ABSTRACT
Most of us probably come to an understanding of the nature of rhetoric from Aristotle, and many Aristotelian concepts can be used to describe rhetoric throughout the global village. My recent comparative studies, however, have led me to the conclusion that some Aristotelian concepts-his view of epideictic, for example-need revision if they are to be valid cross-culturally.1 In addition to what I have said earlier, one might, on cultural grounds, question some of the logical methods Aristotle applied to describing rhetoric. Aristotle was a formalist and a structuralist, and he often relied on binary logic that would not have appealed to some non-Western thinkers, not to his near contemporary the Chinese philosopher Mencius, for example, who developed a theory of multiple definitions. Every audience, Aristotle says (Rhetoric 1.3.2), is either a judge or not a judge. Subsequently (2.18.1), he admits that an audience is in some sense a judge even when it is not asked to make a formal decision, and in practice the three species of Aristotelian rhetoric-judicial, deliberative, and epideictic-are rarely pure. A second binary distinction made by Aristotle (1.2.1) is that between atechnic (or nonartistic) and technic (or artistic) means of persuasion, the latter divided into what may conveniently be labeled ethos., logos, and pathos. Most of us would probably agree that these are useful general categories of rhetoric, even though there may be others, and even though there are overlapping features among these three. Ethical, logical, and emotional means of persuasion are found in all cultures, but the effectiveness of a composition often derives almost exclusively from ethos. We need to recognize, however, something Aristotle did not make clear, that all three of his means of persuasion have nonartistic and artistic elements. The nonartistic element of ethos is the authority that the speaker-or writer-brings to the occasion or context. Its artistic element, which is the only feature discussed by Aristotle, is how a speaker creates trust by what is actually said and how it is said. The nonartistic element in logos is the material that the rhetor chooses and uses in the discourse, applying artistic technique to it. Is there any real difference between, on the one hand, a rhetor’s citation of witnesses, which Aristotle regarded as nonartistic but which includes quotation of proverbs (1.15.14), and on the other hand the use of historical examples, which he regards as artistic (1.2.8-10)? The nonartistic element of pathos is the emotion already existing in an audience, which the
speaker then artistically enhances or mollifies. Aristotle’s discussion of the emotions (2.2-11) seems to imply as much.
