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Rhetoric: Subjects
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Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic. Both alike are concerned with such things as come, more or less, within the general ken of all men and belong to no definite science. Accordingly all men make use, more or less, of both; for to a certain extent all men attempt to discuss statements and to maintain them, to defend themselves and to attack others. Ordinary people do this either at random or through practice and from acquired habit. Both ways being possible, the subject can plainly be handled systematically, for it is possible to inquire the reason why some speakers succeed through practice and others spontaneously; and every one will at once agree that such an inquiry is the function of an art.
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Rhetoric constituted one of the subjects of the trivium, or three preliminary subjects of the seven liberal arts taught at the universities, the other two being grammar and logic. The chief medieval authorities on rhetoric were three Roman scholars of the 5th, 6th, and 7th centuries, respectively: Martianus Capella, author of an encyclopedia of the seven liberal arts (arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music, in conjunction with grammar, logic, and rhetoric); Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus, historian and founder of monasteries, famed especially for his Institutiones Divinarum et Humanarum Lectionum, (Introduction to Divine and Human Readings, 550?), the second book of which contains an account of the seven liberal arts; and Saint Isidore of Seville, a Spanish archbishop who compiled an encyclopedic work setting forth the erudition of the ancient world. During this period, rhetoric found practical application in three “artes”: letter writing, preaching, and the composition of poetry.
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Aristotle's Rhetoric is incomparably the most scientific work which exists on the subject. It may ... be regarded as having determined the main lines on which the subject was treated by nearly all subsequent writers. The extant treatise on rhetoric (also by Aristotle?) entitled 'Pnroparcri 7rpen AXiEa p OSpov, formerly ascribed to Anaximenes of Lampsacus, was written at latest by 340 B.C. The introductory letter prefixed to it is probably a late forgery. Its relation towards Aristotle's Rhetoric is discussed in the article on Aristotle.
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Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art. Every other art can instruct or persuade about its own particular subject-matter; for instance, medicine about what is healthy and unhealthy, geometry about the properties of magnitudes, arithmetic about numbers, and the same is true of the other arts and sciences. But rhetoric we look upon as the power of observing the means of persuasion on almost any subject presented to us; and that is why we say that, in its technical character, it is not concerned with any special or definite class of subjects.
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