What a mess of a day! We have so much to do!
- A quick note on Byron Hawk’s historiography essay
- A new grid (thanks to Stephanie), so let’s cover the basic terminology: branches, pisteis, topics, etc.
- Reviewing secondary sources
- How to make an addition to the wiki
- Secondary source presentations (presentation day list)
- Aristotle’s response to Plato: what does this text have two introductions?
- Aristotle and emotion / psychology (Ryan, Heidegger)
- Aristotle and ethos / prepare the judge (perhaps a better response to Plato?)
- Aristotle’s Book 3 (Delivery)
- Aristotle’s other works: Ethics and Poetics: mimesis and catharsis; another response to Plato (link to undergrad material, and here too)
- Homework: Paper day!
My old notes on Book One and Two.
Find: “Rhetorical and Scientific Aspects of the Nicomachean Ethics“
Aristotle’s Ethics (Or, What the Rhetoric Doesn’t Say)
I have a handout!
From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Aristotle’s distinction between episteme and techne:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/episteme-techne/#3
Let us return to the definition of craft in the Nicomachean Ethics. Having distinguished craft from scientific knowledge, Aristotle also distinguishes it from virtue (aretê). To do so he begins by distinguishing between making something (poiêton) and action (praktikon), since the disposition (hexis) with respect to making is different from the disposition with respect to acting. Technê is a disposition (hexis) that produces something by way of true reasoning; it is concerned with the bringing into existence (peri genesin) of things that could either exist or not. The principle (archê) of these things is in the one who makes them, whereas the principle of those things that exist by necessity or by nature is in the things themselves (1140a1-20). Presumably Aristotle means to distinguish between activity, whose end is in itself, and making, whose end is a product separate from the activity of making. When someone plays the flute, e.g., typically there is no further product of playing; playing the flute is an end in itself. This distinction is clearer in the opening paragraphs of the Nicomachean Ethics. There Aristotle says that each technê, investigation, action (praxis), and undertaking seems to aim at some good. The ends vary, however; some ends are the activities themselves and some ends are products (erga) beyond the activities. As examples of ends, he cites health as the end of medicine, a ship as the end of shipbuilding, and victory as the end of generalship; these ends are products separate from the respective activities (1094a5-10).
This distinction between making and acting is important for the distinction between craft (technê) and virtue (aretê) because virtue is a disposition for acting. The value of the works (ginomena) of technai is in the works themselves — because they are of a certain sort. By contrast, the value of a virtuous action depends on the agent, who must act with knowledge and deliberately choose the action for itself; finally, the action must come from a fixed disposition of character. The latter two features do not belong to technê (1105a25-1105b5). Presumably, then, the craftsman does not choose his activity for itself but for the end; thus the value of the activity is in what is made. In the case of virtue, by contrast, the value is not in a separate product but in the activity itself. Indeed, Aristotle has another important reason for distinguishing technê from virtue. As a rational potency (dunamis meta logou) technê is capable of contrary effects. Medicine, e.g., can produce both disease and health. The reason is that knowledge (epistêmê) is a rational formula (logos) which explains a thing and its privation. Presumably, then, medicine includes a rational formula or definition of health and its privation, disease; hence, it is a capacity to produce either of these opposite states. Aristotle goes on to say that, while the knowledge is relevant to both states, in a sense it is most relevant to the positive state (Metaphysics, 1046b5-25). Of course, virtue is not a potency for contrary effects in any way at all.
In short–Aristotle’s concept of techne is a rigorous defense of “bringing into existence” as a virtue–equivalent to that of dialectic’s ability to “bring before the eyes.” The earlier section of the Ethics points to political science as the highest human pursuit. And, while Aristotle doesn’t make it explicit, we could frame rhetoric as the art that transforms individual prudence into public action.
If you accept this framing, then you might also accept my idea that the Rhetoric is an early a text, written before Aristotle’s other works–perhaps even written while still a student of Plato’s (I’m thinking particularly of the condemnation of delivery in book 3). But perhaps the older Aristotle, were he to return to this text, might offer us something less Platonic. Let us think of dialectic (episteme) and rhetoric (as techne) in terms of medicine. Dialectic might identify what constitutes good health. Prudence might encourage us to develop habits of good health ourselves–the discipline it requires to transform our knowledge of good health into daily practice. But let rhetoric be seen as the techne able to change someone, to bring that level of health into existence in others.
Random Thoughts
Recalling Burke’s rhetoric / the scramble of the barnyard. It is in the Ethics that Aristotle clearly obligates us to intervention. In the Ethics that we see a robust response to Berlin’s condemnation–there are still hints at elitism (A notes that too many humans are just too bad to be “good,” specifically, too interested in base happiness to enjoy the higher happiness of a life well lived (according to justice).
Logos artistic [have to be invented by the speaker] non-artistic [given, quoting others: laws, oaths, contracts, reports, torture,] *note that postmodernism has probably deconstructed this binary to the point of meaninglessness, once there is no objective, transcendent, and/or pre-existing Truth/authority, then every discursive act is created in the moment. All testimony and evidence require artistic contextualization.
I.ii: The necessity of rhetoric, and enthymematic logic, lies in the inability of audience members to follow or understand dialectical reasoning (1357a). Clearly speaking to Plato.
Ethos: comparing 1356a, 1378a.
Pathos: how do we reconcile Aristotle’s skepticism (1356a) in Book 1 against his ontology of emotions in book 2? / Preparing the judge requires we begin by identifying the emotional dispositions that might cloud or complicate the audience’s enthymematic or dialectical reasoning.
To follow up on Aristotle and emotion:
Jamie Dow’s Passions and Persuasions in Aristotle’s Rhetoric
