Politics of Speech: Rhetoric between Language and Violence, Readings

Plato, Phaedrus Truth vs opinions 523 the class of doubtful things 525 Since it is the function of speech to lead souls by persuasion, he who is a rhetorician must know the various forms of soul. 553 processes of division and bringing together perceiveing and bringing together in one idea the scattered particulars and 2. dividing things again by classes. dialecticians 534-535 Writing as an elixir of memory or as producing forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it. 563

Aristotle, On Rhetoric Distinction between rhetoric and dialectic (for Aristotle they are counterparts in a positive sense antistrophos) 30 Laws vs judgment: laws are general; judgment is particular and specific. Laws require extended premeditation; judgment involves a large degree of spontaneity and immediacy. For Aristotle, this means that those who enact laws are more likely to be unaffected by emotion (their private pleasure or greif casts a shadow on their judgment) 32 On truth: Aristotle believed that truth was grounded in nature (physis) and capable of apprehension by reason. In this he differs both from Plato (for whom truth is grounded in the divine origin of the soul) and from the sophists [from whom judgments were based on nomos (convention), which in turn results from the ambivalent nature of language as the basis of human society.] Sophists are precursors of Nietzsche? 35, note 23. The distinction between law and judgment parallels the distinction between rhetoric and dialectics (rhetoric produces an extendedly pre-meditated speech that has considered opposing arguments ahead of its performance, whereas dialectics involves improvisation triggered by impromptu contradictions raised in the course of the dialectical interaction. in dialectic, opposite trains of argument are actually expressed in the dialectical situation, whereas in rhetoric the speaker has usually tried to think out the opposing arguments before speaking to be able to answer them if need arises. p. 35, note 27 The function of rhetoric is not to persuade but to see the available means of persuasion in each case. 36 Think of relation between rhetoric, dialectics, and command. However, rhetoric is a particular enterprise in that it has to examine in each case the appropriate means of persuasion. 37 Persuading by showing examples (paradigms) or by syllogism ro enthymeme (to show that if some premises are true, something else beyond them results from these because they are true). Some orators are paradigmatic, some enthymematic. P. 40