I’ve got a lot on mind this week, and we covered quite a bit (Confucian, Aztecan, and Aristotelian rhetoric), but, to honor Aristotle and keep my thoughts straight, I’m going to put these all down in the form of a list (I’m going to apologize now: sorry!).
1. I’m going to start with Aztecan rhetoric, which was awesome.
2. Judging from my very brief introduction to Aztecan rhetoric, courtesy of Grace, I think it would be hard to separate rhetorical texts from sacred texts and ideology: maybe, culturally, there was no difference, or maybe texts dealing with the sacred is all that has survived.
3. I found the notion of “metaphorical pairing” super interesting and poetic. Paradox is always intriguing. In my experience, western logic tends to fall apart in its treatment of paradox, which I think points to a flaw in the way in which we have defined truth, and constructed the relationship between personal experience and empirical reality. I think we tend to essentialize the nature of the world around us, claiming that it has a singular and unchanging nature, which probably stems from Plato’s sense of truth, but paradox, by illustrating the way in which things are capable of two contraries simultaneously, breaks that idea down. I think Paradox subtly subverts the binary nature of western logic, which I'd argue is in opposition to how the world is actually experienced. By allowing a subject to simultaneous be two contraries, I think Aztecan rhetoric has an understanding of the world in a more complete, or big picture, sense, being aware that space, words, and truth (amongst other things) are experienced subjectively and therefore exist and are defined differently from different perspectives and contexts. Rhetoric, I think, is the “art” by which we can address these possibilities and perspectives, brake them down, and either defend or refute there existence and/or logic. Also, if nothing else, paradox is puzzling in a manner that urges an audience to think about something deeply or differently, and therefore has a practical, pedagogical, and rhetorical nature as well.
4. Let’s move on to Confucian rhetoric.
5. I think—since this was particularly unique to Confucius’ rhetoric—I’m going to talk primarily about the 4th part of his rhetoric, as Carrie described it, being that listeners are equally responsible for their own education as the speaker. I think it reinforces the way in which knowledge is created discursively (for whatever reason I keep on treating rhetoric epistemologically): being created through the interaction between speaker, empirical/material realities, and the audience. I think (and I am borrowing from my composition pedagogies course) that this reality, while being hinted at in Aristotelian rhetoric, has become increasingly important in recent scholarship regarding the place of rhetoric and composition in english departments.
6. Lastly, to slightly change it up a bit, I am going to share a few of the thoughts I had written in the margins of Aristotle’s The “Art” of Rhetoric while reading. Hopefully it’ll reveal, to some minor degree, the progression of my thoughts while reading.
7. “Gets Platonic Here: Words are Imperfect Mediators of Truth” — The sentence in question is “But in proportion as anyone endeavors to make of Dialectic or Rhetoric, not what they are, faculties, but sciences, to that extent he will, without knowing it, destroys their real nature…by crossing over into the domain of sciences, whose subjects are certain definite things, not merely words” (41). Here, in a way that seems interestingly different from Plato, Aristotle seems to treat dialectic as similarly distanced from objective truth as rhetoric because of its connection to non-definite, and imperfect, language/communication. I could be stretching with this interpretation, but I definitely read it as such in the moment, which I think is kind of interesting.
8. “More essentializing and misogyny” — The claim in question is “Virtues and actions are nobler, when they proceed from those who are naturally worthier, for instance from a man rather than a woman” (95). Now, this is rather obvious, and it might also be somewhat of a lazy shot at Aristotle on my part, but, putting the misogyny aside momentarily, I find the assertion that the value of a good quality in an individual is compounded when the individual is of “noble character,” whatever that might mean, problematic and confusing. I assume that nobility is supposed to correlate, and be contingent upon, the quantity of good characteristics in an individual, which would mean that nobility isn’t necessarily inherent, but can be earned. If Aristotle is conflating nobility with his sense of noble birth, then he is basically saying that what is virtuous in the average individual is more virtuous in a greek man, which defies all logic, assumes a racial hierarchy (which might be expected when dealing with ancient greeks), and therefore demonstrates his susceptibility to incredibly flawed logic (undermining his ethos). That said, his misogyny from the get-go also demonstrates his susceptibility to flawed logic and therefore also undermines his ethos.
9. “ENGL 201! Lists of fallacies” — Addressing “One topic of demonstrative enthymemes is derived from opposites; for it is necessary to consider whether one opposite is predictive of the other, as a means of destroying an argument” (297). We talked briefly about this in class, but it was interesting to see the origin of logical fallacies. I have definitely found that these can be useful in the past, and I think, if we are going to be teaching these in composition courses, it would probably be best to be aware of their origin and make students aware of their origins.
10. "Form, Emotion, and Meaning" — Aristotle's passage: "Style expresses emotion...Appropriate style also makes the fact appear credible; for the mind of the hearer is imposed upon under the impression that the speaker is speaking truth, because, in such circumstances, his feelings are the same, so that he thinks (even if it is not the case as the speaker puts it) that things are as he represents them" (379). We talked about this briefly in class, but I think this might be the place wherein the Greek fear of manipulation becomes readily apparent. I don't know that its primarily western, or if it is fear that developed elsewhere also, but Plato and Aristotle seem to always associate emotion with manipulation; they also treat emotion very extremely. Nevertheless, Aristotle's awareness of style's value in persuading is interesting. I think form is inherent to the creation of meaning, and this probably stems from a focus on the way in which an audience (or reader) creates meaning by interacting with content as it is filtered through form and style, but I think Aristotle sees it differently. I think Aristotle, like Plato, sees meaning with a focus on speaker and intention. I could be wrong, but I think the meaning exist separately from the audience, and it is up to both speaker, to guide, and the audience to reach said meaning, what ever it might be. In short, intended meaning is the only meaning of importance. I, of course, could be deeply incorrect, but that's how I have been thinking of Aristotle's connection (or lack thereof) between style and meaning.
11. Well, this has gone long, but thank you for reading!
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