A TRUTH RESEMBLING TRUTH

WHEREAS IN THE TOPICS, which is closely associated with the Rhetoric, Aristotle clearly names his addressee, namely, students of philosophy, he does not specify for whom the Rhetoric is intended. This alone is reason enough not to call this work a technical handbook for rhetoricians, as it has been, and still is by most of the commentators. I do not deny that the Rhetoric also contains advice for students about public speaking; it certainly does so. But right from the beginning, Aristotle takes issue with previous compilers of "arts" of rhetoric who have, as he argues, "provided us with only a small portion of this art" in that they have elaborated only on what is accessory to an art of rhetoric. In this way, he is also putting in question the conception of rhetoric as an art that is based on what is extraneous to rhetoric. One must distinguish, then, between the handbooks for rhetoric written by the technographers, "which chiefly devote their attention to matters outside the subject," and what Aristotle will propose in terms of an art of rhetoric (5). Even if we agree that Aristotle's Rhetoric is addressed to would-be rhetoricians, and hence is a technical handbook of sorts, this technical consideration only occupies one part of the text. Still, the distinction made between what is outside the subject of rhetoric and what is essential to it, requires Aristotle's Rhetoric to be twofold. He writes "that Rhetoric is composed of analytical science and of that branch of political science which is concerned with Ethics" (41); it must be composed of a part that deals with the human being's ability of logical (syllogistic) reasoning, and another part, on character, virtue, and the emotions (17–18). It is this analytical dimension of the work concerned with reasoning and rhetoric's argumentative dimension that I will seek to engage above all. If Aristotle's Rhetoric is an art, it is not only an art entirely different from that of his predecessors who have exclusively focused on the pathe "for the arousing of prejudice, compassion, anger, and similar emotions" (5) with the primary intent of influencing the jurors, but also, because it is based above all on the human's capability for logical reasoning, it is, for the first time, an art of logos, an art of speaking.

As also becomes clear right from the beginning of the treatise, the art of rhetoric that Aristotle will propose is not only an art distinct from all the previous so-called arts of rhetoric in that it is based on rhetorical argument, it is also the only art of the human faculty of speaking with one another that is suitable to a well-policed state. In a city, such as Athens, that is well administered, where well-enacted laws define as much as possible, and leave as little as possible to the discretion of the judges, there is nothing left for a rhetorician whose only object is to influence the jurors. Such laws require that during trials the litigant only address the subject matter and "prove that the fact in question is or is not so, that it has happened or not" they are forbidden to speak "outside the subject," as, for instance, when seeking to arouse "prejudice, compassion, anger, and similar emotions [that have] no connexion with the matter in hand, but [are] directed only to the dicast" (5), the dicast being a citizen eligible to sit as a judge — that is, the juror. In a well-administered state, rhetoric will have to be an art in Aristotle's sense, in that, in such a state, its function is limited to providing proof of whether the subject deliberated in a court happened or did not happen, is going to happen or not, or is or is not true, leaving it to the juror to decide whether this is so or not. In a well-governed state where the legislators have defined all issues as precisely as possible, such a decision by the judge as to whether a thing has happened or not, is going to happen or not, is or is not so, is the only thing left to the judge's discretion, and rhetoric consists precisely in nothing more and nothing less than providing the judge with proof, or reasons, that speak for or against what is under consideration. To accomplish this the rhetorician needs to be "a master of rhetorical argument," that is, to excel in the art of speaking as an art of argumentation (7).

Plato, in Gorgias, famously compared rhetoric to cookery: "Sophistic is to legislation what beautification is to gymnastics, and rhetoric to justice what cookery is to medicine." Consequently, when Aristotle opens his treatise with the claim that "Rhetoric is a counterpart of Dialectic," Dialectic being a discipline that subjects opinions on general issues to a rational examination, rhetoric is raised to a status not only well beyond cookery, but also beyond the accusation, in other Platonic dialogues, of being no art at all, or at best one for deceiving an audience (3). Let me recall here that the Greek term antistrophos, rendered in English as "counterpart," is a term that designates a relation of analogy. To understand in a more precise manner what the analogy between dialectic and rhetoric implies, I continue to quote from the beginning of the treatise. To his initial remark that rhetoric and dialectic are counterparts, Aristotle adds: "for both have to do with matters that are in a manner within the cognizance of all men and not confined to any special science. Hence all men in a manner have a share of both; for all, up to a certain point, endeavor to criticize or uphold an argument, to defend themselves or to accuse" (3). Aristotle stresses here only what both rhetoric and dialectic have in common, what distinguishes them from the sciences, which have their own domain, and of which only the scientists are knowledgeable, but he offers very little about their difference from one another. Both dialectic and rhetoric have this in common: they deal with matters of which all men are cognizant and thus also address a knowledge and a capability that is shared by all men. In distinction from the sciences (and philosophy) they are clearly practices of everyday life. Now, these things of which all men are cognizant, are, as we will see, everything they can have an opinion about. The way all men are cognizant of these matters is hinted at when Aristotle remarks that all men "up to a certain point, endeavor to criticize or uphold an argument, [and] to defend themselves or to accuse" (3). To speak of rhetoric as being analogous to the dialogical examination of arguments, whether in front of students or in a dispute that I have with myself about an argument, asking myself questions to which I must stand answers, is to uphold, against Plato's indictment of it as being no better than cookery,...