Talk:Rhetoric (Aristotle)

Re-Titled Overview Section
Folks, I've retitled the overview section, since as it is currently it konks out halfway through the work. The goal in doing so was to make the article accurate while not creating big holes.

I don't have it in front of me, or I'd write basic overviews of books 2 & 3. Perhaps we could have it in outline form? I suspect Aristotle would be particularly amenable to such a treatment, and it would make for easy expansion, where any given step would be more-or-less complete, as we went along.

A fine article, I should say: it entirely answered the questions I came here with and gave me a couple of new and unexpected ideas as well. Wikipedia rocks. -CC. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.6.221.208 (talk) 23:10, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Under development

 * I added subheads in bold under Overview to mark areas of development, particularly for the species of rhetoric in Book One. I left these subheads without content (temporarily) because I am instructing my students to fill in basic information such as definition in the next week. I will be supervising, but please be patient and by all means please give us feedback on our contributions. We are happy to be part of this scholarly project, and my students (undergraduates) are learning to contribute to scholarly discussion in the process.Thank you for your patience.--Rhetoricmeister (talk) 08:31, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Please note that this article is underdevelopment. Creating an outline first creates the categories for adding in information over the next few days and provides an outline of the book. This is a legitimate way to develop an article. Please if you have something substantive to add, add it! This way we can work together to create a fine article. Otherwise, please leave the structure in place to allow organized development. Cyg-nifier 10:45, 29 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Please don't add headers without content. It looks odd and there's no need for it. SlimVirgin (talk) 20:11, 29 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Gosh, even more harassment. This article is marked as a stub, which makes it clear it is under development. Leave it alone. Oddness is not a defining criteria for/against articles on Wikipedia. Accuracy and verifiability and, oh gosh....collegialiaty is. There is a need for creating the outline to give the structure and if others choose to collaborate, it makes clear the organization that is in process. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SwanSZ (talk • contribs) 21:12, 29 April 2007 (UTC).


 * I think we've discussed this before, haven't we, perhaps with a different user name? Anyway, do not keep on adding headers without content. If you want to write a draft before putting it in the encyclopedia, please do it in user subspace. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:14, 29 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Please read the content policies and guidelines before continuing to revert corrections. We don't use a Harvard ref and a footnote for the same citation, because there's no need to; see WP:CITE. You also have to provide sources for your edits; you can't just add your personal opinion. Please read WP:NOR and WP:V before continuing. Many thanks, SlimVirgin (talk) 21:24, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Source request
Can we have a source, please, for "The Art of Rhetoric" ... is considered by many rhetorical scholars to be the premier work ever written on the nature of persuasion."

At the moment, we have Bizzell, P. & Bruce Herzberg. (2000). The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, and Golden, James L., Goodwin F. Berquist, William E. Coleman, & J. Michael Sproule (eds) (2003). The Rhetoric of Western Thought, but no page numbers. What do they say exactly that you're using as support for that sentence? SlimVirgin (talk) 20:11, 29 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Slim -- the sources are right there; page numbers are needed for direct quotes. And, this claim hardly needs referencing as it is one that is considered common knowledge in these disciplines, but illustrative sources are provided. They say what virtually everyone in the field of rhetoric says -- that the leading, premier work is Aristotle's Rhetoric; others would say that everything else is derivative. This is not a doctoral defense and this article is already far better documented than most of Wikipedia. This is nothing but harassment from you that just keeps continuing. Cut the harrassment. Cyg-nifier 21:09, 29 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Page numbers are needed for any material that is "challenged or likely to be challenged," according to WP:V. Please read our content policies before continuing. Please don't accuse editors of harassment because they request references. Again, please say exactly what your sources say (i.e. quote them) to support that sentence, with page numbers. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:24, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

(copied from SV talk) ... In terms of the "Rhetoric" article, you have pursued me there and continue to harass. The claim that The Rhetoric is the premier work on persuasion ever written is generally accepted amongst the large discipline of rhetoricians -- of which I am a well-qualified part. Two of the leading texts on rhetorical history were cited -- and a page number is not needed as it is a general reference of a widely held claim. If an article starts in one documentation form, it is supposed to stay in that form (go read the policy). I started it in an author-date form, NOT a note form; and corrected the few in-process errors that I had made. In an attempt to appease you, I added text under each heading -- and you went back and still deleted sections. Cyg-nifier 22:33, 30 April 2007 (UTC)


 * If that claim is generally accepted, it should be easy to find sources. A page number is indeed needed if it's requested; please read the policies. As for your qualifications, please say who you are and what they are, and provide checkable references; otherwise, please don't make the claim. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:47, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I do say who I am -- it is quite clear on my user page and I make no attempt to hide my identity as accountability is one of the first tenets of scholarship. Do you establish your qualifications in discussing Aristotle? --A page number is needed in formal citations for specific quotations or a reference to a specific idea. It is not needed in making a general reference to an idea, when in many cases a page number would make no sense anyway. This is clear in all formats of referencing. Any reference given in this article is imminently checkable -- when there is no page number, the relevant section would be clear to anyone looking at the source. If someone doesn't have the source in front of them, the page number would be irrelevant. Demanding it when one has no intention of pursuing the source becomes a form of harassment, not a request for more precise scholarship. If there is no source to a specific statement, it is because it is widely held to be true. Some claims are considered widely accepted -- such as George Washington was the first president of the United States. It would be ludicrous to demand a source, much less a page number for such a claim. The same is true within many scholarly contexts. Cyg-nifier 15:05, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

General Inaccuracies
As a student of Classical Rhetoric I agree with the above user (Swan), but would like to add that the second half of the 'Background' section, whoever is responsible for it, is horribly written/cited. 'The Rhetoric was developed by Aristotle during two periods when he was in Athens, the first between 367 to 347 BC (when he was seconded to Plato in the Academy), and the second between 335 to 322 BC (when he was running his own school, the Lyceum)' Firstly a lack of basic grammar in not having a full stop, incorrect use of 'seconded' and most worryingly no scholarly citation on this claim. 'The study of rhetoric was contested in classical Greece: on the one side were the Sophists, and on the other side were Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.' Really? This is literally something a secondary school pupil would write. I don't want to go into detail in ripping this apart because it would take up too much time, and anyone with half a brain can see what a ridiculous statement it is. 'Dialectic and rhetoric create a partnership for a system of persuasion based on knowledge instead of upon manipulation and omission.' Very debatable, any scholarly backup? Let's see it please. And finally, associating Isocrates with 'manipulating emotion and omitting facts' is simply wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.222.114.247 (talk) 16:13, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Criticism
How are Aristotle's ideas presented in Rhetoric valid for today? Can they be applied? Or are they surpassed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.63.224.115 (talk) 20:02, 12 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, if you ever take a writing class in community college, you'll be shown a picture of an equilateral triangle which includes logos, ethos, and pathos, assumedly made under the assumption that what Aristotle was saying was that all three of these were of equal importance to an argument, which, though I haven't read this, given what I glean of Aristotle, my guess would be that it is just simply false.
 * To me it seems like Aristotle would prefer logos to ethos and ethos to pathos, as, if an argument isn't sound or valid, then it just falls a part, a speaker ought to be genuine, and it is, I'd think, somewhat unfortunately for Aristotle, ultimately effective to sway public opinion through appeals to emotion, though it is all entirely possible that he did say that all three of them were equally persuasive in argumentation as a point of critique.
 * I don't know. That equilateral triangle just gets me, though, and, so, if anyone wants to create an article on the persuasion triad, I would be interested in what Aristotle actually said about all of this. Daydreamdays2 (talk) 19:43, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikisource?
I'm not sure how to do the wikisource template crap, but a translation of this document is available there, and probably would benefit this article. Rhetoric (Freese) --67.61.48.212 (talk) 01:46, 29 October 2012 (UTC)