a practical classification as may inculcate the habit of adaptation to the feelings of an audience.

The psychological analysis of the audience concluded with Chapter xvii, Aristotle turns to rhetoric in our ordinary sense at Chapter xviii with a recapitulation.²⁶ "The use of persuasive discourse," he says, resuming the language of the opening of this book, "is for judgment," or decision; i. e., persuasion connotes an audience to be persuaded. Afler showing that this is true in all cases, and summarizing briefly the main aspects of Books I and II, he concludes his transition by saying: "it remains for us to go with the common topics."²⁷ With these he actually goes on, not merely extending the treatment of them in Book I…, but considering them now as to their availability, their effect upon hearers. More explicit statement, however, of this distinction might well have made the bearing of these latter chapters clearer. The topic of possibility implies the range of the argument from antecedent probability (a priori). Example includes analogy, both from history and from fiction, with specific mention of fables. In this wide sense, including mere illustration, it means little more than vividness of presentation through the concrete and specific; but that its persuasive value far exceeds its logical cogency no one doubts who knows audiences. This is the angle, too, from which Aristotle discusses maxims. "They have great service for speeches because audiences are commonplace. People are pleased when a speaker hits on a wide general statement of opinions that they hold in some partial or fragmentary form."³² The same point of view controls the further discussion of enthymemes,³³ which includes a hint of something like Mill's Canon of Concomitant Variations,³⁴ directions for logical exclusion, for analysis demanding particulars, for dilemma, and for reductio ad absurdum. Remarking the popularity of the refutative, or destructive enthymeme over the constructive, and touching the fallacies of petitio principii post hoc, the book concludes³⁵ with methods of refutation.…

Notes

¹Text, edited with notes, commentary, and index, Cope, E. M., and Sandys, J. E., 3 volumes, Cambridge, 1877.

Translations (the best recent ones in English), Welldon, J. E. C., with analysis and critical notes, London, 1886; Jebb, R. C., edited with introduction and supplementary notes by Sandys, J. E., Cambridge, 1909. Welldon's tabular view is valuable. Jebb's rendering of technical terms is generally more discerning.

Criticism. Aristotle having engaged the attention of nearly every important writer on rhetoric—for over two thousand years, a list of the commentaries and criticisms would be endless and bewildering. Nor would any addition here to the bibliographies already available be especially suggestive. The history of Aristotle's Rhetoric will emerge incidentally throughout this work. The best single exegesis in English, especially of the relations of the Rhetoric to the Aristotelian philosophy, remains E. M. Cope's Introduction to Aristotle's Rhetoric, London, 1867.

² Quoted from the author's article on Aristotle in the Cyclopedia of Education.

³1354 a.

⁴1355 a.

⁵1355 b.

⁶1355 b.…

⁷… Cope, Introduction, page 150, translates "unscientific and scientific"; Welldon, "inartistic or artistic"; Jebb, "inartificial or artificial." None of these translations is satistactory in connotation. Scientific, or artistic, or artificial suggests associations not borne out by the context and ultimately misleading. Aristotle says simply "means that lie outside of the art and means that lie within it." The means that lie within are hardly, in fact or in his intention, scientific. They are artistic in the broadest sense of being attainable by art, not in the narrower sense of belonging to fine art, nor in the colloquial sense of being pretty. Artifical they are not at all, except when they are misapplied.

⁸1356 a.

⁹1356 a.

¹⁰1357 a.

¹¹1356 a.

¹²1358 a.

¹³1358 b.

¹⁴ Of the various translations of Aristotle's [XXXXX], "demonstrative" is flatly a mistranslation, "oratory of display" is quite too narrow a translation, and "epideictic" is not a translation at all. The nearest word in current use is "panegyric," which is right as far as it goes. But English use, though it lacks a single equivalent word, is none the less familiar with the thing. The kind of oratory that Aristotle means is the oratory of the Gettysburg Address, of most other commemorative addresses, and of many sermons. The French equivalent is discours de circonstance.

¹⁵ Chapter iv. 1359 a.

¹⁶ 1359 b-1360 a.

¹⁷ 1360 b-1361 b.

¹⁸ Chapter vi. 1362 a-1363 b.

¹⁹ Chapter vii. 1363 b.

²⁰ Chapter viii. 1366 a.

²¹ Chapter ix. 1366 a-1368a.

²² [to kalon], treated again in Book II from the point of view of the audience.

²³ Chapters x-xv. 1368 b-1377 b.

²⁴ Chapter i. 1377 b. "In regard to [XXXXX] and [XXXXXX], which move juries, the most important part is to know how these emotions are aroused and allayed. This alone, judging that it is none of their business, the rhetors have not borrowed from Aristotle, though they have borrowed everything else." Philodemus, Rhetorica, trans. Hubbell, Transactions of the Connecticut Academy, vol. 23 (September, 1920), page 338.

²⁵ "The import of these 'characters,' as of the [XXXXX] in I. 8. 6, and the use to which they are to be applied, may be thus expressed in other words. Certain ages and conditions of men are marked by different and peculiar characteristics. A speaker is always liable to be confronted with an audience in which one or the other of these classes forms the preponderating element. In order to make a favorable impression upon them, he must necessarily adapt his tone and language [Aristotle means rather his method and arguments] to the sentiments and habits of thought prevailing amongst them, and the feelings and motives by which they are usually influenced. And for this purpose he must study their characters, and make himself acquainted with their ordinary motives and feelings and opinions. And the following analysis will supply him with topics for this purpose." Cope, Introduction, foot-note to page 248.

²⁶ Certain difficulties here in the text, with the principal emendations proposed, are discussed by Cope in his Introduction, and more largely in the Cope and Sandys edition. Vahlen was so convinced of an error in transmission that he proposed to restore what he considered the original order by transposing bodily Chapters xviii-end and Chapters i-xvii. But in spite of difficulties of detail, the present order shows sufficiently clear progress if we remember that these latter chapters (xviii-end) are written, as all the rest of the book is written, from the point of view of the audience. So viewed, what has seemed repetition and expansion of Book I is seen to be distinct, and not merely additional, but progressive.

²⁷ 1391 b.…

³² 1395 b.

³³ Chapters xxii-xxiv.

³⁴ Opening of Chapter xxiii.

³⁵ Chapters xxv-xxvi.…