Aristotle's 'Rhetoric'

Moving from the dense passages of Plato’s Phaedrus, I found myself more enthused about getting to Aristotle. I thought the introduction did a good job introducing everything which I didn’t necessarily feel about the Plato selection, especially as it relates to how Aristotle veers away from the belief of the Sophists as proposed by Plato. Bizzell and Herzberg assert, “Aristotle did not appear to agonize over the good and bad uses of rhetoric, as his predecessors had done, especially Isocrates and Plato. he seemingly did not feel particularly hostile to the Sophists or need to devote much time to refuting their ideas” (30). Aristotle mentions a few passages that seems to relate to the Sophists and the tradition, yet he doesn’t continually berate them in his dialogues as Plato had done. 

One thing that I remember most about the Plato readings is the classification and organisation he makes as it relates to the audience, something which followed me into the reading of Aristotle. He asserts various situations in which divisions result. The most notable of these divisions would be how he discusses a natural hierarchy that exists: “For the superiority of class over class is proportionate to the superiority possessed by their largest specimens” (193). Aristotle looks through this lens in terms of members of society in health, height, and even abstract conceptualisations such as the goodness men possess. What I found striking about this point was his distinction about the varying degrees men use in their language whilst trying to convey such points in order to persuade a specific audience. 

Prior to this assertion, he discusses the importance and levels of utility in society. Aristotle states that “the political or deliberative orator’s aim is utility: deliberation seeks to determine not ends but the means to ends, i.e. what is most useful to do” (190). This also makes me think of how this would function in the other forms of oratory that he introduces and delineates through the work. Would it necessarily be through language that these are implemented or in what manner would it take shape; furthermore, wouldn't a necessary account of Dissoi Logoi apropos looking at an event through two perspectives come into play…or perhaps not. 

While I still am wrestling with the Aristotle readings, I must say that these seem more accessible than that of Phaedrus perhaps due to translation, or due to the organisational elements incorporated in the text.