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AN ART of RHETORICAL LISTENING: ARISTOTLE’S TREATMENT of AUDIENCE in the RHETORIC Christopher D

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AN ART of RHETORICAL LISTENING: ARISTOTLE’S TREATMENT of AUDIENCE in the RHETORIC Christopher D AN ART OF RHETORICAL LISTENING: ARISTOTLE’S TREATMENT OF AUDIENCE IN THE RHETORIC Christopher D. Schmidt, Ph.D. University of Dallas, 2021 Scott F. Crider, Director ABSTRACT For Aristotle, the art of rhetoric—an ability to see what is persuasive in any given case—is a matter both of speaking and of listening, of persuading and of judging persuasive speeches. Rhetorical artists may exercise their theoretical powers for the sake of productive activity, discovering persuasive arguments to deploy in the courtroom and the assembly, or they may use those same powers to judge the validity or political utility of other speakers’ arguments, “seeing” the difference between the persuasive and the “apparently persuasive.” This conception of rhetorical artistry is consistent with Aristotle’s teaching about arts generally. In the Physics and the Metaphysics, Aristotle distinguishes between technē, which is a rational and theoretical capacity, and poiēsis, which is a productive activity. In the Politics, he advises free people to study the arts, not so that they may please audiences or clients with their artifacts (which is a vulgar pursuit), but so that they may become better judges of others’ works (a liberal one). Consistent with this conception of receptive and evaluative artistry, the Rhetoric analyzes topics, proofs, enthymeme, and metaphor from both the speaker and the audience’s perspectives, showing how one may be rhetorically artistic both as a speaker and as a judge. The dialectical arrangement of the Rhetoric trains Aristotle’s students and readers in this art of rhetorical listening, teaching them to see not only the available “means” of persuasion, but also persuasion’s material, formal, and final causes. ii THE BRANIFF GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF DALLAS AN ART OF RHETORICAL LISTENING: ARISTOTLE’S TREATMENT OF AUDIENCE IN THE RHETORIC by CHRISTOPHER D. SCHMIDT B.A., UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS, 2004 M.A., UNIVERSITY OF DALLAS, 2012 A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Dallas in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Literature in the Institute of Philosophic Studies. April 28, 2021 Reading Committee: Scott F. Crider, Chair Gregory Roper Joshua Parens Eugene Garver Christopher D. Schmidt, An Art of Rhetorical Listening: Aristotle’s Treatment of Audience in the Rhetoric, © 2021 iv for Laura, femina bona dicendi perita “Where twain together go”— Iliad 10.224; Nicomachean Ethics 1155a CONTENTS Tables and Figures vi Acknowledgements vii Introduction ix I The Unity of Aristotle’s Rhetoric 1 II Judgment, Dialectic, and the Art of Rhetoric (Rhetoric 1.1) 25 III Art and Judgment in the Physics and Metaphysics 51 IV Judgment and the Ends of Persuasion (Rhetoric 1.2-3) 87 V Material Causes: Special Topics, Character, and Passions (1.4 – 2.17) 129 VI Formal Causes: Logic, Arrangement, and Style (2.20-3.19) 177 Appendix I: Uses of “Rhetōr” 218 Appendix II: Uses of “Technē” 219 Appendix III: Arts, Virtues, and Powers 221 Notes 225 Bibliography 244 vi TABLES AND FIGURES Figure 1. The five-part structure of Rhetoric 1.1 9 Figure 2. Five-step dialectical argument repeated three times in Rhetoric 1.1 11 Figure 3. Detailed chart of the cyclical, dialectical structure of 1.1.3-12 12 Figure 4. Endoxa taught by the sophistic Arts of Speech, with corresponding Socratic replies from the Gorgias and Phaedrus 17 Figure 5. An imperfect syllogistic rendering of Rhetoric 1.1.2 21 Figure 6. Syllogistic rendering of 1.1.11 37 Figure 7. Aristotle’s four causes (Physics 193a-195b) 68 Figure 8. Efficient causes of any thing’s coming to be, not by nature 74 Figure 9. Taxonomy of proofs (pisteis), 1.2.3-4 90 Figure 10. Theoretical, audience-centered taxonomy of rhetoric (1.3.1-4) 102 Figure 11. Chapter outline of Politics book 8 122 Figure 12. Topics of fallacious enthymemes 203 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My mother taught me to read and write; my father, to inquire, deduce, and discuss. Grandma Harthan taught me that kindness and good will are as persuasive as a well-reasoned argument. Grandpa Harthan taught me that clarity, the chief virtue of rhetorical style, comes as much from common sense as from art or training. Grandma Schmidt taught me to study inductively: Observe, outline, obtain! Grandpa Schmidt taught me to parse and exegete. Somewhere there is a picture of him and me sitting at the old Pine Street house with lexicons and commentaries strewn about the dining room table, wondering about Paul’s syntax in the first chapter of Ephesians. Growing up in Gulf Coast Bible Church meant learning to read and listen carefully and to recite one’s lessons with confidence and precision. Grandpa Schmidt’s hour-long sermons, during which I was always expected to take copious notes, inculcated the habits of careful listening that I hope to have discerned in Aristotle; and I can remember a number of times when Grandma, Mom, or Dad would insist that I articulate some fine distinction that Grandpa had drawn, always correcting my wording when I remembered poorly. These technical skills are not the chief end for which my parents, grandparents, and neighbors labored. I often wonder if, despite their efforts, I learned a bit too much dicendi peritus and not nearly enough vir bonus. But this is a matter for prayer, not for academic study. At the University of North Texas, Richard Ruderman, Martin Yaffe, and Joe Barnhart taught me to read political philosophy. Eugene Wright, a professor of Shakespeare, insisted that I study Aristotle’s Ethics, and J. Baird Callicott helped me to situate Aristotle in the history of ethical thought. Professor Bruner in the Communication Studies Department and Ulrike Jaeckel in the English Department brought me to the Rhetoric. By chance or by providence, I happened viii upon Scott Crider’s The Office of Assertion, which brought me to the University of Dallas. There, Scott Crider, John Alvis, Gerard Wegemer, David O. Davies, and the rest of the IPS faculty carefully honed my exegetical skills over five years of first-rate lectures and seminars. Scott’s new book, The Art of Persuasion: Aristotle’s “Rhetoric” for Everyone, should become the standard guide for young rhetors. My wife Laura was the first to suggest that I apply for graduate school. She encouraged and supported my studies, patiently doing more than her share to run our household and to bring up our children “beautifully by means of habits,” while also working as a marketer and copy writer. One neither expects nor merits such kindness, nor does one hope ever to repay it adequately—though God knows I will try. ix INTRODUCTION The species of rhetoric are three in number; for such is the number to which the hearers of speeches belong. A speech consists of three things: a speaker and a subject on which he speaks and someone addressed, and the objective of the speech relates to the last (I mean the hearer). –Rhetoric 1.3.11 To theorize about rhetoric is not only to explain how speakers use the means of persuasion; it is also to wonder about how audiences listen and why they judge as they do. As a power or capacity (dunamis), rhetoric is bi- (and often multi-) directional. To treat it as a unidirectional exertion, in which an active speaker transmits a message to a passive audience, is to ignore or minimize most of the political circumstances, ethical considerations, and psychological conditions that inhere in the reciprocal act of speaking and listening. Such treatments are not only theoretically inaccurate but also practically deficient. As Aristotle observes, persuasion is always directed at someone.2 To practice the craft of speaking rationally and artistically, a speaker must, to whatever degree is possible, know her audience—just as she knows her subject and the canons of rhetoric. But understanding an audience means treating its constituent members as human beings who are by nature rational, ethical, emotive, and political—and who are therefore capable of active participation, not only of passive reception, in persuasive discourse. Ultimately, this realization demands that a study of rhetoric treat the rhetorical exchange not only from the perspective of the speaker or writer, whose persuasive goals the speech must instrumentally achieve, but also from the perspective of the reader or listener, whose purposes in hearing the speech, whether acknowledged or not, are broadly political and ethical. A speaker may want to convict a defendant or to see a motion passed; an audience, composed of citizens who may or may not rise to speak, will render a judgment with broad implications and long-lasting x consequences for the administration of justice or the pursuit of common advantage. As a matter of theory, then, rhetoric must explain not only the workings of the speaker’s language, logic, and vocal performance, but also the workings of reason, emotions, and moral convictions in listeners’ souls—all of which serve political and ethical ends that constitute the public good. While cities come into being for the sake of living, they exist for the sake of living well; and, while the art of rhetoric does not in itself discover or determine what constitutes the just or the good, it nevertheless studies and provides arguments about those ends. According to Aristotle, it is part of the same capacity to see what is persuasive about such matters and what is only apparently so. Insofar as the discipline of rhetoric explains how a speaker can best achieve his or her instrumental goals, it should also explain how audiences can best judge the relationship between those instrumental goals and the ends of politics and human life.
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