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Dispositio

Dispositio

Dispositio was the system used for the organization of arguments in Western classical rhetoric. The word is Latin, and can be translated as "organization" or "arrangement." It is the second of five canons of classical rhetoric (the first being inventio, and the remaining being elocutio, memoria, and pronuntiatio) that concern the crafting and delivery of speeches and writing. The first part of any rhetorical exercise was to discover the proper arguments to use, which was done under the formalized methods of inventio. The next problem facing the orator or writer was to select various arguments and organize them into an effective discourse. Aristotle defined two essential parts of a discourse: the statement of the case and the proof of the case. For example, in a legal argument, a prosecutor must first declare the charges against the defendant and provide the relevant facts; then he must present the evidence that proves guilt. Aristotle allowed that in practice most discourse also requires an introduction and a conclusion. Later writers on rhetoric, such as Cicero and Quintilian refined this organizational scheme even further, so that there were eventually six parts:
- the introduction, or exordium
- the statement of the case, or narratio
- the outline of the major points in the argument, or divisio (sometimes known as partitio)
- the proof of the case, or confirmatio
- the refutation of possible opposing arguments, or confutatio
- the conclusion, or peroratio While this structure might appear to be highly rigid (and certainly some writers on the subject were overly pedantic), it was in practice a flexible model. Cicero and Quintilian, for example, encouraged writers to rearrange the structure when it strengthed their case; for instance, if the opposing arguments were known to be powerful, it might be better to place the refutation before the proof. Within each major part, there were additional tactics that might be employed. For instance, a prosecutor might sum up his case with forceful repetition of his main points using a technique known as accumulatio. The defense attorney in the same case might use a different approach in his summation. Finally, dispositio was also seen as an iterative process, particularly in conjunction with inventio. The very process of organizing arguments might lead to the need to discover and research new ones. An orator would refine his arguments and their organization until they were properly arranged. He would then proceed on to those areas that we generally associate with rhetoric today — the development of the style and delivery of the arguments.

Rhetoric

Rhetoric (from Greek ρήτωρ, rhêtôr, "orator") is one of the three original liberal arts or trivium (the other members are dialectic and grammar) in Western culture. In ancient and medieval times, both rhetoric and dialectic were understood to aim at being persuasive. The concept of rhetoric has shifted from time to time during its 2500-year history. Today rhetoric is generally described as the art of persuasion through language. Rhetoric can be described as a persuasive way in which one relates a theme or idea in an effort to convince. However, both the terms "rhetoric" and "sophistry" can be used today in a pejorative or dismissive sense, when someone wants to denigrate certain verbal reasoning as spurious.

History

Introduction

The scholarly literature on the 2500-year history and theory of rhetoric in Western culture is far too voluminous to be listed at the end of this entry. Useful reference works include Thomas O. Sloane, ed., Encyclopedia of Rhetoric (Oxford University Press, 2001); Heinrich Lausberg, Handbook of Literary Rhetoric: A Foundation for Literary Study (1960; 2nd ed. 1973; English trans, Brill, 1998); Richard A. Lanham, A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms (University of California Press, 1968; 2nd ed. 1991). For overview surveys of the scholarly literature, see Winifred Bryan Horner, ed., The Present State of Scholarship in Historical and Contemporary Rhetoric (University of Missouri Press, 1983; rev. ed. 1990); and Theresa Enos and Stuart C. Brown, eds., Defining the New Rhetorics (Sage, 1993).

Ancient Greece

Western thinking about rhetoric grew out of the public and political life of Ancient Greece, much of which revolved around the use of oratory as the medium through which philosophical ideas were developed and disseminated. For modern students today, it can be difficult to remember that the wide use and availability of written texts is a phenomenon that was just coming into vogue in Classical Greece. In Classical times, many of the great thinkers spoke their words; in fact, many of them are known only through the texts that their students and followers wrote down. As has already been noted, rhetor was the Greek term for orator. See Jeffrey Walker, Rhetoric and Poetic in Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2000). Rhetoric thus evolved as an important art, one that provided the orator with the forms, means, and strategies of persuading an audience of the correctness of the orator's arguments. Today the term rhetoric can be used at times to refer only to the form of argumentation, often with the pejorative connotation that rhetoric is a means of obscuring the truth. Classical philosophers believed quite the contrary: the skilled use of rhetoric was essential to the discovery of truths, because it provided the means of ordering and clarifying arguments.

The Sophists

Organized thought about rhetoric began in ancient Greece. The first written manual is attributed to Corax and his pupil Tisias. Their work, as well as that of many of the early rhetoricians, grew out of the courts of law; Tisias, for example, is believed to have written judicial speeches that others delivered in the courts. Rhetoric was popularized in the 5th century BC by itinerant teachers known as sophists, the best known of whom were Protagoras (c.481-420 BC), Gorgias (c.483-376 BC), and Isocrates (436-338 BC). See Jacqueline de Romilly, The Great Sophists in Periclean Athens (French orig. 1988; English trans. Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press, 1992).

Aristotle

Plato (427-347 BC) has famously outlined the differences between true and false rhetoric. His student Aristotle (384-322 BC) has even more famously set forth an extended treatise on rhetoric that still repays careful study today. In the first sentence of The Art of Rhetoric, Aristotle says that "rhetoric is the counterpart [literally, the antistrophe] of dialectic." By this, he means that while dialectical methods are necessary to find truth in theoretical matters, rhetorical methods are required in practical matters such as adjudicating somebody's guilt or innocence when charged in a court of law, or adjudicating a prudent course of action to be taken in a deliberative assembly. For Plato and Aristotle, dialectic involves persuasion, so when Aristotle says that rhetoric is the antistrophe of dialectic, he means that rhetoric as he uses the term has a domain or scope of application that is different from the domain or scope of application of dialectic. In Nietzsche Humanist (1998: 129), Claude Pavur explains that "[t]he Greek prefix 'anti' does not merely designate opposition, but it can also mean 'in place of.'" When Aristotle characterizes rhetoric as the antistrophe of dialectic, he no doubt means that rhetoric is used in place of dialectic when we are discussing civic issues in a court of law or in a legislative assembly. The domain of rhetoric is civic affairs and practical decision making in civic affairs, not theoretical considerations of operational definitions of terms and clarification of thought -- these, for him, are in the domain of dialectic. Aristotle's treatise on rhetoric is an attempt to systematically describe civic rhetoric as a human art or skill (techne). He identifies three different types of rhetorical proof:
- ethos: how the character and credibility of a speaker influence an audience to consider him to be believable. This could be any position in which the speaker knows about the topic, from being college professor to being an acquaintance of person who experienced the matter in question.
- pathos: the use of emotional appeals. This can be done through metaphor, storytelling, or presenting the topic in a way that evokes strong emotions in the audience.
- logos: the use of facts, numbers, and figures to construct an argument. The term logic evolved from logos. He also identifies three different types of civic rhetoric: forensic (concerned with determining truth or falsity of events that took place in the past), deliberative (concerned with determining whether or not particular actions should or should not be taken in the future), and epideictic (concerned with praise and blame, demonstrating beauty and skill in the present). See Eugene Garver, Aristotle's Rhetoric: An Art of Character (University of Chicago Press,1994).

Roman rhetoricians

The Romans, for whom oration was also an important part of public life, saw much value in Aristotle's rhetoric. Cicero (106-43 BC) and Quintilian (35-100 AD) were chief among Roman rhetoricians, and their work is an extension of Aristotle's. Latin rhetoric was developed out of the Rhodian schools of rhetoric. In the second century BC, Rhodes became an important educational center, particularly of rhetoric, and the sons of noble Roman families studied there. Although not widely read in Roman times, the Rhetorica ad Herennium (sometimes attributed to Cicero, but probably not his work) is a notable early work on Latin rhetoric. Its author was probably a Latin rhetorician in Rhodes, and for the first time we see a systematic treatment of Latin elocutio. Although the Ad Herennium was not known in its time, it provides a glimpse into the early development of Latin rhetoric, and in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, it achieved wide publication as one of the basic school texts on rhetoric. Whether or not he wrote the Rhetorica ad Herennium, Cicero contributed several other works on rhetoric: De Oratore, the Brutus, and the Orator are major works; De Optimo Genere Oratorum, Topica, and De Partitione Oratia are additional minor works. Cicero, of course, was also a renowned orator, and his orations and epistles are themselves exemplars of rhetoric, and were much imitated. See James M. May, ed., Brill's Companion to Cicero: Oratory and Rhetoric (Brill, 2002). Along with Cicero, the most influential Roman rhetorician was Quintilian. His career began as a pleader in the courts of law; his reputation grew so great that Vespasian created a chair of rhetoric for him in Rome. The culmination of his life's work was the Institutio oratoria (or Institutes of Oratory), a lengthy treatise on the training of the orator. In it, Quintilian codified rhetorical studies under five canons that would persist for centuries in academic circles:
- Inventio (invention) is the process that leads to the development and refinement of an argument.
- Once arguments are developed, dispositio (disposition, or arrangement) is used to determine how it should be organized for greatest effect, usually beginning with the exordium.
- Once the speech content is known and the structure is determined, the next steps involve elocutio (style) and pronuntiatio (presentation).
- Memoria (memory) comes to play as the speaker recalls each of these elements during the speech.
- Actio (delivery) is the final step as the speech is presented in a gracious and pleasing to the audience way - the Grand Style. This work was available only in fragments in medieval times, but the discovery of a complete copy at Abbey of St. Gall in 1416 led to its emergence as one of the most influential works on rhetoric during the Renaissance. Quintilian was reacting in part to the growing tendency in Rome to value ornamentation over substance in rhetoric. However, his masterful work was not enough to curb this movement, and the second century CE saw rhetoric fall into decadence. One other figure worth mention, although he is not commonly regarded as a rhetorician, is St. Augustine (354-430). However, he was at one time a teacher of Latin rhetoric and after his conversion to Christianity, became interested in using these "pagan" arts for spreading his religion. This new use of rhetoric is explored in the Fourth Book of his De Doctrina Christiana, and laid the foundation of what would become homiletics, the rhetoric of the sermon. A valuable collection of studies can be found in Stanley E. Porter, ed., Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period 330 B.C. - A.D. 400 (Brill, 1997).

Rhetoric from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment

After the Roman Empire the study of rhetoric continued to be central to the study of the verbal arts; but the study of the verbal arts went into decline for several centuries, followed eventually by a gradual rise in formal education, culminating in the rise of medieval universities. But rhetoric transmuted during this period in the arts of letter writing (ars dictaminis) and writing sermons (ars praedicandi). As part of the trivium, rhetoric was secondary to the study of logic, and its study was highly scholastic: students were given repetitive exercises in the creation of discourses on historical subjects (suasoriae) or on classic legal questions (controversiae). In his 1943 Cambridge University doctoral dissertation in English, Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) surveys the verbal arts from approximately the time of Cicero down to the time of Thomas Nashe (1567-1600?). McLuhan's dissertation is scheduled to be published in a critical edition by Gingko Press in the fall of 2005 with the title The Classical Trivium: The Place of Thomas Nashe in the Learning of His Time. His dissertation is still noteworthy for undertaking to study the history of the verbal arts together as the trivium, even though the developments that he surveys have been studied in greater detail since he undertook his study. As noted below, McLuhan became one of the most widely publicized thinkers in the 20th century, so it is important to note his scholarly roots in the study of the history of rhetoric and dialectic.

Sixteenth century

Walter J. Ong's encyclopedia article "Humanism" in the 1967 New Catholic Encyclopedia provides a well-informed survey of Renaissance humanism, which defined itself broadly as disfavoring medieval scholastic logic and dialectic and as favoring instead the study of classical Latin style and grammar and philology and rhetoric. (Reprinted in Ong's Faith and Contexts (Scholars Press, 1999; 4: 69-91.) One influential figure in the rebirth of interest in classical rhetoric was Erasmus (c.1466-1536). His work, De Duplici Copia Verborum et Rerum (1512), was widely published (it went through more than 150 editions throughout Europe) and became one of the basic school texts on the subject. Its treatment of rhetoric is less comprehensive than the classic works of antiquity, but provides a traditional treatment of res-verba (matter and form): its first book treats the subject of elocutio, showing the student how to use schemes and tropes; the second book covers inventio. Much of the emphasis is on abundance of variation (copia means "plenty" or "abundance", as in copious or cornucopia), so both books focus on ways to introduce the maximum amount of variety into discourse. For instance, in one section of the De Copia, Erasmus presents two hundred variations of the sentence "Semper, dum vivam, tui meminero". Juan Luis Vives (1492 - 1540) also helped shape the study of rhetoric in England. A Spaniard, he was appointed in 1523 to the Lectureship of Rhetoric at Oxford by Cardinal Wolsey, and was entrusted by Henry VIII to be one of the tutors of Mary. Vives fell into disfavor when Henry VIII divorced Catherine of Aragon and left England in 1528. His best-known work was a book on education, De Disciplinis, published in 1531, and his writings on rhetoric included Rhetoricae, sive De Ratione Dicendi, Libri Tres (1533), De Consultatione (1533), and a rhetoric on letter writing, De Conscribendis Epistolas (1536). It is likely that many well-known English writers would have been exposed to the works of Erasmus and Vives (as well as those of the Classical rhetoricians) in their schooling, which was conducted in Latin (not English) and often included some study of Greek and placed considerable emphasis on rhetoric. See, for example, T.W. Baldwin's William Shakspere's Small Latine and Lesse Greeke, 2 vols. (University of Illinois Press, 1944). The mid-1500s saw the rise of vernacular rhetorics — those written in English rather than in the Classical languages; adoption of works in English was slow, however, due to the strong orientation toward Latin and Greek. A successful early text was Thomas Wilson's The Arte of Rhetorique (1553), which presents a traditional treatment of rhetoric. For instance, Wilson presents the five parts of rhetoric (Inuention, Disposition, Elocution, Memorie, and Utterance). Other notable works included Angel Day's The English Secretorie (1586, 1592), George Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie (1589), and Richard Rainholde's Foundacion of Rhetorike (1563). During this same period, a movement began that would change the organization of the school curriculum in Protestant and especially Puritan circles and lead to rhetoric losing its central place. A French scholar, Petrus Ramus (1515-1572), dissatisfied with what he saw as the overly broad and redundant organization of the trivium, proposed a new curriculum. In his scheme of things, the five components of rhetoric no longer lived under the common heading of rhetoric. Instead, invention and disposition were determined to fall exclusively under the heading of dialectic, while language, delivery, and memory were all that remained for rhetoric. See Walter J. Ong, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (Harvard University Press, 1958; reissued by the University of Chicago Press, 2004, with a new foreword by Adrian Johns). One of Ramus' followers, Audomarus Talaeus (Omer Talon) published his rhetoric, Institutiones Oratoriae, in 1544. This work provided a simple presentation of rhetoric that emphasized the treatment of style, and became so popular that it was mentioned in John Brinsley's (1612) Ludus literarius; or The Grammar Schoole as being the "most used in the best schooles." Many other Ramist rhetorics followed in the next half-century, and by the 1600s, their approach became the primary method of teaching rhetoric in Protestant and especially Puritan circles. See Walter J. Ong, Ramus and Talon Inventory (Harvard University Press, 1958); Joseph S. Freedman, Philosophy and the Arts in Central Europe, 1500-1700: Teaching and Texts at Schools and Universities (Ashgate, 1999). John Milton (1608-1674) wrote a textbook in logic or dialectic in Latin based on Ramus' work, which has now been been translated into English by Walter J. Ong and Charles J. Ermatinger in The Complete Prose Works of John Milton (Yale University Press, 1982; 8: 206-407), with a lengthy introduction by Ong (144-205). The introduction is reprinted in Ong's Faith and Contexts (Scholars Press, 1999; 4: 111-41). But Ramism did not strongly influence the established Catholic schools and universities or the new Catholic schools and universities founded by members of the religious order known as the Society of Jesus, as can be seen in the Jesuit document known as the Ratio Studiorum that Claude Pavur, S.J., has recently translated into English, with the Latin text in the parallel column on each page (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2005). The influence of Cicero and Quintilian permeates the Ratio Studiorum.

Seventeenth century

In New England and at Harvard College (founded 1636), Ramus and his followers dominated, as Perry Miller shows in The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Harvard University Press, 1939). However, in England, several writers influenced the course of rhetoric during the seventeenth century, many of them carrying forward the dichotomy that had been set forth by Ramus and his followers during the preceding decades. Of greater importance is that this century saw the development of a modern, vernacular style that looked to English, rather than to Greek, Latin, or French models. Francis Bacon (1561-1626), although not a rhetorician, contributed to the field in his writings. One of the concerns of the age was to find a suitable style for the discussion of scientific topics, which needed above all a clear exposition of facts and arguments, rather than the ornate style favored at the time. Bacon in his The Advancement of Learning criticized those who are preoccupied with style rather than "the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of judgment." On matters of style, he proposed that the style conform to the subject matter and to the audience, that simple words be employed whenever possible, and that the style should be agreeable. See Lisa Jardine, Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse (Cambridge University Press, 1975). Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) also wrote on rhetoric. Along with a shortened translation of Aristotle's Rhetoric, Hobbes also produced a number of other works on the subject. Sharply contrarian on many subjects, Hobbes, like Bacon, also promoted a simpler and more natural style that used figures of speech sparingly. Perhaps the most influential development in English style came out of the work of the Royal Society (founded in 1660), which in 1664 set up a committee to improve the English language. Among the committee's members were John Evelyn (1620-1706), Thomas Sprat (1635-1713), and John Dryden (1631-1700). Sprat regarded "fine speaking" as a disease, and thought that a proper style should "reject all amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style" and instead "return back to a primitive purity and shortness" (History of the Royal Society, 1667). While the work of this committee never went beyond planning, John Dryden is often credited with creating and exemplifying a new and modern English style. His central tenet was that the style should be proper "to the occasion, the subject, and the persons." As such, he advocated the use of English words whenever possible instead of foreign ones, as well as vernacular, rather than Latinate, syntax. His own prose (and his poetry) became exemplars of this new style.

Modern developments

Walter Jost has examined Rhetorical Thought in John Henry Newman (1989). (John Henry Newman lived from 1801-1890.) The Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984), who was deeply influenced by Newman's An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (1870), worked out what he styles the generalized empirical method in Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) and elsewhere. In a review article originally published in the Quarterly Journal of Speech (1985: 476-88), John Angus Campbell has characterized Lonergan's generalized empirical method as his rhetoric, an astute observation that has not yet been widely noted. Even so, Lonergan's generalized empirical method holds enormous potential for taking the theory of rhetoric to the next level of significance. (Campbell's essay is reprinted in Communication and Lonergan (Sheed & Ward, 1991: 3-22). At the turn of the twentieth century, there was a revival of rhetorical study manifested in the establishment of departments of rhetoric and speech at academic institutions, as well as the formation of national and international professional organizations. Theorists generally agree that a significant reason for the revival of the study of rhetoric was the renewed importance of language and persuasion in the increasingly mediated environment of the twentieth century. The rise of advertising and of mass media such as photography, telegraphy, radio, and film brought rhetoric more prominently into people's lives. For example, when McLuhan was working on his 1943 Cambridge University doctoral dissertation on the verbal arts and Nashe, mentioned above, he was also preparing the materials that were eventually published as the book The Mechanical Bride: The Folklore of Industrial Man (Vanguard Press, 1951). This book is a compilation of exhibits of ads and other materials from popular culture with short essays about them by McLuhan. The essays involve rhetorical analysis of the ways in which the material in the item aims to persuade, and commentary on the persuasive strategies in each item. After studying the persuasive strategies involved in such an array of items in popular culture, McLuhan shifted the focus of his rhetorical analysis and began to consider how communication media themselves impact on us as persuasive, in a manner of speaking. In other words, the communication media as such embody and carry a persuasive dimension. McLuhan uses hyperbole to express this insight when he says "the medium is the message." This shift in focus from his 1951 book led to his two most widely known books, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (University of Toronto Press, 1962) and Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (McGraw-Hill, 1964). These two books led McLuhan to become one of the most publicized thinkers in the 20th century. No other scholar of the history and theory of rhetoric was as widely publicized in the 20th century as McLuhan. It should be noted here that McLuhan read Lonergan's Insight, mentioned above, in 1957 (see Letters of Marshall McLuhan, 1987: 251). Lonergan's book is an elaborate guidebook to cultivate one's inwardness and on attending to and reflecting on one's inward consciousness. McLuhan's 1962 and 1964 books represent an inward turn to attending to one's consciousness that is far more pronounced than anything found in his 1951 book or in his 1943 dissertation. By contrast, many other thinkers in the study of rhetoric are more outward oriented toward sociological considerations and symbolic interaction. McLuhan's famous dictum "the medium is the message" can be paraphrased with terminology from Lonergan. At the empirical level of consciousness, the medium is the message, whereas at the intelligent and rational levels of consciousness, the content is the message. Thus McLuhan is enjoining us to attend to the empirical level of consciousness.

Current state of rhetorical study

Rhetorical theory today is as much influenced by the research results and research methods of the behavioral sciences and by theories of literary criticism as by ancient rhetorical theory. Early rhetorical theorists attempted to turn the study of rhetoric into a social science that allowed predictive analyses of human behavior. Interdisciplinary scholars of symbol systems, such as Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945), Hugh Duncan, and most notably Kenneth Burke (1897-1993), influenced a new generation of rhetorical scholars who drew from various disciplines to more fully comprehend the phenomenon of human communication in all its aspects. While ancient rhetorical scholarship had focused primarily on rhetoric as oral speech, contemporary rhetorical theorists are interested in the panoply of human symbolic behavior—both the spoken and written word as well as music, film, radio, television, etc. Thus Kenneth Burke, who defined the human being as the "symbol-using animal," defined rhetoric as "the use of symbols to induce cooperation in those who by nature respond to symbols." Current rhetorical theory also draws heavily from cultural studies and design studies. Other notable 20th-century authors in the study of the history and theory of rhetoric include Wayne C. Booth, Edward P.J. Corbett, James Kinneavy, Richard A. Lanham, Chaim Perelman, I.A. Richards, Stephen Toulmin, and Richard M. Weaver.

References

Primary texts

The locus classicus for bilingual editions of Greek and Latin primary texts is the Loeb Classical Library that is published in the United States by Harvard University Press. For other translations, see the bibliographies accompanying the Wikipedia entries about each author. see the external links section for online editions of several important works, including" :Rhetorica ad Herennium :Cicero's De Inventione :Quintilian's Institutio oratoria :Thomas Wilson's The Arte of Rhetorique
External links

- [http://rhet.net/ rhet.net--an internet portal for rhetoricians]
- [http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm Silva Rhetoricae]
- [http://rhetoric.eserver.org/ EServer Rhetoric and Composition]
- [http://www.godstruthfortoday.org/Library/bullinger/FiguresOfSpeech.html Figures of Speech] by E.W. Bullinger Systematically Classified
- [http://www.figarospeech.com/ It Figures - Figures of Speech]
- [http://www.uky.edu/ArtsSciences/Classics/rhetoric.html A Glossary of Rhetorical Terms with Examples] by Division of Classics at The University of Kentucky.
- [http://wac.colostate.edu/books/lauer%5Finvention/ PDF edition of Janice Lauer's Invention in Rhetoric and Composition]
- [http://www.geocities.com/mskochin/workinprogress/fivechapcurr.PDF PDF edition of Michael S. Kochin's Five Chapters on Rhetoric: Character, Action, Things, Nothing, and Art]
- [http://specgram.com/CXLVII.3/09.seely.rhetoric.html Twenty Special Forms of Rhetoric]: A humorous look at twenty non-traditional but nonetheless commonly used forms of rhetorical argumentation.
- [http://www.galilean-library.org/int21.html An introduction to Rhetoric and rhetorical figures] by Paul Newall at the Galilean Library, aimed at beginners. Online primary texts
- [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Aristot.+Rh.+1.1.1 Online Greek and English editions of Aristotle's Rhetoric]
- [http://dobc.unipv.it/scrineum/wight/herm1.htm Online Latin edition of Rhetorica ad Herrenium]
- [http://dobc.unipv.it/scrineum/wight/invs1.htm Online Latin edition of Cicero's De Inventione]
- [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Cic.+de+Orat.+1.1 Online Latin edition of Cicero's De Oratore]
- [http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=9060 Online English edition of Demosthenes' orations]
- [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Dem.+21+1 Online Greek editions of Demosthenes' orations]
- [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Isoc.+13+1 Online Greek and English editions of Isocrates' Against the Sophists]
- [http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=Gallica&O=NUMM-83897 Online edition of 1576 edition of Susenbrotus' Epitome troporum]
- [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.03.0096 Online edition of 1593 edition of Henry Peacham's The Garden of Eloquence]
- [http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/displayprose.cfm?prosenum=17 Online edition of George Puttenham's The Arte of Poesie]
- [http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/%7Erbear/arte/arte.htm Online edition of Thomas Wilson's The Arte of Rhetorique]
- Category:Linguistics Category:Narratology ja:修辞技法

Inventio

Inventio is the system or method used for the discovery of arguments in Western rhetoric and comes from the Latin, meaning "invention" or "discovery". It is the first of five canons of classical rhetoric (the others being dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronuntiatio) that concern the crafting and delivery of speeches and writing. One of the oldest criticisms of rhetoric is that as an art it has no proper subject matter. In other words, an orator might speak on any topic, with his success being measured purely on the brilliance of his rhetorical skills. This aspect of rhetoric is one reason why Plato attacked what he saw as empty rhetoric on the part of sophist philosophers, such as Gorgias. Aristotle, in his works on rhetoric, answered Plato's charges by arguing that reason and rhetoric are intertwined ("Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic" is the first sentence of his Rhetoric). In Aristotle's view, dialectic reasoning is the mechanism for discovering universal truths; rhetoric is the method for clarifying and communicating these principles to others. And in order to communicate effectively, an orator must be able to assemble proper arguments that support his thesis. Inventio, therefore, is the systematic discovery of arguments. Aristotle, as well as later writers on rhetoric, such as Cicero and Quintilian, devoted considerable attention to developing and formalizing the discipline of rhetorical invention. Two important concepts within invention were:

Topoi

In classical rhetoric, arguments are obtained from various sources of information, or topoi (from the Greek for "places"; i.e. "places to find something"). Topoi are a set of categories that help delineate the relationships among ideas; Aristotle divided these into "common" and "special" groups. In the common group could be found such categories as laws, witnesses, contracts, oaths, comparisons of similarity, difference, or degree, definitions of things, division of things (whole/parts, for instance), cause and effect, and other items that could be analyzed, researched or documented. Modern writers and students use these topics, as well, when discovering arguments, although today more emphasis is placed on such things as scientific facts, stastistics, and other "hard" evidence. Classical rhetoricians saw many areas of inquiry that today's writer might view as being purely in the province of "logic" — developing syllogisms, finding contradictions, and so on — as being of equal or greater importance. Special topoi included such concepts as justice or injustice, virtue, good, and worthiness. Again, these are areas of inquiry seen by many today as belonging to other arts, but from Greek times through the Renaissance, these were considered integral to the study and practice of rhetoric.

Stasis

The procedure known as stasis was another important part of the invention process. This involved the practice of posing and exploring questions relevant to clarifying the main issues in the debate. There were four types of stasis: definitional, conjectural, translative, and qualitative. For instance, a lawyer defending someone accused of damaging property might pose the following questions:
- Question of fact: did the person damage the item? (conjectural)
- Question of definition: was this the damage minor or major? (definitional)
- Question of quality: was he justified in damaging the item? (qualitative)
- Question of jurisdiction: should this be a civil or criminal trial? (translative) Through the application of this process, as well as using the relevant topoi, the orator would be able to construct not just elegant arguments, but ones that were well-reasoned and well-researched. For example, to answer the second question, the attorney would need to ascertain additional things: how should the degree of damage be measured? does the law specify distinctions between degrees of damage? was there some remedy to the damage that could easily set things right? and so on.

External links

- [http://wac.colostate.edu/books/lauer%5Finvention/ PDF edition of Janice Lauer's Invention in Rhetoric and Composition] Category:Rhetoric

Memoria

Memoria was term for the aspects involving memory in Western classical rhetoric. The word is Latin, and can be translated as "memory." Memoria was one of five canons in classical rhetoric (the others being inventio, dispositio, elocutio, and pronuntiatio) concerned with the crafting and delivery of speeches and prose. The art of rhetoric grew out of oratory, which was the central medium for intellectual and political life in ancient Greece. Legal proceedings, political debates, philosophical inquiry were all conducted through spoken discourse. Many of the great texts from that age were not written texts penned by the authors we associate them with, but were instead orations written down by followers and students. In Roman times, while there was a much greater body of written work, oration was still the medium for critical debate. Unlike public speakers of today, who use notes or who read their speeches, good orators were expected to deliver their speeches without such aids. Memoria was the discipline of recalling the arguments of a discourse. It generally received the less attention from writers than other parts of rhetoric, as there is less to be about the subject. However, the need to memorize speeches did influence the structure of discourse to some extent. For example, as part of dispositio, some attention was paid to creating structures (such as the divisio, an outline of the major arguments of a discourse) that would also aid memory. Some writers also discussed the use of various mnenomic devices to assist speakers. But rhetoricians also viewed memoria as requiring more than just rote memorization. Rather, the orator also had to have at his command a wide body of knowledge to permit improvisation, to respond to questions, and to refute opposing arguments. Where today's speech-making tends to be a staged, one-way affair, in former times, much oration occurred as part of debates, dialogues, and other settings, in which orators had to react to others. Moreover, rhetoricians also recognized that the credibility of a speaker depended not just on the strength of his prepared arguments, but on the audience's perceptions of the speaker. In Greece, Rome, and the Renaissance, a speaker's familiarity of many areas of learning was seen as a virtue.

Memoria in the Renaissance

When the Humanists took up the ideas on memory found the writings of Classical authors, memoria played an important role in the pedagogical system. Texts were learned first by rote memorization, then re-read for meaning. Children's ability to memorize was aided by "memory tables", which were first available in manuscript form, and were, from the 1470's onwards, some of the first products of the printing press. (Source: Paul Gehl, A Moral Art: Grammar, Society, and Culture in Trecento Florence (1993)) For further reading see: Giovanni Ciappelli and Patricia Rubin, Art, Memory, and Family in Renaissance Florence (CUP 2001).

Pronuntiatio

Pronuntiatio was the discipline of delivering speeches in Western classical rhetoric. It is the one of five canons of classical rhetoric (the others being inventio, dispositio, elocutio, and memoria that concern the crafting and delivery of speeches. As with memoria, the canon that dealt with the memorization of speeches, pronuntiatio was not extensively written about in Classical texts on rhetoric. Its importance declined even more, once the written word became the focus of rhetoric, although after the eighteenth century it again saw more interest. In public speaking today, it may be somewhat over-emphasized, but that is probably more because other parts of rhetoric are downplayed. Rhetoricians laid down guidelines on the use of the voice and gestures (actio) in the delivery of oratory. There were instructions on the proper modulation of the voice (volume and pitch), as well as the phrasing, pace, and emphasis of speech. Also covered were the physical aspects of oration: stance, gestures, posture, and facial expressions. There was also the concept of exercitatio (or practice exercises) that enabled speakers to both memorize their speeches and to practice their delivery. This excerpt from Quintilian's Institutio oratoria provides an example of the types of advice provided by rhetoricians: :"The head, being the chief member of the body, has a corresponding importance in delivery, serving not merely to produce graceful effect, but to illustrate our meaning as well. To secure grace it is essential that the head should be carried naturally and erect. For a droop suggests humility, while if it be thrown back it seems to express arrogance, if inclined to one side it gives an impression of languor, while if it is held too stiffly and rigidly it appears to indicate a rude and savage temper." (Institutio oratoria, XI iii 68-69, translated by H. E. Butler, Loeb Classical Library, 1922) While the content, structure, and style of oration were (and continue to be) the most important elements of oratory, there is no doubt that effective delivery enhances its persuasive power, and that poor delivery detracts greatly from its intended effect.

Aristotle

by Lysippos. Louvre Museum.]] Aristotle (Greek: Αριστοτέλης Aristotelēs; 384 BC – March 7, 322 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher, student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote many books about physics, poetry, zoology, logic, rhetoric, government, and biology. Aristotle, along with Plato and Socrates, is generally considered one of the most influential ancient Greek philosophers in Western thought. Among them they transformed Presocratic Greek philosophy into the foundations of Western philosophy as we know it. The writings of Plato and Aristotle form the core of Ancient philosophy. Aristotle placed much more value on knowledge gained from the senses and would correspondingly be better classed among modern empiricists (see materialism and empiricism). He also achieved a "grounding" of dialectic in the Topics by allowing interlocutors to begin from commonly held beliefs (Endoxa); his goal being non-contradiction rather than Truth. He set the stage for what would eventually develop into the scientific method centuries later. Although he wrote dialogues early in his career, no more than fragments of these have survived. The works of Aristotle that still exist today are in treatise form and were, for the most part, unpublished texts. These were probably lecture notes or texts used by his students, and were almost certainly revised repeatedly over the course of years. As a result, these works tend to be eclectic, dense and difficult to read. Among the most important ones are Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, De Anima (On the Soul) and Poetics. Their works, although connected in many fundamental ways, are very different in both style and substance. Aristotle is known for being one of the few figures in history who studied almost every subject possible at the time. In science, Aristotle studied anatomy, astronomy, embryology, geography, geology, meteorology, physics, and zoology. In philosophy, Aristotle wrote on aesthetics, economics, ethics, government, metaphysics, politics, psychology, rhetoric and theology. He also dealt with education, foreign customs, literature and poetry. His combined works practically comprise an encyclopedia of Greek knowledge.

Biography

Early life and studies at the Academy

encyclopedia.]] Aristotle was born at Stageira, a colony of Andros on the Macedonian peninsula of Chalcidice in 384 BC. His father, Nicomachus, was court physician to King Amyntas III of Macedon. It is believed that Aristotle's ancestors held this position under various kings of Macedonia. As such, Aristotle's early education would probably have consisted of instruction in medicine and biology from his father. About his mother, Phaestis, little is known. It is known that she died early in Aristotle's life. When Nicomachus also died, in Aristotle's tenth year, he was left an orphan and placed under the guardianship of his uncle, Proxenus of Atarneus. He taught Aristotle Greek, rhetoric, and poetry (O'Connor et al., 2004). Aristotle was probably influenced by his father's medical knowledge; when he went to Athens at the age of 18, he was likely already trained in the investigation of natural phenomena. From the age of 18 to 37 Aristotle remained in Athens as a pupil of Plato and distinguished himself at the Academy. The relations between Plato and Aristotle have formed the subject of various legends, many of which depict Aristotle unfavourably. No doubt there were divergences of opinion between Plato, who took his stand on sublime, idealistic principles, and Aristotle, who even at that time showed a preference for the investigation of the facts and laws of the physical world. It is also probable that Plato suggested that Aristotle needed restraining rather than encouragement, but not that there was an open breach of friendship. In fact, Aristotle's conduct after the death of Plato, his continued association with Xenocrates and other Platonists, and his allusions in his writings to Plato's doctrines prove that while there were conflicts of opinion between Plato and Aristotle, there was no lack of cordial appreciation or mutual forbearance. Besides this, the legends that reflect Aristotle unfavourably are traceable to the Epicureans, who were known as slanderers. If such legends were circulated widely by patristic writers such as Justin Martyr and Gregory Nazianzen, the reason lies in the exaggerated esteem Aristotle was held in by the early Christian heretics, not in any well-grounded historical tradition.

Aristotle as philosopher and tutor

After the death of Plato (347 BC), Aristotle was considered as the next head of the Academy, a post that was eventually awarded to Plato's nephew. Aristotle then went with Xenocrates to the court of Hermias, ruler of Atarneus in Asia Minor, and married his niece and adopted daughter, Pythia. In 344 BC, Hermias was murdered in a rebellion, and Aristotle went with his family to Mytilene. It is also reported that he stopped on Lesbos and briefly conducted biological research. Then, one or two years later, he was summoned to Pella, the Macedonian capital, by King Philip II of Macedon to become the tutor of Alexander the Great, who was then 13. Plutarch wrote that Aristotle not only imparted to Alexander a knowledge of ethics and politics, but also of the most profound secrets of philosophy. We have much proof that Alexander profited by contact with the philosopher, and that Aristotle made prudent and beneficial use of his influence over the young prince (although Bertrand Russell disputes this). Due to this influence, Alexander provided Aristotle with ample means for the acquisition of books and the pursuit of his scientific investigation. It is possible that Aristotle also participated in the education of Alexander's boyhood friends, which may have included for example Hephaestion and Harpalus. Aristotle maintained a long correspondence with Hephaestion, eventually collected into a book, unfortunately now lost. According to sources such as Plutarch and Diogenes, Philip had Aristotle's hometown of Stageira burned during the 340s BC, and Aristotle successfully requested that Alexander rebuild it. During his tutorship of Alexander, Aristotle was reportedly considered a second time for leadership of the Academy; his companion Xenocrates was selected instead.

Founder and master of the Lyceum

In about 335 BC, Alexander departed for his Asiatic campaign, and Aristotle, who had served as an informal adviser (more or less) since Alexander ascended the Macedonian throne, returned to Athens and opened his own school of philosophy. He may, as Aulus Gellius says, have conducted a school of rhetoric during his former residence in Athens; but now, following Plato's example, he gave regular instruction in philosophy in a gymnasium dedicated to Apollo Lyceios, from which his school has come to be known as the Lyceum. (It was also called the Peripatetic School because Aristotle preferred to discuss problems of philosophy with his pupils while walking up and down -- peripateo -- the shaded walks -- peripatoi -- around the gymnasium). During the thirteen years (335 BC–322 BC) which he spent as teacher of the Lyceum, Aristotle composed most of his writings. Imitating Plato, he wrote Dialogues in which his doctrines were expounded in somewhat popular language. He also composed the several treatises (which will be mentioned below) on physics, metaphysics, and so forth, in which the exposition is more didactic and the language more technical than in the Dialogues. These writings show to what good use he put the resources Alexander had provided for him. They show particularly how he succeeded in bringing together the works of his predecessors in Greek philosophy, and how he pursued, either personally or through others, his investigations in the realm of natural phenomena. Pliny claimed that Alexander placed under Aristotle's orders all the hunters, fishermen, and fowlers of the royal kingdom and all the overseers of the royal forests, lakes, ponds and cattle-ranges, and Aristotle's works on zoology make this statement more believable. Aristotle was fully informed about the doctrines of his predecessors, and Strabo asserted that he was the first to accumulate a great library. During the last years of Aristotle's life the relations between him and Alexander became very strained, owing to the disgrace and punishment of Callisthenes, whom Aristotle had recommended to Alexander. Nevertheless, Aristotle continued to be regarded at Athens as a friend of Alexander and a representative of Macedonia. Consequently, when Alexander's death became known in Athens, and the outbreak occurred which led to the Lamian war, Aristotle shared in the general unpopularity of the Macedonians. The charge of impiety, which had been brought against Anaxagoras and Socrates, was now, with even less reason, brought against Aristotle. He left the city, saying (according to many ancient authorities) that he would not give the Athenians a chance to sin a third time against philosophy. He took up residence at his country house at Chalcis, in Euboea, and there he died the following year, 322 BC. His death was due to a disease, reportedly 'of the stomach', from which he had long suffered. The story that his death was due to hemlock poisoning, as well as the legend that he threw himself into the sea "because he could not explain the tides," is without historical foundation. Very little is known about Aristotle's personal appearance except from hostile sources. The statues and busts of Aristotle, possibly from the first years of the Peripatetic School, represent him as sharp and keen of countenance, and somewhat below the average height. His character—as revealed by his writings, his will (which is undoubtedly genuine), fragments of his letters and the allusions of his unprejudiced contemporaries—was that of a high-minded, kind-hearted man, devoted to his family and his friends, kind to his slaves, fair to his enemies and rivals, grateful towards his benefactors. When Platonism ceased to dominate the world of Christian speculation, and the works of Aristotle began to be studied without fear and prejudice, the personality of Aristotle appeared to the Christian writers of the 13th century, as it had to the unprejudiced pagan writers of his own day, as calm, majestic, untroubled by passion, and undimmed by any great moral defects, "the master of those who know". Aristotle's legacy also had a profound influence on Islamic thought and philosophy during the middle ages. The likes of Avicenna, Farabi, and Yaqub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi[http://www.ummah.net/history/scholars/KINDI.html 1] were a few of the major proponents of the Aristotelian school of thought during the Golden Age of Islam.

Methodology

Aristotle defines philosophy in terms of essence, saying that philosophy is "the science of the universal essence of that which is actual". Plato had defined it as the "science of the idea", meaning by idea what we should call the unconditional basis of phenomena. Both pupil and master regard philosophy as concerned with the universal; Aristotle, however, finds the universal in particular things, and called it the essence of things, while Plato finds that the universal exists apart from particular things, and is related to them as their prototype or exemplar. For Aristotle, therefore, philosophic method implies the ascent from the study of particular phenomena to the knowledge of essences, while for Plato philosophic method means the descent from a knowledge of universal ideas to a contemplation of particular imitations of those ideas. In a certain sense, Aristotle's method is both inductive and deductive, while Plato's is essentially deductive. In Aristotle's terminology, the term natural philosophy corresponds to the phenomena of the natural world, which include: motion, light, and the laws of physics. Many centuries later these subjects would later become the basis of modern science, as studied through the scientific method. The term philosophy is distinct from metaphysics, which is what moderns term philosophy. In the larger sense of the word, he makes philosophy coextensive with reasoning, which he also called "science". Note, however, that his use of the term science carries a different meaning than that which is covered by the scientific method. "All science (dianoia) is either practical, poetical or theoretical." By practical science he understands ethics and politics; by poetical, he means the study of poetry and the other fine arts; while by theoretical philosophy he means physics, mathematics, and metaphysics. The last, philosophy in the stricter sense, he defines as "the knowledge of immaterial being," and calls it "first philosophy", "the theologic science" or of "being in the highest degree of abstraction." If logic, or, as Aristotle calls it, Analytic, be regarded as a study preliminary to philosophy, we have as divisions of Aristotelian philosophy (1) Logic; (2) Theoretical Philosophy, including Metaphysics, Physics, Mathematics, (3) Practical Philosophy; and (4) Poetical Philosophy.

Aristotle's epistemology

Logic

History

Aristotle "says that 'on the subject of reasoning' he 'had nothing else on an earlier date to speak about'" (Bocheński, 1951). However, Plato reports that syntax was thought of before him, by Prodikos of Keos, who was concerned by the right use of words. Logic seems to have emerged from dialectics, the earlier philosophers used concepts like reductio ad absurdum as a rule when discussing, but never understood its logical implications. Even Plato had difficulties with logic. Although he had the idea of constructing a system for deduction, he was never able to construct one. Instead, he relied on his dialectic, which was a confusion between different sciences and methods (Bocheński, 1951). Plato thought that deduction would simply follow from premises, so he focused on having good premises so that the conclusion would follow. Later on, Plato realised that a method for obtaining the conclusion would be beneficial. Plato never obtained such a method, but his best attempt was published in his book Sophist, where he introduced his division method (Rose, 1968).

Analytics and the Organon

What we call today Aristotelian logic, Aristotle himself would have labelled analytics. The term logic he reserved to mean dialectics. Most of Aristotle's work is probably not authentic, since it was most likely edited by students and later lecturers. The logical works of Aristotle were compiled into six books at about the time of Christ: #Categories #On Interpretation #Prior Analytics #Posterior Analytics #Topics #On Sophistical Refutations The order of the books (or the teachings from which they are composed) is not certain, but this list was derived from analysis of Aristotle's writings. There is one volume of Aristotle's concerning logic not found in the Organon, namely the fourth book of Metaphysics. (Bocheński, 1951).

Modal logic

Aristotle is also the creator of syllogisms with modalities (modal logic). The word modal refers to the word 'modes', explaining the fact that modal logic deals with the modes of truth. Aristotle introduced the qualification of 'necessary' and 'possible' premises. He constructed a logic which helped in the evaluation of truth but which was very difficult to interpret. (Rose, 1968).

Science

Aristotelian discussions about science had only been qualitative, not quantitative. By the modern definition of the term, Aristotelian philosophy was not science, as this worldview did not attempt to probe how the world actually worked through experiment. For example, in his book The history of animals he claimed that human males have more teeth than females. Had he only made some observations, he would have discovered that this claim is false. Rather, based on what one's senses told one, Aristotelian philosophy then depended upon the assumption that man's mind could elucidate all the laws of the universe, based on simple observation (without experimentation) through reason alone. One of the reasons for this was that Aristotle held that physics was about changing objects with a reality of their own, whereas mathematics was about unchanging objects without a reality of their own. In this philosophy, he could not imagine that there was a relationship between them. In contrast, today's "science" assumes that thinking alone often leads people astray, and therefore one must compare one's ideas to the actual world through experimentation; only then can one see if one's ideas are based in reality. This position is known as empiricism or the scientific method.

Aristotle's metaphysics

Aristotle's four causes

Aristotle names four "causes" of things, but the word cause (Greek: , aitia) is not used in the modern sense of "cause and effect", under which causes are events or states of affairs. Rather, the four causes are like different ways of explaining something: ; The Material Cause (That from which it comes): This is the material that makes up an object, for example, "the bronze and silver ... are causes of the statue and the bowl." ; The Formal Cause (That which it is): This is the blueprint or the idea commonly held of what an object should be. Aristotle says, "The form is the account (and the genera of the account) of the essence (for instance, the cause of an octave is the ratio two to one, and in general number), and the parts that are in the account." ; The Efficient Cause (That which moves it): This is the person who makes an object, or "unmoved movers" (gods) who move nature. For example, "a father is a cause of his child; and in general the producer is a cause of the product and the initiator of the change is a cause." This is closest to the modern definition of "cause". ; The Final Cause (That of which its purpose is): The final cause or telos is the purpose or end that something is supposed to serve. This includes "all the intermediate steps that are for the end ... for example, slimming, purging, drugs, or instruments are for health; all of these are for the end, though they differ in that some are activities while others are instruments." An example of an artifact that has all four causes would be a table, which has material causes (wood and nails), a formal cause (the blueprint, or a generally agreed idea of what tables are), an efficient cause (the carpenter), and a final cause (using it to dine on). Aristotle argues that natural objects such as an "individual man" have all four causes. The material cause of an individual man would be the flesh and bone that make up an individual man. The formal cause would be the blueprint of man, that which is used as a guide to create an individual man and to keep him in a certain state called man. The efficient cause of an individual man would be the father of that man, or in the case of all men an �unmoved mover� who breathed (anima: breath) into the soul (anima: soul) of man. The final cause of man would be as Aristotle stated, �Now we take the human�s function to be a certain kind of life, and take this life to be the soul�s activity and actions that express reason. Hence the excellent man�s function is to do this finely and well. Each function is completed well when its completion expresses the proper virtue. Therefore the human good turns out to be the souls� activity that expresses virtue.�

The difference between natural objects and artifacts

The difference between natural objects and an artifact is that natural objects have self movement. Aristotle defined the difference between a natural object and an artifact when he stated, �In contrast to these, a bed, a cloak, or any other artifact-insofar as it is described as such i.e., as a bed, a cloak, or whatever, and to the extent that it is a product of a craft-has no innate impulse to change; but insofar as it is coincidentally made of stone or earth or a mixture of these, it has an innate impulse to change and just to that extent. This is because a nature is a type of principle and cause of motion and stability within those things to which it primarily belongs in their own right and not coincidentally.� The natural objects are changed to artifacts through crafts but they have an innate impulse of self movement to convert through time to their natural state, and they will all turn into that state when all animals with reason are extinct from the earth.

Modes of causation

Aristotle states two modes of causation:
- Proper Causation: Things take place for the sake of something, and the result is that which is intended.
- Accidental Causation: Things that take place not out of necessity. E.g. things that take place by chance/coincidence. This cause is indeterminable.

Chance

Chance lies in the realm of accidental causes. It is "from what is spontaneous" (but note that what is spontaneous does not come from chance). For a better understanding of Aristotle's conception of "chance" it might be better to think of "coincidence": Something takes place by chance if a person sets out with the intent of having one thing take place, but with the result of another thing (not intended) taking place. For example: A person seeks donations. That person may find another person willing to donate a substantial sum. However, if the person seeking the donations met the person donating, not for the purpose of collecting donations, but for some other purpose, Aristotle would call the collecting of the donation by that particular donator a result of chance. It must be unusual that something happens by chance. In other words, if something happens all or most of the time, we cannot say that it is by chance. However, chance can only apply to human beings. According to Aristotle, chance must involve choice (and thus deliberation), and only humans are capable of deliberation and choice. "What is not capable of action cannot do anything by chance" (Physics, 2.6).

The Five Elements

- Fire which is hot and dry.
- Earth which is cold and dry.
- Air which is hot and wet.
- Water which is cold and wet.
- Aether which is the divine substance that makes up the heavens These four elements interchange (i.e. Fire ↔ Air ↔ Water ↔ Earth etc.), while aether is on its own. The Sun keeps this cycle going. God keeps the Sun going (and thus the Sun is eternal).

Aristotle's ethics

Although Aristotle wrote several works on ethics, the major one was the Nicomachean Ethics, which is considered one of Aristotle's greatest works; it discusses virtues. The ten books which comprise it are based on notes from his lectures at the Lyceum and were either edited by or dedicated to Aristotle's son, Nicomachus. Aristotle believed that ethical knowledge is not certain knowledge (like metaphysics and epistemology) but is general knowledge. Also, as it is not a theoretical discipline, he thought a person had to study in order to become "good." Thus, if a person was to become virtuous, they could not simply study what virtue is, they had to actually do virtuous activity. In order to do this, Aristotle had to first establish what was virtuous. He began by determining that everything was done with some goal in mind and that goal is 'good.' The ultimate goal he called the Highest Good. Aristotle contested that happiness could not be found only in pleasure or only in fame and honor. He finally finds happiness "by ascertaining the specific function of man. But what is this function that will bring happiness? To determine this, Aristotle analyzed the soul and found it to have three parts: the Nutritive Soul (plants, animals and humans), the Perceptive Soul (animals and humans) and the Rational Soul (humans only). Thus, a human's function is to do what makes it human, to be good at what sets it apart from everything else: the ability to reason or Nous. A person that does this is the happiest because they are fulfulling their purpose or nature as found in the rational soul. Depending on how well they did this, Aristotle said people belonged to one of four categories: the Virtuous, the Continent, the Incontinent and the Vicious. Aristotle believes that every ethical virtue is an intermediate condition between excess and deficiency. This does not mean Aristotle believed in moral relativism, however. He set certain emotions (e.g., hate, envy, jealousy, spite, etc.) and certain actions (e.g., adultery, theft, murder, etc.) as being always wrong, regardless of the situation or the circumstances.

Nicomachean ethics

In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle focuses on the importance of continually behaving virtuously and developing virtue rather than committing specific good actions. This can be opposed to Kantian ethics, in which the primary focus is on individual action. Nicomachean Ethics emphasizes the importance of context to ethical behaviour — what might be right in one situation might be wrong in another. Aristotle believed that happiness is the end of life and that as long as a person is striving for goodness, good deeds will result from that struggle, making the person virtuous and therefore happy.

Aristotle's critics

goodness (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael.]] Aristotle has been criticised on several grounds.
- His analysis of procreation is frequently criticised on the grounds that it presupposes an active, ensouling masculine element bringing life to an inert, passive, lumpen female element; it is on these grounds that some feminist critics refer to Aristotle as a misogynist.
- At times, the objections that Aristotle raises against the arguments of his own teacher, Plato, appear to rely on faulty interpretations of those arguments.
- Although Aristotle advised, against Plato, that knowledge of the world could only be obtained through experience, he frequently failed to take his own advice. Aristotle conducted projects of careful empirical investigation, but often drifted into abstract logical reasoning, with the result that his work was littered with conclusions that were not supported by empirical evidence; for example, his assertion that objects of different mass fall at different speeds under gravity, which was later refuted by John Philoponus. Credit is often given to Galileo, even though Philopinus lived centuries before him.
- In the Middle Ages, roughly from the 12th century to the 15th century, the philosophy of Aristotle became firmly established dogma. Although Aristotle himself was far from dogmatic in his approach to philosophical inquiry, two aspects of his philosophy might have assisted its transformation into dogma. His works were wide-ranging and systematic so that they could give the impression that no significant matter had been left unsettled. He was also much less inclined to employ the sceptical methods of his predecessors, Socrates and Plato.
- Some academics have suggested that Aristotle was unaware of much of the current science of his own time, and that he was a far lesser mathematician than many of his learned contemporaries. Aristotle was called not a great philosopher, but "The Philosopher" by Scholastic thinkers. These thinkers blended Aristotelian philosophy with Christianity, bringing the thought of Ancient Greece into the Middle Ages. It required a repudiation of some Aristotelian principles for the sciences and the arts to free themselves for the discovery of modern scientific laws and empirical methods. The Western mind is "Aristotelian". By this we mean that it formats the external world into factual and "scien"-tific categories. (By "Scien"-tific we mean that something is knowable or known. Latin scientia = knowledge). Under the premise of external categorization, the Aristotelian mind has come to equate "experience" with the unified chronical and spatial ontological structure that is the "external" universe -- visible, audible and sensible by the handful of our common, well-identified senses. By so equating the two, the Aristotelian mind is fully confident, or fully "positive" of the meanings of its utterances and the purposes of all actions. That is to say, it dismisses the possibility of dubious meanings as interpreted by subjects that are at variance in perspectives or phenomenology, and it dismisses the importance of anything other than an objectively defined "purpose" to an action. Therefore, the Aristotelian mind assumes that when subject A utters "I am X," he or she is referring to the same experience and is expressing the same purpose as subject B who also utters "I am X."

Bibliography

Note: Bekker numbers are often used to uniquely identify passages of Aristotle. They are identified below where available.

Major works

The extant works of Aristotle are broken down according to the five categories in the Corpus Aristotelicum. Not all of these works are considered genuine, but differ with respect to their connection to Aristotle, his associates and his views. Some, such as the Athenaion Politeia or the fragments of other politeia are regarded by most scholars as products of Aristotle's "school" and compiled under his direction or supervision. Other works, such On Colours may have been products of Aristotle's successors at the Lyceum, e.g., Theophrastus and Straton. Still others acquired Aristotle's name through similarities in doctrine or content, such as the De Plantis, possibly by Nicolaus of Damascus. A final category, omitted here, includes medieval palmistries, astrological and magical texts whose connection to Aristotle is purely fanciful and self-promotional. Those that are seriously disputed are marked with an asterisk.

Logical writings

- Organon (collected works on logic):
- (1a) Categories (or Categoriae)
- (16a) On Interpretation (or De Interpretatione)
- (24a) Prior Analytics (or Analytica Priora)
- (71a) Posterior Analytics (or Analytica Posteriora)
- (100b) Topics (or Topica)
- (164a) On Sophistical Refutations (or De Sophisticis Elenchis)

Physical and scientific writings

- (184a) Physics (or Physica)
- (268a) On the Heavens (or De Caelo)
- (314a) On Generation and Corruption (or De Generatione et Corruptione)
- (338a) Meteorology (or Meteorologica)
- (391a) On the Cosmos (or De Mundo, or On the Universe)
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- (402a) On the Soul (or De Anima)
- (436a) Little Physical Treatises (or Parva Naturalia):
- On Sense and the Sensible (or De Sensu et Sensibilibus)
- On Memory and Reminiscence (or De Memoria et Reminiscentia)
- On Sleep and Sleeplessness (or De Somno et Vigilia)
- On Dreams (or De Insomniis)
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- On Prophesying by Dreams (or De Divinatione per Somnum)
- On Longevity and Shortness of Life (or De Longitudine et Brevitate Vitae)
- On Youth and Old Age (On Life and Death) (or De Juventute et Senectute, De Vita et Morte)
- On Breathing (or De Respiratione)
- (481a) On Breath (or De Spiritu)
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- (486a) History of Animals (or Historia Animalium, or On the History of Animals, or Description of Animals)
- (639a) On the Parts of Animals (or De Partibus Animalium)
- (698a) On the Gait of Animals (or De Motu Animalium, or On the Movement of Animals)
- (704a) On the Progression of Animals (or De Incessu Animalium)
- (715a) On the Generation of Animals (or De Generatione Animalium)
- (791a) On Colours (or De Coloribus)
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- (800a) De audibilibus
- (805a) Physiognomics (or Physiognomonica)
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- On Plants (or De Plantis)
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- (830a) On Marvellous Things Heard (or Mirabilibus Auscultationibus, or On Things Heard)
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- (847a) Mechanical Problems (or Mechanica)
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- (859a) Problems (or Problemata)
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- (968a) On Indivisible Lines (or De Lineis Insecabilibus)
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- (973a) Situations and Names of Winds (or Ventorum Situs)
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Metaphysical writings

- (980a) Metaphysics (or Metaphysica)

Ethical writings

- (1094a) Nicomachean Ethics (or Ethica Nicomachea, or The Ethics)
- (1181a) Great Ethics (or Magna Moralia)
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- (1214a) Eudemian Ethics (or Ethica Eudemia)
- (1249a) Virtues and Vices (or De Virtutibus et Vitiis Libellus, Libellus de virtutibus)
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- (1252a) Politics (or Politica)
- (1343a) Economics (or Oeconomica)

Aesthetic writings

- (1354a) Rhetoric (or Ars Rhetorica, or The Art of Rhetoric or Treatise on Rhetoric)
- Rhetoric to Alexander (or Rhetorica ad Alexandrum)
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- (1447a) Poetics (or Ars Poetica)

Writings absent from Corpus Aristotelicum

- The Constitution of the Athenians (or Athenaion Politeia, or The Athenian Consitution)
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- On Melissus, On Xenophanes, and On Gorgias. These are sometimes grouped together and called the "MXG" writings. They clearly are not written by Aristotle, and are believed to date from the fifth century AD. However, because they have frequently been attributed to him in the past, they are often included in compilations of his writings (for example, in the Loeb Classical Library).

Specific editions

- Princeton University Press: The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation (2 Volume Set; Bollingen Series, Vol. LXXI, No. 2), edited by Jonathan Barnes ISBN 0-691-09950-2 (The most complete recent translation of Aristotle's extant works)
- Oxford University Press: Clarendon Aristotle Series. [http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/series/ClarendonAristotleSeries/?view=usa Scholarly edition]
- Harvard University Press: Loeb Classical Library (hardbound; publishes in Greek, with English translations on facing pages)

Named after Aristotle

- Aristoteles crater on the Moon.
- The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
- Aristotle's Cockney legacy - The name of Aristotle, like that of J. Arthur Rank, became a common expression in Cockney rhyming slang.

References

Needless to say, the secondary literature on Aristotle is vast. The following references are only a small selection.
- A popular exposition for the general reader.
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- A detailed and scholarly work, but very readable.
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- For the general reader.

External links

Aristotle Aristotle
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- [http://Aristotle.thefreelibrary.com/ A brief biography and e-texts presented one chapter at a time]
- [http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/a/aristotl.htm The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Aristotle.], 2004.
- [http://www.non-contradiction.com/ An extensive collection of Aristotle's philosophy and works, including lesser known texts]
- [http://www.virtuescience.com/nicomachean-ethics.html Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle.]
- [http://uk.arxiv.org/abs/physics/0505172 Aristotle and Indian logic]
- O'Connor, J. John & Robertson, Edmund F., [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Aristotle.html Aristotle], 2004.
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- [http://www.greektexts.com/library/Aristotle/index.html Large collection of Aristotle's texts, presented page by page]
- [http://www.greek-literature-online.com/aristotle/ Read Aristotle's works online]
- [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01713a.htm Source of most of the Biography and Methodology sections, as well as more overview]
- Category:Aristotle Category:Ancient Greek philosophers Category:Aristotelian philosophers Category:Ancient Greek mathematicians Category:Empiricists Category:Rhetoric Category:Greek logicians Category:Meteorologists ko:아리스토텔레스 ms:Aristotle ja:アリストテレス simple:Aristotle th:อริสโตเติล

Quintilian

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (c. AD 35-95), Roman rhetorician, was born at Calagurris (now Calahorra) in Spain. In English translation, he is usually referred to as Quintilian, although the alternate spellings of Quintillian and Quinctilian are occasionally met with, the latter in older texts. Spain

Quintilian's life

Quintilian’s father, a well-educated man, sent his son to Rome to study rhetoric early in the reign of Nero. While there, he cultivated a relationship with Domitius Afer, who died in 59. “It had always been the custom…for young men with ambitions in public life to fix upon some older model of their ambition…and regard him as a mentor” (Kennedy, 16). Quintilian evidently adopted Afer as his model and listened to him speak and plead cases in the law courts. Afer has been characterized as a more austere, classical, Ciceronian speaker than those common at the time of Seneca, and he may have inspired Quintilian’s love of Cicero. Sometime after Afer’s death, Quintilian returned to Spain, possibly to practice law in the courts of his own province. However, in 68, he returned to Rome as part of the retinue of Emperor Galba, Nero’s short-lived successor. Quintilian does not appear to have been a close advisor of the Emperor, which probably ensured his survival after the assassination of Galba in 69. After Galba’s death, and during the chaotic Year of the Four Emperors which followed, Quintilian opened a public school of rhetoric. Among his students were Pliny the Younger, and perhaps Tacitus. He also received a state subsidy from Emperor Vespasian, who “in general was not especially interested in the arts, but…was interested in education as a means of creating an intelligent and responsible ruling class” (19). This subsidy enabled Quintilian to devote more time to the school, since it freed him of pressing monetary concerns. In addition, he appeared in the courts of law, arguing on behalf of clients. Of his personal life, little is known. In the Institutio Oratoria, he mentions a wife who died young, as well as two sons who predeceased him. Image of Quintilian from The Nuremburg Chronicle Quintilian retired from teaching and pleading in 88, during the reign of Domitian. His retirement may have been prompted by his achievement of financial security and his desire to become a gentleman of leisure. Quintilian had also survived under several emperors; the reigns of Vespasian and Titus were relatively peaceful, but Domitian was reputed to be difficult even at the best of times. Domitian’s increasing cruelty and paranoia may have prompted the rhetorician to quietly distance himself. The emperor does not appear to have taken offence; in the year 90, Quintilian was made tutor of Domitian’s two grand-nephews and heirs. Even this may not have been a vote of confidence; “by the time [Quintilian] finished the Institutio Oratoria, the two young men—potential rivals to a shaky throne—had vanished into exile” (Murphy, xx). Otherwise, Quintilian spent his retirement writing his Institutio Oratoria. The exact date if his death is not known, but is believed to be sometime around CE 100. He does not appear to have long survived Domitian, who was assassinated in 96. Therefore, after living through the reigns of some of Rome’s most notorious emperors, Quintilian appears to have died before the time of the five good emperors.

Quintilian's Works

The only extant work of Quintilian is his masterwork, a textbook on rhetoric entitled Institutio Oratoria. It is important to note that this work deals not only with the theory and practice of rhetoric, but also with the foundational education and development of the orator himself. An earlier text, De Causis Corruptae Eloquentiae (On the Causes of Corrupted Eloquence) has been lost, but is believed to have been “a preliminary exposition of some of the views later set forth in [Institutio Oratoria]” (Kennedy, 24). In additon, there are two sets of declamations, Declamationes Majores and Declamationes Minores, which have been attributed to Quintilian. However, there is some dispute over the real writer of these texts; "Some modern scholars believe that the declamations circulated in his name represent the lecture notes of a scholar either using Quintilian's system or actually trained by him" (Murphy, xvii-xviii).

Institutio Oratoria

Introduction

As mentioned above, Quintilian wrote his book during the last years of the reign of Emperor Domitian. In the tradition of several Roman emperors, such as Nero and Caligula, Domitian’s regime grew harsher as time went on. “[A]n active secret police preyed on the Roman population, and even senators were encouraged in various ways to inform on each other…under Domitian, even the slightest suspicion of disrespect for the emperor became a capital crime” (xx). Social and political corruption were rife. In a move of utmost irony, the debauched Domitian appointed himself “censor perpetuus, making himself responsible for public morals” (xx). Against this backdrop, it was very difficult to find orators in the , part of whose “fame as an orator stems from his public denunciations of enemies of the state” (xix). Such positions were simply too dangerous to take during the reign of the emperors since Augustus. Therefore, the role of the orator had changed since Cicero’s day. Now, they were more concerned with pleading cases than anything else. Into this time, Quintilian attempted to interject some of the idealism of an earlier time. “Political oratory was dead, and everyone in Rome knew it was dead; but Quintilian deliberately chooses the oratory of a past generation as his educational ideal” (Gwynn, 188).

Quintilian on Rhetoric

In Quintilian’s time, rhetoric was primarily composed of three aspects: the theoretical, the educational, and the practical. Insitutio Oratoria does not claim originality; Quintilian drew from a number of sources in compiling his work. This eclecticism also prevented him from adhering too rigidly to any particular school of thought on the matter, although Cicero stands out among the other sources. Quintilian also refused any short, simple lists of rules; he evidently felt that the study and art of rhetoric could not be so reduced. This might explain the length of Institutio Oratoria, which consists of twelve books. From the middle of the first century BCE to Quintilian's time, there had been a flowering of Roman rhetoric. But by Quintilian's time, the current of popular taste in oratory was rife with what has been called "silver Latin," a style that favored ornate embellishment over clarity and precision. Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria can in many ways be read as a reaction against this trend; it advocates a return to simpler and clearer language. It may also reflect the influence of the late Emperor Vespasian, who was “[a] man of plebian stock,…a down-to-earth realist with the common touch” (Murray, 431); Vespasian disliked excess and extravagance, and his patronage of Quintilian may have influenced the latter’s views of language. Cicero is the model Quintilian adopts as the standard-bearer for this form; during the previous century, Cicero’s far more concise style was the standard. This relates to his discussion of nature and art. Quintilian evidently preferred the natural, especially in language, and disliked the excessive ornamentation popular in the style of his contemporaries. Deviating from natural language and the natural order of thought in pursuit of an over-elaborate style created confusion in both the orator and his audience. “Even difficult questions can be dealt with by an orator of moderate ability if he is content to follow nature as his leader and does not give all his attention to a showy style” (Gwynn, 78). Institutio Oratoria is effectively a comprehensive textbook of the technical aspects of rhetoric. From the eleventh chapter of Book II to the end of Book XI, Quintilian covers such topics as natural order, the relation of nature and art, invention, proof, emotion, and language. Perhaps most influential among the ideas discussed is his examination of Augustus 'Rhetoric' and Cicero's works — as one of the ancient world's greatest works on rhetoric. He organizes the practice of oratory into five canons: inventio (discovery of arguments), dispositio (arrangement of arguments), elocutio (expression or style), memoria (memorization), and pronuntiatio (delivery). For each canon, particularly the first three, he provides a thorough exposition of all the elements that must be mastered and considered in developing and presenting arguments. The thorough and sensible presentation reflect his long experience as orator and teacher, and in many ways the work can be seen as the culmination of Greek and Roman rhetorical theory. It is important to note that, throughout these and other discussions, Quintilian remains concerned with the practical, applicable aspect, rather than the theoretical. Unlike many modern theorists, he “does not see figurative language as a threat to the stability of linguistic reference” (Leitch, 156). The referential use of a word was always the primary meaning, and the use of figurative language was merely an addition to it, not a replacement for it.

Quintilian on Education

“My aim, then is the education of the perfect orator” (Quintilianus, 1.Preface.9). Book I of Institutio Oratoria discusses at length the proper method of training an orator, virtually from birth. This focus on early and comprehensive education was in many ways a reflection of Quintilian’s career; Emperor Vespasian’s influence on the official status of education marked the period as one of conscientious education. Quintilian’s contribution to this line of thought, aside from his long career as a public educator, was the opening of his text, and it is regarded as a highlight of the discussion:

“Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria is a landmark in the history of roman education: it is the culmination of a long development, and it had no successor… [No] teacher was found who could speak with Quintilian’s authority, no orator sufficiently interested in the theory of his art to produce a second de Oratore” (Gwynn, 242).

His theory of education is one area in which Quintilian differs from Cicero. Cicero called for a broad, general education; Quintilian was more focused. He lays out the educational process step by step, from “hav[ing] a father conceive the highest hopes of his son from the moment of his birth” (Quintilianus, 1.1.1). Other concerns are that the child’s nurse should speak well (“The ideal according to Chrysippus, would be that she should be a philosopher” (1.1.4)), and that both the parents and the teachers of the child should be well-educated. With respect to the parents, it is important to note that Quintilian “do[es] not restrict this remark to fathers alone” (1.1.6); a well-educated mother is regarded as an asset to the growing orator. Quintilian also presents a wide review of suitable literary examples, and this work is also an important work of literary criticism. While he clearly favors certain writers, his fairness is notable, as even writers, such as Sallust, an influential practitioner of the sort of style that Quintilian opposed, are afforded some consideration. Above all, Quintilian holds up Cicero as an example of a great writer and orator. Quintilian discusses many issues of education that are still relevant today. He believed that education should be begun early, as mentioned above, but also that it should be pleasurable for the child. “Above all things we must take care that the child, who is not yet old enough to love his studies, does not come to hate them and dread, the bitterness which he had once tasted, even when the years of infancy are left behind. His studies must be made an amusement” (1.1.21). The proliferation of educational toys available for pre-school aged children shows that this view still has power. He also examines the various pros and cons of public schooling versus homeschooling, eventually coming out in favour of public school, so long as it is a good school. His view is that public schools teach social skills along with their studies, and a student would benefit more from this than from studying in seclusion. One must note, however, that Quintilian makes a point of declaring that “a good teacher will not burden himself with a larger number of pupils than he can manage, and it is further of the very first importance that he should be on only friendly and intimate terms with us and make his teaching not a duty but a labor of love” (1.2.15). In these days of overcrowded public schools and overworked educators, it can be difficult for a student to acquire a good education. Quintilian’s most arresting point about the growing orator, however, is that he should be educated in morality above all else. To Quintilian, only a good man could be an orator. This is another aspect where he differs from Cicero, or rather takes Cicero’s injunction that an orator should be a good man a step further. Quintilian quite literally believed that an evil man could not be an orator, “[f]or the orator’s aim is to carry conviction, and we trust those only whom we know to be worthy of out trust” (Gwynn, 231). This was quite possibly a reaction to the corrupt and dissolute times in which Quintilian lived; he many have attributed the decline in the role of the orator to the decline in public morality. Only a man free from vice could concentrate on the exacting study of oratory. But “the good man does not always speak the truth or even defend the better cause…what matters is not so much the act as the motive” (Clarke, 117). Therefore, Quintilian’s good orator is personally good, but not necessarily publicly good.

Limitations of Institutio Oratoria

Several limitations have been pointed out in Quintilian’s work. Among them is the injunction that he was too immersed in the culture of rhetoric. Because of his position and his profession, it was impossible for him to view rhetoric from the outside. Therefore, it would have been difficult for him to entertain any doubts about its value. This helps explain his ideal orator as a morally good man-rhetoric to Quintilian was in itself inherently good. It may also shed some light on his view of philosophy; he “considered rhetoric to be the basis of all education, [and] viewed philosophy as a challenge to its supremacy” (Dominik, 53). He believed that an orator should read philosophy, but only because philosophy had usurped some of the functions of oratory in the first place. Another limitation of Quintilian is that he is inevitably a victim of his own educational tradition. As mentioned above, he lived in a time of flowery, ornate language. Therefore, although he obviously prefers natural language and attempts to interject some simplicity into the way language is taught, to a certain degree he is forced to accept the unnatural language of his time, simply because of the force of current fashion. Finally, some have called into question the idea of the ideal orator. The education so dictated in Institutio Oratoria was designed to create a person who had neve

Dispositio

See also

Rhetoric

History

Introduction

Ancient Greece

The Sophists

Aristotle

Roman rhetoricians

Rhetoric from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment

Sixteenth century

Seventeenth century

Modern developments

Current state of rhetorical study

See also

Rhetorical remedies

References

Primary texts

External links

Inventio

Topoi

Stasis

See also

External links

Memoria

Memoria in the Renaissance

See also

Pronuntiatio

See also

Aristotle

Biography

Early life and studies at the Academy

Aristotle as philosopher and tutor

Founder and master of the Lyceum

Methodology

Aristotle's epistemology

Logic

History

Analytics and the Organon

Modal logic

Science

Aristotle's metaphysics

Aristotle's four causes

The difference between natural objects and artifacts

Modes of causation

Chance

The Five Elements

Aristotle's ethics

Nicomachean ethics

Aristotle's critics

Bibliography

Major works

Logical writings

Physical and scientific writings

Metaphysical writings

Ethical writings

Aesthetic writings

Writings absent from Corpus Aristotelicum

Specific editions

Named after Aristotle

See also

References

External links

Quintilian

Quintilian's life

Quintilian's Works

Institutio Oratoria

Introduction

Quintilian on Rhetoric

Quintilian on Education

Limitations of Institutio Oratoria