Abstract
In our search for an appropriate assessment of the place of rhetoric in courts, we see that the history of philosophy offers a variety of descriptions of what rhetoric is as well as a variety of notions of what rhetoric should be. The paper shows that in the work of Aristotle rhetoric and ethics are inextricably connected. Aristotle’s limitation of rhetorical activity to three domains, his description of rhetoric as an offshoot from politics, his view on emotions and his elaboration of rhetoric as ‘technê’ all imply that the art of rhetoric is directly related to the orientation towards the good life. Subsequently the paper shows that Nicomachean Ethics has a rhetorical calibre. The contingent character of practical truth implies that discovering and communicating practical truth inevitably has a rhetoric dimension.
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- 1.
Indeed Plato did give an account of ‘real’ rhetoric, or rhetoric based on knowledge, but in this account rhetoric is just a part of philosophy. The real orator would be a philosopher-king.
- 2.
Commentary of the translator in: Aristotle (1926).
- 3.
‘Rhetoric is useful, because the true and the just are naturally superior to their opposites’ (1255a18).
- 4.
Elaborated in book III of EN.
- 5.
Cooper (1994, 197): ‘and not merely by what he says’.
- 6.
Engberg-Petersen (1996) hints at several places where this ‘austere conception’ of rhetoric can be found.
- 7.
1355a17 ‘pros ta endoxa’; cfr. 1356b33 ‘endoxon’, cfr. 1357a14., 1359a30: ‘things which may possibly happen or not’-endechetai’.
- 8.
1359b1: our examination is limited to finding out whether such things are possible or impossible for us to perform.
- 9.
As Jaeger (1957) elaborates, the difference is clearly visible in the use Plato and Aristotle make of examples from medicine.
- 10.
Jaeger (1957) states that Aristotle’s examples from medicine are meant to support this claim. According to Aristotle theoretical knowledge described in books is only good when it is supplemented by experience. Ultimately the doctor is educated by a doctor.
- 11.
I’ve elaborated this interpretation of Aristotle’s methodology in Becker (2004).
- 12.
Trevett even speaks about ‘a curious neglect of genuine political and forensic oratory’. Quoted in Graff (2001).
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Becker, M. (2013). Aristotelian Ethics and Aristotelian Rhetoric. In: Huppes-Cluysenaer, L., Coelho, N. (eds) Aristotle and The Philosophy of Law: Theory, Practice and Justice. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 23. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6031-8_6
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