Name: The " art" of rhetoric
ISBN: 9780674992122

The " art" of rhetoric

Few, if any, writers in history have made major contributions to as many fields of knowledge as Aristotle... 'If there are two definitive features of ancient Greek civilization,' writes Hugh Lawson-Tancred in his wide-ranging Introduction, 'they are articulacy and competition.' In the city-states oratorical competence was an essential asset for politicians in the Assemblies and Councils and even for ordinary citizens in the courts of law. In response, the technique of rhetoric rapidly developed, bringing virtuoso performances and a host of practical manuals for the layman. Yet if many of these were little more than collections of debaters' tricks, the hugely influential Art of Rhetorichas a far deeper purpose. It is here that Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) establishes the methods of informal reasoning, provides the first aesthetic evaluation of prose style and offers detailed observations on character and the emotions. 'Persuasiveness,' suggests Lawson-Tancred, 'becomes for the first time a systematic and even scientific exercise; it can indeed be taught, but only by a deep grasp of some of the most central features of human nature.' His fine translation makes freshly available an epoch-making work of literary criticism.

What Hacker News says

hdividerNov 2025

This always reminds me of a fragment of lost tragic ancient Greek verse, quoted only in Aristotle's Art of Rhetoric:

Often, when the gods bring great prosperity as a gift for men

They do so not out of goodwill towards them

But so that their ruin may be more conspicuous.

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hdividerFeb 2024

One might perhaps say that what is probable
Is that men experience much that is improbable.

- Fragment of a lost play by Agathon, ca. 2,400 years ago, quoted in Aristotle's The Art of Rhetoric

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corrralJun 2022

Yeah, I know rhetoric isn't about reading, exactly—I'm looking at the cheerful green spine of a Loeb edition of Aristotle's Art of Rhetoric on my shelf right this moment—but there seems to be a general deficiency in the ability to even follow, let alone construct, arguments or lines of reasoning. Often, bare comprehension of meaning is severely lacking, before we even get to interpreting and evaluating a text.

I mean simply that reading well is a distressingly uncommon skill; that one may hardly hope to write well without that foundation; and that there's a great deal of overlap between reading comprehension, and evaluating oral argument or presentation. I agree that instruction in rhetoric is lacking, but universities, and certainly high schools, aren't even doing a great job of ensuring graduates are skilled at more fundamental aspects of communication. However, perhaps that's backwards, and more robust rhetorical instruction would fill in some of the gaps in reading ability. I wouldn't mind seeing it attempted, since the current approach doesn't seem to be very effective.

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zeteoMar 2013

As long as you're not doing pure mathematics, you can't always speak on purely logical ground. Aristotle himself, who invented logic and whose picture is on this poster, wrote a different book called The Art of Rhetoric in which he fully approves of deploying e.g. appeals to emotion or authority. Most of these "fallacies" are actually good heuristics within normal discourse: even if they don't produce full logical confidence, they are still very useful in ambiguous or time-sensitive contexts (a.k.a. everyday life).

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