ABSTRACT
This chapter offers standard, complementary definitions of rhetoric and shows that our vision of classical rhetoric, the beginning of the formal study of persuasion, has been blurred by an overemphasis on Aristotle’s important definition and contributions. Aristotelian rhetoric is grounded in conflict and competition, and by contemporaneous as well as current accounts it was not the most successful, effective of the classical Greek rhetorics. The most famous (and complicating) definition of rhetoric, however, probably belongs to Aristotle: “Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion”. Aristotle remains the best known of the classical Greek rhetoricians, owing, in large part, to the survival of his Rhetoric, an analysis of the art of persuasion. Evidence from evolutionary biology, philosophy, and rhetoric shows that, in general, cooperative relationships are more successful in sustained resource acquisition than relationships based on egoism, conflict, and competition.
