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Mariah Maras Professor Haixia Lan English 333 Fall 2013 Aristotelian Rhetorical Thought The Aristotelian techne of rhetorical invention - ethos, pathos, and logos - is a process in which the rhetor and audience together produce, discover, and fabricate probable knowledge. By viewing techne this way, the process of Aristotles rhetoric is partially like Platos and partially like Gorgias. Aristotle lists three modes of persuasion in relation to the Greek terms ethos, pathos, and logos. According to ethos or credibility proof of the rhetor, the rhetor must be a good person of some sort. The audience must in turn come to perceive the rhetor as a good person in order to believe the rhetors credibility as a speaker. Persuasion is achieved by the speakers personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible (1356a4). Aristotle explains that a rhetor must produce of his own self a good man. Further, since exact validity is not possible, probable knowledge must be fabricated through the perceived credibility of the rhetor by the audience. Aristotle explains, We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided (1356a6). According to pathos or the emotional proof, the rhetor must focus on tending to the audiences emotions in order for them to be successfully persuaded. Aristotle writes, Our judgments when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile (1356a14). In order to appeal to the audiences emotions, Aristotle explains that the writer must focus all of their efforts on the language use to stir the emotion of the audience. Emotional appeal can make an argument of probable knowledge even stronger. In accordance with logos or logical proof, the rhetor must persuade through use of reason. This includes the use of both inductive logic, or the example, and deductive logic, or the enthymeme. The enthymeme

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produces probable knowledge. It can take probable knowledge as its premises and in turn produce probable knowledge, sometimes true and sometimes not. An example, on the other hand, demonstrates a situation in question that has occurred before and uses it to support a future similar situation likely to occur by inducing the knowledge from the previous situation and applying it to the current or future situation. Aristotle is okay with either of these means of logos used to persuade the audience. He states, Thirdly, persuasion is effected through the speech itself when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question (1356a19). Together the rhetor and audience, using the three modes of persuasion provided by Aristotles form of techne of rhetorical invention, are able to produce, discover, and fabricate probable knowledge. An example of a Rhetoric and Composition scholar who explored the Sophistical side of Aristotles rhetoric is James E. Porter. In his essay, Intertexuality and the Discourse Community Porter discusses the use of intertextuality to fabricate something new. In other words, a person borrows knowledge from one source and combines it with another source, or many other sources, to fabricate new probable knowledge. He describes new probable knowledge as new discourse in this case. In referring to the way that the rhetor and the audience together produce, discover, and fabricate probable knowledge Porter states, We might then say that the audience of each of these texts is as responsible for its production as the writer. That, in essence, readers, not writers, create discourse (Porter 228). The way that this relates to the Sophistical side of Aristotles rhetoric is that the audience, in this case the example from Porter of when reading John Kifners article in the New York Times about the Kent State shooting, is able to recognize an array of signs (Sophistical term borrowed from Jacques Derrida) relating to relevant material from the writing to their culture, time period, and location. I would say that an understanding is created by the audience from the text in being able to relate words and phrases that Kifner uses to other parts of their American way of life. In this sense, knowledge is created about not only the event that happened, the Kent State shooting, but knowledge about what kind of effect it has and will create across the nation. From this effect derives a probable knowledge about American culture in the

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sixties and seventies. The probable knowledge then relates to the true by affirming parts of American culture and the time period that were relative to the everyday lives of Americans, enabling the audience to understand and relate the words and phrases of the text to the truths of their American life. Aristotle confers this Sophistical idea of fabrication when describing rhetoric. He first states that rhetoric is useful. He then states, It is clear, further, that its function is not simply to succeed in persuading, but rather to discover the means of coming as near such success of the circumstances of each particular case allow (1355b9). By describing rhetorics function as a way to discover the means of successful probable knowledge, Aristotle falls in line with the Sophistical side of reasoning. This is exemplified again, through Porters essay discussing the way that intertextuality helps the writer to discover the means of new discourse or new probable knowledge. Two examples of Rhetoric and Composition scholars who seem to explore only the Platonic side of Aristotle, leaving the other side unexplained, are James L. Kinneavy and Richard E. Young. In his essay Kairos in Classical and Modern Rhetorical Theory, Kinneavy explains the Platonic side and the Sophistical side of Aristotles rhetoric through his discussion of what kairos is, though he seems to kind of lose focus on the Sophistical side and instead focuses on the Platonic side more in depth. Throughout his essay, Kinneavy discusses how Aristotle looks at the way kairos does, in fact, impose the value on ideas and force humans to make free decisions about these ideas using various methods such as those of the Platonic method. The Platonic side of the kairic nature of Aristotelian rhetorical invention establishes general rules for a situational application; it is in a way, universal and can also apply to the future. Kinneavy discusses how Plato and Aristotle relate on this level and sums this idea up by saying, And both distinguish the general rules of the art of rhetoric from their situational application (Kinneavy 67). Plato believed that general rules and ideas about things were universal so, looking at kairos from a Platonic side, its nature can be universally applied to particular situations.

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Young discusses the use of heuristics in teaching writing in his essay Concepts of Art and the Teaching of Writing. He acknowledges the Sophistical side of teaching writing by listing Sophistical people such as Gorgias, but he explains the teaching of writing more in depth in a Platonic way. He quotes others who discuss, with Platonic expression, earlier rhetorical elements, though very real and valuable, are not practical because the ability to employ them cannot be imparted by teaching. They have to exist in the writer himself, in the peculiar bent of his nature. (Practical Elements, pg. xi) (qtd. in Young 176). This quote explains the way that probable knowledge is discovered from being familiar to a person, as if it has happened before; again, it has been proven to be universally applied to a particular situation as Plato believes. Further, Young explains through a quote by another scholar, Gordon Rohman, that the process of thinking when writing brings forth probable knowledge about something. It is not the other way around as the Sophistics explain where new probable knowledge can be fabricated through intertextualization. Instead, Rohman explains that thinking actively brings about probable knowledge. He states, By thinking, we refer to that activity of mind which brings forth and develops ideas, plans, designs, not merely the entrance of an idea into ones mind; an active, not a passive enlistment in the cause of an idea; conceiving, which includes consecutive logical thinking but much more besides; essentially the imposition of pattern upon experience (qtd. in Young 177). Through this quote that Young provides, the elements of a kind of Platonic heuristic are also explained. The elements involve intuition and relevant knowledge in order to follow through with the heuristic procedure. Elements of Aristotles rhetoric that are Platonic. An example of a Rhetoric and Composition scholar who argues that Aristotles rhetoric is Platonic is Barbara Warnick. In her essay Judgment, Probability, and Aristotles Rhetoric, Warnick discusses the five modes of thought or, what she explains that Aristotle expresses, the five faculties by which the soul expresses truth by way of affirmation and denial (Warnick 229). Warnick points out throughout her essay the various parts of Aristotles writings that are Platonic. One part in particular is 1402b9 in his Rhetoric when Aristotle discusses using probable knowledge in rhetoric when judging the accused and their opponents. Warnick

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provides information regarding the topic and concludes, Therefore, the conclusion must be shown to apply in the majority of cases (Warnick 307). Again, the Platonic nature of her conclusion is shown through the argument made that the probable knowledge in rhetoric, leading to a conclusion, must be shown to apply in many cases. This argument relates to the Platonic side that probable knowledge about something can be universally applied to a particular situation. The second and third uses of probable knowledge in rhetoric argued for by Warnick are Platonic as well. They are a premise formed from a generally accepted proposition and they are inferences or connections we make between facts and conclusions in everyday reasoning (Warnick 308). They are more closely related to Platonic thinking in that they involve a kind of intuition in order to come to a conclusion. The propositions are discovered and applied rather than fabricated and manipulated. There are connections between meanings, or facts, and what they represent, the conclusion, rather than being unrelated as the Sophistical side states.

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Works Cited Aristotle. Rhetoric. Trans. W. Rhys Roberts. Introduction to Aristotle. Ed. Richard McKeon. 2nd ed. Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 1973. 726-59. Print. Kinneavy, James L. Kairos in Classical and Modern Rhetorical Theory. Rhetoric and Kairos: Essays in History, Theory, and Praxis. Eds. Phillip Sipiora and James S. Baumlin. New York: State University of New York Press, 2002. 58-78. Print. Porter, James E. Intertextuality and the Discourse Community. Wiley, Gleason, and Phelps 225-33. Print. Warnick, Barbara. Judgment, Probability, and Aristotles Rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of Speech. 9 (1989): 299-311. Print. Wiley, Mark, Barbara Gleason, and Louise Wetherbee Phelps, eds. Composition in Four Keys: Inquiring into the Field. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1996. Print. Young, Richard E. Concepts of Art and the Teaching of Writing. Wiley, Gleason, and Phelps 176-83. Print.