Rhetoric Class Notes 1.3.07

(Originally written January 3, 2007 in Book 12)

Class Notes

Background for the emergence of Rhetoric

Greek Era (same as)
1) Homeric Epic
2) Josiah, King of Israel

Political Reforms:
1) Solon's Reforms (594 BC)
- Middle ground between poor and rich
- Four classes of people based on income
2) Cleisthenes (500 BC)
- Established direct involvement in government
3) Pericles
-Citizenship law
-Finanial support for government

Wars (as Foundation)
1) Athens v. Sparta (Peloponnesian)
2) Greece v. Persia (Persian)

Athenian Empire united Greece for trade, culture and rhetoric. Melting pot of culture cultivated rhetoric.

Intellectual Background
Thales - Solar Eclipse
Thales, Anaximander, Miletus - physical world governed by natural law
Protagoras (480-410 BC)
- traveled and taught for a fee
- taught Pericles and Socrates
- moral codes based on social construction
- neither denied nor affirmed the gods
- 'man is the measure of all things'

Rhetoric Beginnings

Gorgias to Athens (427 BC)
War with Corinth (395 - 387 BC)
Isocrates opens school in Athens (393 BC)
Isocrates - "Against the Sophists" (391 BC)
Plato founds the Academy (386 BC)
Aristotle joins the Academy (367 BC)
First Plebeian consul elected (367 BC)

Aristotle (384 - 322 BC)
"On Rhetoric" 360 - 344 BC
Tutored Alexander 335 - 332 BC
"Rhetoric is a combo of analytical knowledge and knowledge of characters"

Definitions of Rhetoric:
1) Antistrophos of dialectic
2) Ability to see the available means of persuasion.

Aristotle takes rhetoric (a knack in Plato) as an academic discipline

Purpose of Rhetoric
1) Duty
2) To give appropriate judgment
3) To become a political science which educates to prudence

Place of Rhetoric in Aristotle's work

4 Branches of the Organon:
1) Dialectic
2) Rhetoric
3) Prior Analytics
4) Posterior Analytics

Main Components
1) Pisteis (Proof)
2) Appeals:
Ethos - arete (excellence), phronosis (good sense) eunoia (good will)
Logos - syllogism (primarily in dialectic), enthymeme
Pathos - Emotions and appearance of character

Three types of Discourse
1) Epideictic - praise and blame
2) Forensic - legal, judicial
3) Deliberative - legislative, policy, future

The Rhetorical Triangle

Speaker - Ethos
Subject - Logos
Audience - Pathos
Text - Grammar