修辞学复习提要

what is rhetoric?

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)：the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.

1. History of Ancient Greece (Hellas):

1.1 Tyranny (7th and 6th cent. B.C., each Greek city-state was for a time ruled by some tyrants (Corax defend the noble free men)

1.2 Democracy emerging around 600 B.C.: Solon (638 BC–558 BC), senate 元老院of 400 people, forcing each freeman to take a direct and personal interest in the affairs of the city (The Story of Mankind; court system (a jury of thirty)

1.3 Athens' Golden Age/ Classical/ Hellenic Age (500-323 B.C.)

Note: Hellenic, of Hellenes (Greek people), an Indo-European tribe who came to reside in Greece in the 11th cent. B.C. The people called themselves Hellene, after Hellen, the son of Deucalion and Pyrrha (the only two human beings who had escaped the great flood)

1) Pericles the statesman

Democracy:equality of opportunity ensured by individual merit and efficiency; equality of justice secured by jury system

By 460 B.C., led by Pericles 490-429 B.C. (p13), Athens was at its height of commercial prosperity and cultural and political dominance, and over the next 40 years many major building projects, including the Acropolis and Parthenon, were completed. Athens’s ―Golden Age‖ saw the works of the philosophers Socrates (469-399 B.C.), Plato(427-347 B.C.), and Aristotle; the dramatists Sophocles, Aristophanes, and Euripides; the historians Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon; and the sculptors Praxiteles and Phidias.

2. History of classical rhetoric

For political and forensic purpose

2.1 Origin of rhetoric

Q: Why did western rhetoric originate in ancient Greece?

In light of politics (administration of polis-city state): democracy

2.1.1 Political政治类的: about public affairs

Q: How was a decision possibly made at the assembly? (in light of Pericles’s speech)

(through discussions and debates at the assembly)

argument, the need for rhetoric

2.1.2 Ceremonial典礼类的: to praise or censure

2.1.3 Forensic法律类的: about private affairs (to deal with the property usurped by tyrant, why in need of Corax)

Jury system: Solon, Cleisthenes, Pericles

Solon made a provision whereby a citizen with a grievance had the right to state his case before a jury of thirty of his fellow Athenians.

1.Aristotle’s theory (Reading of Aristotle’s Rhetoric)

Three categories of oratory (3 general cases corresponding to “any given case” in the definition of rhetoric): political, forensic and ceremonial (tb, p24; eRhetoric 10) Hearer determines the speech’s end and object:

2.1 Political: assembly member to determine the future course;

2.2 Forensic: juryman to determine the past;

2.3 Ceremonial oratory of display: observer to decide on the orator’s skill in praising

or censuring a man

NOTE: Political: The main matters all men deliberate and on which political speeches are made are roughly five: ways (of revenue) and means (of expenditure); war and peace; national defense; imports and exports (food supply); legislation (above all) means of persuasion: belonging to the art of rhetoric;not the inartistic/ non-technical 非技艺类的proofs—laws, witnesses, contracts, tortures, oaths. (tb, p22; eRhetoric, p47);

belonging to the art of rhetoric:used and invented by the speaker/ spoken words

means/ modes: 3 kinds—ethos(speaker); pathos(hearer); logos(speech) Three technical means of persuasion: ethos伦理, pathos情理, logos论理(pp23-24) Ethos: ethical appeal道德诉求, in the character of the speaker so as to inspire trust in audience;

Pathos: emotional appeal情感诉求, in the emotional state of the hearer so as to put them in the right state of mind;

Logos: rational appeal理性诉求, in the argument itself

动之以情，晓之以理

3.1 Ethos: How can the speaker manage to appear as a credible man? (only through

words, not through preexisting good character)

He must display (1)good sense (practical intelligence) 明智; (2) good morals (a virtuous character高尚品德); (3) good will善意Men either form a false opinion through want of good sense; or they form a true opinion, but because of their moral badness they do not say what they really think; or finally, they are both sensible and upright, but not well disposed to their hearers, and may fail in consequence to recommend what they know to be the best course.

(e.g. Obama’s health care speech) eRhetoric, p53

3.2 Pathos: For we do not judge in the same way when we grieve and rejoice or when

we are friendly and hostile. Thus the orator has to arouse emotions exactly because emotions have the power to influence our judgments.

3.3 Logos: We persuade the argument itself when we demonstrate or seem to

demonstrate that something is the case.

Two species of argument: induction归纳(examples) and deduction 演绎/syllogism三段论(enthymeme修辞三段论，省略式三段论). (e.g.

Obama’s speech on debt ceiling)