On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse

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.

I can't understand quite what it is about Kennedy's book that has so outraged the last reviewer("Spare me the PC!!",Dec. 26,'01). It can't be any real "PC" dogmatism;there's none in Kennedy's book. But take a look at the passage the anti-PC reviewer refers to,& judge for yourself:
"Two features of my translation may be worth pointing out in advance. ...[Here Kennedy discusses a feature that need not concern us now.]... A second feature is avoidance of some of the sexist language seen in older translations,which often speak of 'men' when Aristotle uses a more general plural. I have used *man* or *men* only in those few instances in which the word appears in the Greek; otherwise I use *someone*,*people*,or *they*. On the other hand,to alter Aristotle's many uses of *he*,*his*,or *him* in reference to speakers or members of a Greek assembly or jury would be unhistorical & involve an actual change in the text. Aristotle usually envisions only males as speaking in public; but he clearly did not think that rhetoric was a phenomenon limited to males...."
Now whether Kennedy considered this feature a "virtue" of his translation (as the anti-PC reviewer suggests) is debatable; but based on what I've quoted,Kennedy seems only to speak of it as one of two features "worth pointing out in advance".
Now what has so outraged the anti-PC reviewer? It's not as though Kennedy is translating Aristotle's use of the Greek words for *man* or *men* into gender-neutral English words. Kennedy explicitly says that he has *not* done so.
Kennedy is saying that wherever Aristotle uses a noun or pronoun (*other* than "man/men" or "he/him") that happens in Greek to be masculine in gender,even though there is no particular reason to think (and maybe even positive reason *not* to think) that Aristotle means to be referring exclusively to males,then in such cases (and,from what I understand,*only* in such cases) Kennedy uses a word that in English is gender-neutral,like "person/people" or "someone". Now there is no reason to get into a huff about this or think that Kennedy is constructing some barrier between us English readers & what Aristotle is actually saying. The neuter "gender" just wasn't used in Greek as a way to refer to a mixed group of males & females or as a way to refer to people without specific reference to their gender. The masculine "gendered" words were used for this purpose. This was just a fact about the language.
It's true that in English we sometimes oddly use a word like "guys" to refer to a mixed group of males & females or even to a group of women only,& we sometimes use a word like "he" to refer indefinitely to *someone*,male or female. But in English such cases aren't the norm. In fact,it's peculiar that the specific word "guys" *may* be used in the way I just mentioned,but the word "men" is *never* used in that way. And although "he/him" is,as I said,used with gender-indefinite reference,it's increasingly *not* the norm; these days we just as often see the words "he or she" or even "she" were we formerly found only "he". Now this is just a fact of our language,whether or not you agree that it is an improvement. (I haven't commented on the use of the suffix "-man",which is another matter that is fairly irrelevant here.)
So unless we think that Aristotle actually is referring exclusively to males every time he uses a noun or pronoun that happens in Greek to be masculine in gender,a translator is rather misrepresenting the Greek to translate,as a matter of course,these words into words that in English are obviously-and almost always,exclusively-masculine,like "man/men" & "he/him". Kennedy is simply trying to accurately represent in English a grammatical feature quite common to Greek words but rather rare in English.
I have made a big deal of a point that Kennedy only says was "worth pointing out". I've done this only to do better justice to Kennedy's translation which is quite an improvement over previous English translations.(Even *if* the anti-PC reviewer were justified in his/her characterization of Kennedy's attitude about gender,I don't see how the reviewer arrived at his/her one-star rating. Is this all the reviewer cares about in a translation? Or does he/she think that Kennedy's choice of "people" over "men" totally *ruins* an otherwise good translation?!)
The anti-PC reviewer has (apparently unwittingly) propagated the PC agenda by giving undue attention to what,for serious readers of Kennedy's translation,can be only marginally important.

Aristotle's treatise "On Rhetoric" has been the seminal work in the field since it was written. There is a very real sense in which there is nothing new under the sun since Aristotle's day, and that the rhetorical constructs of Burke, Toulmin and every other rhetorical theorist are simply Aristotle's concepts dressed up in new terms. Certainly no one has been as comprehensive in cataloguing all the available means of persuasion. The study of rhetoric begins in earnest with Aristotle's volume. While there are numerous translations of "On Rhetoric" available, this remarkable translation by George A. Kennedy is the one worth owning. Kennedy has studied classical rhetorical for over three decades and he brings his knowledge of what rhetoric meant in the time of Aristotle to his translation. By the time you get to the first sentence of this translation--"Rhetoric is an antisrophos to dialectic"--you have ample evidence that Kennedy is the ideal translator for this text. You will have gone through a Prooemion, an Introductory essay, a synopsis of the first three chapters of Book 1 before you get to that first sentence, which contains two footnotes detailing the contemporary meanings of "rhetoric" and "antistrophos." More than any other scholar to tackle this project, Kennedy is as well versed in the subject matter as he is the original language. Kennedy's translation also benefits from the fact that it is eminently readable.

Additionally, this volume includes only a glossary and bibliography, but two excellent appendixes. The first consists of Supplementary Texts: (A) Gorgias' "Encomium on Helen," the showcase speech by the leader of the Sophists; (B) Aristotle on "Art as an Intellectual Virtue" from his "Nicomachean Ethics"; (C) "An Introduction to Dialectic" from Aristotle's "Topics"; (D) Cicero's "Description of Aristotle's Synagoge Tekhnon"; (E) Aristotle on "Word Choice and Metaphor" from his "Poetics"; and (F) Kennedy's note on "The Concept of the Enthymeme as Understood in the Modern Period." The second appendix features three Supplementary Essays: (A) "The Composition of the 'Rhetoric'"; (B) "The History of the Text After Aristotle"; and (C) "The Strengths and Limitations of the 'Rhetoric.'" The supplemental works alone would make this the translation to own. Every teacher or student of rhetorical theory/criticism needs to own Kennedy's translation of Aristotle's "On Rhetoric."

Aristotle is amazing in his insight into the human nature. "Aristotle on rhetoric" focuses on what people like, how to talk to them, and how to act around them. However, be forewarned that the reading is not light, many hours can be spent on each chapter. If you are interested in finding out that people are the same today as they were in ancient Greece, read this book!