green l. d., aristotelean rhetoric, dialectic, and the traditions of antistrofos, „rhetorica”...

7/22/2019 Green L. D., Aristotelean Rhetoric, Dialectic, and the Traditions of Antistrofos, Rhetorica 8.1(1990), s. 5-27.

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Aristotelian Rhetoric, Dialectic, and the Traditions ofAuthor(s): Lawrence D. GreenSource: Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Winter 1990), pp. 5-27Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the International Society for the History ofRhetoric

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L A W R E N C E D . G R E E N

Aristotelian Rhetoric, Dialectic, and theTraditions of 'AvTLaTQO(l)og

ny a t tem pt to un der s tan d Ar isto tle 's Rhetoric requires taking a stand on the issue of the relationship he proposesbetween rhetoric and dialectic, even if the stand is merelya provisional one. Certainly the relationship was important to Aristotle himself: the opening line of his treatise declares that "Rhetoricis the dvTioTQOc|)og of dialectic" (1354al), and within his treatise thecross-references to his dialectical works are so extensive that itoften seems as though Aristotle is defining rhetoric and dialectic interms of one another. Yet the precise nature of their relationshiphas puzzled commentators and interpreters from classical t imes to

the present , assuming more and less importance in different eras .In the Renaissance theorists and practi t ioners alike were increasingly self-conscious about their own roots in Aristotelian thinking,and the relations they discerned between the two disciplines affected educational practices, approaches to l i teracy, and even practices in some vernacular l i teratures. ' But if scholars in the Renaissance were particularly feverish in their pursuit of this matter, theyw ere h ar dly u ni q ue in realizin g the centrality of it. To the extentthat the two disc ipl ines def ine one another , unders tanding that

'See Cesare Vasoli, La dialettica e la retorica dell'Um anesimo: "Invenzione" e"Metodo'- nella cultura del XV e XVI secolo (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1968).

The Intern ation al Society for the H istory of Rhetoric Rhetorica, Volume VllI,N u m b e r 1 (W inter 1990)

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6 R H E T O R I C Arela t ionship has some import for how we unders tand Aris to teHanrhetoric.The his tory of in terpreta t ion and commentary over the centuries provides eloquent testimony to the difficulty people have had,and c ont inu e to hav e, in sor t ing out th is re la t ions hip . The problemnags a t commentators and refuses to s tay solved; no matter howelaborate an analysis one commentator offers , the next commentator often feels compelled to reconsider the entire problem again,of ten with no percept ib le advance in the argument . Moreover , themajor positions are difficult to reconcile with one another, and yetso many commentators in their rehearsals e i ther g loss over thedisagreements as though they do not matter or do not exist , or elsethey s imply dism iss the posi t ions they do n ot like w itho ut t ry ing tocome to grips with them. Finally, the issue reached an impasse bythe end of the Renaissance, and the arguments have not advancedsignificantly in four hundred years; all of the major posit ions werealready spelled out by the sixteenth century, and subsequent scholarship has done l i t t le more than choose s ides .

One of the greatest difficult ies in the long history of commentary has been the very her i tage of commentary itself. Medieval andRenaissance scholars often failed to appreciate why an earlierscholar said wh at he sa id , and so m isun de rs too d the genesis of thatscholar 's posit ion, the extent to which i t answered his own localconcerns and arguments , and the inherent l imita t ions of that posit ion. Our modern unders tandings on th is subject , in turn , havebeen sh ape d by the his tory of t ry ing to un de rs ta nd the subject, andwe have valorized posit ions which were first developed in thecontext of historical concerns which are not our own, and concernswhich we in all probabili ty do not share. In what follows I willoutline the development of some of these posit ions by focusing onA ris to tle 's u se of the w o rd dvTi;oTQO(t)05 in th e o pe n in g lin e of th eRhetoric. It is precisely at this point in his treatise that commentators historically have joined batt le , and here that they establishedthe premises about Aristotelian rhetoric and dialectic which wouldguide the rest of their enterprise. Moreover, the decisions made atth is crux are near ly a lways shaped by the commentator ' s or in terpreter ' s larger unders tanding of the Rhetoric as a whole, often by anun de rs ta nd ing of Aris to t le ' s d ia lectical t rea t ises , and som etim es bya read ing of oth er A ristotelian w or ks . My focus in w h at follows willbe principally historical , rath er t ha n ph ilosop hical, insofar a s I willbe less conce rned w ith Aris to t le tha n with the a t te m pts by co m m enta tors to unders tand Aris to t le . As one commentator sa id , speaking



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A r i s t o t e l i a n R h e t o r i cin the sixteenth century, "There are as many interpretations of thisl i t t le word as there are in terpreters . ' "iAris tot le h imself does not provide much help within the immediate context of the Rhetoric. H e u ses dvxL0TQ0


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8 R H E T O R I C AA commonplace of Aristotelian crit icism is that dialectic andrhetor ic re la te to one an othe r as do choric s t roph e and ant i s t rop he,but this explanation raises more problems than i t solves, as Aris-totie 's brief reference to "ancient poets" suggests. In some circulardi thyrambs (a l though probably not in t ragedy) the chorus sang thestrophe while dancing to the r ight , the ant is t rophe while dancingto the left , and the epode while standing sti l l .^ In Pindar 's Olympian 1 all the l ines of the strophe are in Aiolic rhythm, with eachline complexly different from the line before.* The following antis t rophe has the same number of l ines as the s t rophe, and eachant is t rophic l ine repeats the rhythm of the corresponding s t rophicline. The e po de is also Aiolic, bu t n ow he re is it identical metricallyto the first two stanzas. The structure of Olympian 1 is a series oftr iads in which each strophe is followed by a matching antistrophe,while a l l the epodes are ident ical among themselves .At this point, the parallels between ancient Greek choral practice and Aristotle's use of dvxioxQocjjog at 1354al fall apart. The verynotion of an "antistrophe" is not created by the earlier strophe, but

instead by the existence of the epode. Without the epode, the choralant is t rophe would merely be a second s tanza repeat ing the formalmetrics of the first , and there would be nothing inherent in thestructure of the ode to prevent a third, fourth, and fif th repeatingstanza. In such a case the not ion of "ant is t rophe" would becomemeaningless , and the s tanza would be jus t one more ramble in thepotentially endless dvaPoXr| which Aristotle explicitly warns theorator to avoid at 1409b27. Such successive sta nz as m ay co rresp ondto one another in one way or another, but i t is the dance and, inparticular, the "stan dsti l l" of the ep od e whic h toge ther tu rn the firsts tanza ins ide out and m ake i t an ant is t rop he. The paral le ls betw eentw o verse s or, in the case of the Rhetoric, be tw een tw o d isc iphnes arenot eno ug h to mak e their re la t ionship a nt is t rophic , ev en if the parallels are exact. Something more is needed to turn the verse or discipl ine back upo n itself. In ancient verse , the ep od e and da nce served

^See Lillian L. Lawler, The Dance of the Ancient Greek Theatre (Iowa City: Univ. ofIowa Press, 1964), 11-14. For a statement of the older view, see Walther Kranz,Stasimon: Untersuchungen zu Form und Gehalt der Griechischen Tragodie (Berlin: Weid-mannsch Buchhandlung, 1933), 115 ff.'Frank Niset ich, Pindar's Victory Odes (Bal t imore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press,1980), 34-35; for an analysis of the metrics of Olympian 1, see Alexander Turyn,Pindari Carmina cum Fragmentis (Krakow: Academia Polona Lit terarum et Scien-tiarum, 1948), 1.



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Aristotelian Rhetoric 9this function. But the history of Aristotelian commentary is devoidof elements serving any such function for rhetoric and dialectic. Theseeming precision of references to Greek strophe and antistrophefor clarifying Aristotie's ideas at 1354al is illusory.

But if the word dvxLOXQO(j)og is unusual within the context ofthe Rhetoric, i t is very common in Aristotle 's other works, and theword almost always has a very technical meaning. 'AvxLox0oct)O5appears in the Analytics and in the Topics more than 150 times. Inevery insta nce t he wo rd indica tes a transform ation wh ich is reciprocal and reversible, and in which one part of a two-part relationshipnecessarily implies the second part by virtue of such reciprocityand reversibil i ty. These transformations can be performed on elements such as sentences , proposi t ions , terms, re la t ions , and evenon arguments. In general , the transformation either follows Aristotle 's principles of logical conversion detailed in the Prior Analytics, or the transformation negates the original element. In theformer case, if certain logical operations can be performed on elem ent X to yield ele m en t Y, or on elem ent Y to yield element X, thenX an d Y are co nve rtible w ith o ne an oth er. In the latter case, eitherelement can always be converted to i ts opposite. In one of Aristotle's illustrations of conversion (dvxiOTQe({)LV, A.Pr 1.25a6), thesta tem ent " no m an is an anim al" transforms in to the s ta tem ent "noanimal is a man," while "every man is an animal" t ransforms in to"som e anim al is a m an ." Th us X and Y always imply one another ,and can be transformed into one another, without actually beingone another.^ In each instance of the word dvxL0X90(()05 in thedialectical treatises, the word conveys more than what is suggestedby an inaccurate t ransla t ion such as "correspondence," or "analog ue," or "corre la t ive ," or " ident i ty ."If this reading from the Analytics and Topics we re at all perm issible in the context of the Rhetoric, then the problematic use of theword in the declaration "Rhetoric is the dvxi;oxQO(j)05 of dialectic"would indicate that rhetoric and dialectic could somehow be conver ted so that they could be unders tood as one another ( recipro-^here a re nuances wi th in th i s genera l descr ip t ion , and those nuances have

been largely understood throughout the commentary t radi t ion, s ince Aristot le 'sdiscussions clarify the sense of the word in almost all cases. W. D. Ross summarizesthose nuances in Aristotle's Prior and Posterior Analytics (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1949), A.Pr. 25a6, although scholars have taken issue with aspects of his analysis,e.g., Robin Smith, "Some Studies of Logical Transformations in the Prior Analytics,"History and Philosophy of Logic 2 (1981): 1-9.



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10 R H E T O R I C Acally and reversibly), and that they do not merely resemble oneanother in a vague manner. But in the history of Aristotelian comm en tary this is no t the pa th tha t ha s be en followed.*Most of modern thinking about the problems of dvxiox0O(j)O5 in theRhetoric can be t raced back to what Renaissance in terpreters andcommentators had to say. Their th inking, in turn , re l ied upon arelatively small number of earher scholars and studies. We canthink of those earlier and influential studies in terms of three independent t radi t ions; one emerges out of Per ipate t ic phi losophy ofthe third century, another from Arabic philosophy in the twelfthcentury, and a third from Scholastic concerns of the thirteenth century. From the Renaissance point of view, these three tradit ionsseemed to converge, and if scholars within each tradit ion did notactually say the same things about Aristotle's dvxioxQocjjog, at leasttheir posit ions seemed intell igible in terms of one another. But infact they are not, and what seems similar in their posit ions is reallydifferent because the reasons for holding those posit ions are different. This difficulty leads to two problems which trouble the historyof commentary from the Renaissance onward; s imilar explanat ionsab ou t dvxioxQo4>05 m as k real differences in u n d er st an d in g , a nd ,conversely, se em ing differences in exp lana tion ob scure areas ofcrit ical agreement.

The critical position with the oldest heritage is that of the Peripate tic com m enta tor A lexand er of Ap hrod is ias in the th ird century.Alexander briefly considers the question of dvxioxQO(t)og in hisstudy of Aristotle 's Topics, and while he does not actually reject thenotion of antistrophic convertibility, still he discusses the matter insuch a way as to lead centur ies of subsequent commentators todismiss such a reading as inapplicable to the Rhetoric.^ Alexanderclaims that dvxCoxQO(j)05 originally meant the same as io6ax0O(})O5,and that Aristotle 's l ine in the Rhetoric signifies that rhetoric anddialectic, despite their differences, engage in the same activities

In another s tudy 1 explore the possibil i ties an d pro blem s of just this sugg est ion.Alexander Aphrodis iens is , In Aristotelis topicorum libros octo comm entaria, ed .Maximillian Wallies (Beriin: Georg Reimer, 1841), 1.4. Numerous manuscripts ofAlexander survive, and his commentary became widely avai lable after the Aldineedition (Venice, 1513).



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Aristotelian Rhetoric 11an d disc uss the sam e things.* Alex and er delineates four principalresemblances between rhetor ic and dia lect ic :1. Neither art has a subject matter of i ts own, and in theory eitherar t can address any topic whatsoever;2. Neither has the kind of general organizing principle or generating principle which is necessary for the definition of a particularsc ience, a l though both have recourse to pr inciples common toany kind of reasoning;3. Both use probable reasons, rather than t iue, certain, or demonstrable reasons, and both aim at conclusions which can be no

more than probable ; and4. Both can argue either side of a question, whereas a true demon-st ia t ion can have but one conclusion.Alexander 's f irst two points imply one another, while his fourthpoint follows from his third, so that Alexander 's resemblances areactually fewer than his diffuse discussion suggests. But the majordifferences which Alexander perceives between the two arts aremore pronounced than these resemblances :1. Dialectic in practice deals with any subject, while rhetoric inpractice deals only with civil affairs;2. Dialectic proceeds by question and answer, while rhetoric inpractice is more expansive and proceeds in such order as i tchooses ; and3. Dialectic usually aims at conclusions of general or universal im

port , while rhetoric in practice aims at particular conclusions,often involving individuals or discernible parties.As Alexander ' s d iscussion makes c lear , the resemblances betweenrhetoric and dialectic are all on a theoretical level, while the differences are all on the level of practical application. In his view, botharts are practical rather than theoretical enterprises, and as a resultthe practical differences matter more to Alexander than do thetheoret ical resemblances .

What poses the greatest difficulty with this passage in Alexander is that he is not really thinking about rhetoric. What does"Sextus Empiricus, who is roughly contemporaneous with Alexander, has a

similar understanding of (ivTioxeo(J)05 in Adversus Mathematicus 7.6. These two third-century writers are the principal authorities for attributing this reading to Aristotle 'savTioTQO(t)og.



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12 R H E T O R I C Aconcern him is how to determine which of the competing def init ions of "dialectic" is ap pro pri ate as a start ing poi nt for his c om m en tary on Aristotle 's Topics. His remarks about rhetoric are the last ina series which first ranges across Platonic method in philosophy.Stoic dialectic, Aristotelian categories and demonstration, and thenature of probable s ta tements . The remarks themselves are sandwiched in between these ear ly dis t inct ions and the major d iscussion of syllogistic proceeding and topical reasoning which follows.Both the overall s tructure of his discussion and the very remarksthemselves demonstra te that Alexander is pr imari ly in teres ted inthe similarit ies and differences between rhetoric and dialectic insofar as they clarify for him the issue of syllogizing from probabilities.Commentators during the Renaissance s t ruggled val iant ly tomake sense of Alexander ' s remarks , with mixed success . Marc An-toine M ure t, in an influential Latin tianslation of A lexa nde r, u nd er stood him to say that the two disciplines were coequal with one another ("eam esse a.vTioTQO


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Aristotelian Rhetoric 13A different and independent l ine of th inking comes throughthe Arabic tradit ion, through Al-Farabi and Averroes. Averroes incorporated Aristotelian rhetoric, poetics, dialectic, demonstration,and sophistic all into a larger art of what he thought of as logic.What was not c lear to medieval and Renaissance commentatorswas that Averroes was mainta ining his own polemic within theArabic world . Other Arabic commentators had argued that rhetor icwas to be viewed merely as a component of style. Averroes rescuedrhetoric from its subordination to poetics by instead subsumingbo th rheto ric an d poetics alike u nd er lo gic ." Rhetoric again islinked to dialectic, as it is for Alexander, by its efficacy in gainingassent through syllogistic practice, but Averroes offers an interesting difference. Dialectic recognizes that two contrary posit ions areavailable with any given question, and i t tr ies to ignore or destroyone of them; rhetoric, on the other hand, tr ies to keep both possibilities in sight.^^ Thus the two disciplines touch upon one anotherwithin Averroes ' overarching discipline of logic, and his paraphrase of Aris to t le ' s Rhetoric is consonant with his percept ion.Abramo de Balmo transla ted that paraphrase in to Lat in as "Arsquidem Rhetoricae affinis est artis Topicae," in which Aristotle 's xfj8LaX.eixixfj at 1354al is understood as a reference to the Topics, andnot to the Analytics or to a broader notion of dialectic." Averroes 'focus on the Topics makes i t unnecessary for h im to ponder thedefinit ions of dialectic which motivated Alexander 's remarks, butthe different contexts of the two commentators ' concerns wouldlead to confusion when later writers tr ied to compare their respective posit ions.Yet a third line of thinking comes through the Scholastic tradition. William of Moerbeke [ca. 1270], the Dominican confrere ofSt . Thomas Aquinas , was another in terpreter who t r ied to makesense of Aristotle 's difficult line, but he caused as much difficultyas he solved. He rendered this l ine as "Rhetorica assecutiva dialec-tice est," '^ so that rhetoric apparently rivals dialectic, or aspires to

Alexander should be used with cauhon, since Cope adds his own crihcal commentary without clearly differentiating it from what Alexander actually says."Charles E. But te rworth , ed . and t rans . , Averroes' Three Short Commentaries on

Aristotle's "Topics," "Rhetoric," and "Poetics" (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press,1977), 21 .'^Averroes, The Book of D ialectic, para. 2 , in Butterworth, 47."Aver roes , In libros rhetoricorum Aristotelis paraphrases. Abramo de B almes inter

prete [1515], in Aristotelis opera cum Averrois comm entariis, vol. 2 (Venice, 1562), 69."Translatio Guillelmi de Moerbeka, in Aristoteles Latinus XXXI, l -2 : Rhetorica:



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14 R H E T O R I C Abe like it, or is an extension of it, or perhaps is subsequent to it.But o ther unders tand ings o f assecutiva are possible, and Giles ofRome [ca. 1290], a disciple of St. Thomas, puzzles his waythrough several of them in his very extensive commentary onMoerbeke's translation.^* Giles argues against posit ions advancedby Al-Farabi in the eighth century, saying that rhetoric is not apart of logic; that dialectical opinion has no more human forcethan does rhetorical creduhty; and that either discipline can dealwith particulars. For Giles, rhetoric is a kind of imitation of dialectic ("quaedem imitatio"), the equal of dialectic in some respects("aequatur i lh"), and deficient in others. Rhetoric serves the practical intellect, dialectic the speculative intellect, but bothinThomis t fash ionmake the un iverse more knowable ."

According to Giles, un de rs t an din g Aris to t ie ' s op en ing l ine ( thatis, Moerbeke 's t ransla t ion of i t ) requires a larger unders tanding ofthe differences an d similarities be tw ee n rheto ric an d dialectic. Rh etoric and dialectic are alike in that both are rational activities that dealwith acts of reason, nei ther uses the inexorable reasoning whichcompels the min d in logic, an d th e reaso ning w hich each us es de alswith aspects of universal being itself. The two differ in that rhetorictends to deal with par t icular moral matters among unsophis t ica tedaudi tors , and employs the infer ior logic of enthymemes and examples, wh ile dialectic te nd s to deal w ith univer sal speculative m atter sam on g subt le aud i tors , an d em plo ys the superior logic of syl logismsand induc t ions . The mos t impor tan t d is t inc t ion be tween them forGiles is that rhetor ic arouses the pass ions and seeks to producecredulity, while dialectic eschews the passions and seeks to produceopinion . In Giles 's Scholas tic perc ept ion , the pa ss ion s require bo thmater ia l an d organ ism , and t hu s the pass ions cannot be found in thelower vegetative soul, or in the higher rational soul, but only in thesensit ive soul.^" Th ere, th e pass ion s m us t be either cognitive (w hich

Translatio Anonyma sive Vetus et Translatio G uillelmi de Moerbeka, ed . Bernd Schneider(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978), 159 (cited hereafter as Aristoteles Latinus). For discussion,see Bernd Schneider, Die mittelalterlichen griechisch-lateinischen Ubersetzungen deraristotelischen Rhetorik (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1971).

"Aegidius Romanus (Egidio Colonna, Giles of Rome), Expositio super tribuslibris rhetoricorum [ca. 1290] (Venice, 1515), l 'a-2'a.

"B roth er S. Rob ert, F. S. C , "Rh etoric and D ialectic: A ccord ing to the F irstLat in Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristot le ," New Scholasticism 31 (1957): 48 4-9 8.^"james Jerome M urphy , "The Scholast ic Con dem natio n of Rhetoric in the C om mentary of Giles of Rome on the Rhetoric of A ristot le ," Arts Liberaux et Philosophic au

Moyen Age (Montreal : Inst i tute d 'Etudes Medievales, 1969), 83 3 -4 1 .



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Aristotelian Rhetoric 15they cannot be) or else appetit ive. When the sensit ive appetite affects the intellect, the result is human choice; credulity is an intellective assent driven by the appetite, and it leads to action in thisworld.^' But action in this world, even good action, is not the greates t happiness; that happiness is reserved for reasoning that seeksthe truth, and which requires neither choice nor action. That higherhappiness is the goal of dialectic, which arouses no passions and isnot affected by ap pe tite . In dialectic, no thi ng m ove s the intellect butthat which is proper to it, while in rhetoric the intellect answers tothe appet i te .

In Giles's Commentary, the most significant differences betweenrhetoric and dialectic, and the resultant hierarchy between the twodisciplines, turn on the issue of the appetitive intellect. This helpsexplain his unders tanding of Moerbeke 's assecutiva, but even so, itis difficult for modern translations to capture fully Giles's sense,and we have "Rhetor ic reaches to dialectic"^ along with "Rhetoricfollows upon dialectic."^ An altogether different problem is whetherGiles 's complex posit ion really reflects Moerbeke's understandingof Aristotle's dvxioxQocjJog.I have so far touc hed up o n th ree com m entary t radi tions: Per ipatetic, Arabic, and Scholastic . In each tradit ion commentators havecome to similar understandings of Aristotle's dvxioxQO(t)og, butthey have done so for very different reasons, and what looks l ikeagre em ent is in fact no th in g of the sort . These thre e tradit ions, an dthe superficial sense of agreement among them, continue into theRenaissance. When Pietro Vettori offers a translation of Aristotle 'sUne at 1354al, h e closely follows Ale xan der 's lang uag e with "Rhetorica versatur in iisdem rebus, in quibus dialectica,"^* and othersthen follow Vettori 's influential lead. Averroes also finds manyechoes. Jacques Brocard, who usually wrote on theological matters,offers a popular paraphrase of the Rhetoric which declares that"rhetoricae est cum dialectica affinitas."^^ Marco Antonio Riccoboni

^'For Giles, rhetoric occupies a medial position between dialechc, on the onehan d, a nd bo th ethics and pol ihcs on the other; see Gerardo Bruni , "The De differentiarhetoricae, ethicae et politicae of Aegid ius Romanus ," New Scholasticism 6 (1932): 1-18.^Robert , 488.^Murphy , 840 .^Victorius, Com mentarii in tres libros Aristotelis de arte dicendi (Florence, 1579), in

Aristoteles Latinus, 356.^Jacobus Brocardus , Aristotelis de arte rhetorica paraphrasis (Paris, 1549), 36: "Ea



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16 R H E T O R I C Aadopts a s imilar iy Averrois t point of v iew when he wri tes "Rhetorica convenientiam habet cum Dialectica,"^* and his language ispreserved as late as the Cambridge Edition of 1728. The complexScholastic posit ion of Giles is adopted by Augustino Nifo, who ismore commonly known for h is phi losophical s tudies of Aris to t le .In his commentary and in terpreta t ion, Nifo f inal ly adopts Giles ' sintricate position, but only after first despairing that "dvxiaxQ0(f)058ia>iEXXLKfj: non parua difficultas est." Nifo is certain that Giles hadnever countenanced antistrophic convertibil i ty as i t is found in theAnalytics, and he toys wi th the word "suba l te rna" to render whathe thought Giles meant before he finally setfles for the vaguer"Rhetorica est vicaria dialectice."^^ But for many other commentators , the magisterial Guillaume Bude sett les the entire philologicalissue by declaring in his widely adopted lexicon that dvxL0XQ0(t)05des igna tes avakoyoq, "an analogue which cor responds propor t ionate ly to som ethin g else. " ^ His posi t ion has the vir tue of enc om pas sing three divergen t t radi t ions wh ich have only an app are nt s imilari ty , and many commentators and in terpreters , both in the Renaissance and since, have found Bude's solution attractive.

But three conve rging t radi t ions are not the sam e as a conse nsu s;the Renaissance had i ts dissenters, and they took Cicero for theirauthority. In the Orator (32.114) Cicero had translated Aristotle 'st roublesome l ine as "quasi ex a l tera par te respondere dia lect icae ."Today many scholars choose to translate Cicero 's interpretation inOrator by using the English word counterpart,^^ which conceivablymeans an analogue. But Pietro Vettori and other Renaissance commentators thought that Cicero had jus t the opposi te in mind, thatCicero perceived contrariety, and that he saw the two Aristoteliandisciplines of rhetoric an d dialectic as op po se d to one an othe r, contraand e regione.^ Carlo Sigonio ado pts th is posi t ion an d sho rtens Cicero 's qualif ied sta tem en t to a very simp le "Rhetorica res po nd et dia-igitur rhetoricae est cum dialechca affinitas, ac cognatio, ut re eadem nitens,habi tum i l ium orat iones induat , qui formis disserendi dialect icis respondeat , s imi-l ique; qu ad am facultate poUeat vtr aq ue ."' ' M . Antonius Riccobonus , Aristotelis artis rhetoricae libri tres (Venice, 1579), inAristoteles Latinus, 358.

A u g u s t i n u s N i p h u s , Expositio atque interpretatio lucida in libros artis rhetoriceAristotelis (Venice, 1538), fol. 2' seq."^Gulielmus Budaeus, Commentarii linguae Graecae, rev. ed. (Paris, 1548), 629.^'See, for example, H. M. Hubbel l , Cicero: Orator, Loeb Classical Library (London: W. Heinemann Ltd. , 1939).^Vic tor ius , Commentarii (1548), 1-2.



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Aristotelian Rhetoric 17lecticae."^^ Sigonio's simple opposition is directly repeated by others, as in Giovanni Strazell i 's interpretation "Rhetorica respondetdialecticae."^^ The movement, however, is not all in one direction,and where some interpreters shorten Cicero 's s ta tement in order totranslate Rhetoric 1354al , o the rs take the sam e s ta tement and ins teadelaborately expand it , as in Johann Sturm's "Ars dicendi, quasi inchoro e regione disserendi respicit."^' '

Not surprisingly, not all Renaissance critics were convinced bythis approach; some thought this was a misreading of Cicero, others thought that Cicero had misread Aristotle, and some Renaissance critics of Cicero's approach, such as Pietro Vettori himself,saw no roo m for compromise.** As far as they we re conc erned, thepossibility that dvTioxQocjjog could be read as analogue never occurred to Cicero, and in this conviction they were aided by theRenaissance love for philological analysis. John Rainolds, who lectured on the Rhetoric at Oxford University during the early 1570s,summarizes for his students the state of the debate:

The word is composed of avti and 0TQC|)CO. But the word itself hasmany meanings, and the same authors use it differently at differenttimes. This complexity causes disagreement among interpreters, andmakes this passage obscure. So, in order to come to a better decision,let us see what avxi means by itself and what it means conjoined withthe word aTQi


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18 R H E T O R I C AOther Renaissance commentators considered such var ia t ions mtranslation to be distinctions with ou t a difference. The no ted h um an

ist (and Ciceronian) Ermolao Barbaro, for example, was clearly Ciceronian when he translated Aristofle as "Ars Rhetorica dialecticaetanquam ex a l tera par te respondet ." But h is t ransla t ion was notpubl ished for several decades , when his nephew Danielo Barbarocoupled i t with his own extended commentary based on his uncle ' stranslation. Dan ielo glossed Erm olao's sente nce in Ave rroist fashionby saying "Rhetoricam & Dialecticam similes ess e, " referred to thetwo disciplines as affinis, an d m ad e it clear tha t he tho ug ht Aristoflehere in tended the Topics.^'' Danielo draws some dis t inct ions in aneffort to reconcile these positions, pro a n d contra. He says that Alexander of Aphrodisias and Averroes both saw similarity by virtue oflooking at the material of the two disciplines, while Cicero sawcontrariety (opponi) by lookin g at the form . T hu s, for Da nielo, i t ' s alla m atter of ho w o ne choo ses to look at the prob lem , an d he declaresthat he and Erm olao both s ide with Cicero . A nu m be r of c om m entators found Danielo 's solut ion persuasive .^ '

If Danielo was being judicious, there were, at the same time,com m enta tors wh o were perfect ly h ap py to have it bo th wa ys .Marco Antonio Maioragio translates Aristotle with "Rhetorica Dialecticae affinis est, et quasi ex altera parte respondet."^' A shghtlydifferent case is pr es en ted by Mu ret, on e of the transla tors of Alexand er w ho m I d iscussed earl ier, and w ho clear ly kn ow s the t radit ion descending from Alexander. When Muret later offered hisown translation of Aristotle 's Rhetoric he adopted the Ciceroruan"Rhetor ice dia lect icae a l tera ex par te respondet . ' "" Muret apparently concluded that Alexander and Cicero were not at all in conflict . Muret, in fact , appears so secure that he even drops theequivocation of Cicero 's original sentence, an equivocation whichmost Ciceronians had been careful to preserve with the qualif iersquasi or tanquam.*^Thus we see that similarit ies in expression can obscure or mask

^'Barbarus, Commentarii, 8, 9-14 .Such as Franciscus Portus, Com men tarii in tres Aristotelis rhe toricae (Speyer,1598), 5 - 6 .Maiorag ius , In tres Aristotelis libros, de arte rhetorica (Venice, 1572), fol. Pa.Maioragio cont inues in his commentary with an extended at tack upon the scholarship of Vettori , with regard both to Aristotle and Cicero." M u r e t u s , Aristotelis Rhetoricorum libri duo (Rome, 1585), 1.

" As does Jakob Gorski in his dialectical studies; Jacobus Gorscius, Com-mentariorum artis dialecticae libri decern (Leipzig, 1563), 9.



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Aristotelian lyietoric 19real differences in interpretation. But the converse is true as well ,and se em ing differences in langu age can m ask a sam eness in und ers t and ing . The anonymous med ieva l Vetus Translatio, for centuriesthe principal source in the West for the Rhetoric, boldly translatesAristotle 's line as "Rhetorica est convertibihs dialetice,"^ but it isclear from other parts of the translation that the writer does notintend the kind of antistrophic convertibil i ty which prevails in theAnalytics. Aristotle is here thought to be saying that rhetoric anddialectic are interchangeable. William of Moerbeke's translation, asI m entio ned eari ier , m ake s the two discipl ines touch up on oneanother, but in at least two manuscripts of Moerbeke, dating fromthe thirteenth century, a variant on his coequal "assecutiva" is thephrase "vice versabilis ,"*^ "interchangeable," suggesting that thecareful discriminations offered by Giles of Rome did not prevaileve ryw here .

George of Trebizond, one of the earliest humanist interpretersof the Rhetoric [1443], translates Aristotle as "Rhetorica cum dialectica convertitur,"^ which at first looks like a divergence from thetiadition. But his ow n scholia on this poin t m ak e it clear tha t her ehe intends similarity, not convertibility.*^ And yet, an anonymousreviser of George rewrote this line as "Rhetorica dialecticae aequi-poUet,"** int rod uc ing an in teres ting prob lem . Aequipollet can yieldthe sense of similarity and equality between the two disciplines,but it is also a technical term in medieval scholastic logic whichmeans, roughly, antistrophic convertibility.*^ Alesandro Piccolo-mini, however, provides some evidence that this latter possibil i tyhad already dropped out of the tradit ion; he too offers "Rhetoricadialecticae aequipollet ," but his I talian paraphrase of the l ine rulesout antistrophic conversion: "La retorica con assai somiglianza, &

^Translatio Anonyma sive Vetus, in Aristoteles Latinus, 5.""Wolfenbiittel MS . 488 H elm sta dt, fols. 182'-219"; an d V ienna, Nationalbiblio-

thek MS. 125. See Schneider, 165, and Aristoteles Latinus, xxxviii-xlii, 159n."Georg iu s Trapezun t iu s , Aristotelis rhetoricorum liber II I (Paris, 1475); AristotelesLatinus, 344.

^John Monfasani, ed.. Collectanea Trapezuntiana: Texts, Docum ents, and Bibliographies of George of Trebizond (Bin gham pton, N . Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts andShid ies, 1984), 465.

"^Trapezuntius, Aristotelis rhetoricorum ad Theodecten libri tres, in Aristotelis . . .opera quae quidem extant omnia (Basel, 1538), vol. 2, 242.

""Alexander Broadie, Introduction to Medieval Logic (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1987).



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20 R H E T O R I C Agra n conform ita, & qu asi affinita rig ua rd a la Dialetica."*' M arcoAntonio Riccoboni acknowledges in his extensive commentary thatsome wri ters have t r ied to see ant is t rophic convers ion, but he wil lnot accept the argument: "Dialecticae Rhetorica si t s imihs, hanctamen cum i l ia non conuert i ."Are these all dist inctions without a difference? I do not think so,cer ta inly the medieval and Renaissance commentators who worried the question did not think so, and the long fine of scholarss ince the Renaissance wh o have looked a t th is quest ion c on t inue tobe puzzled by the problem.^" Even after we allow for the uncertainties of medieval and Renaissance distinctions between dialectic andanalytics, for the unsteadiness of language over the centuries, forthe unevenness of individual scholarship , and for the vagaries ofelegant variation, we are left with fundamental differences about

" M . Alesandro Piccolomini , Copiosissima parafrase nel primo libro delta Retoricad'Aristotele (Venice, 1565), 13.

"Riccobonus, Paraphrasis in Rhetorica [1556] (Hanover, 1606), 14.Many mo re in te rpre ters and co mm enta tors tha n I have m ent ion ed h ere havepuz zled over this pro blem , inclu ding Borr hau s (Basel, 1551); B ern ard us (Bologna,1595); Kra mer (W ittenberg , 1597); Be rna rdu s (Venice, 1599); G ou lsto n (Lo ndo n,1619; Cam bridge, 1696); Schra der (He lmstad t , 1648); Schrad er (H elm stadt , 1674);"H . C. " (Lo ndo n, 1686); Ho lwe l (Oxford, 1759); Buhl (Oxford, 1826); an d a ho st ofothers who m I have exam ined. Som e studies are un us ua l , such as that by Cyllenius(Venice, 1571), who published diagrams of the entire Rhetoric, and there a re rhymedversions as well (Whitchurch, 1840):In several points , which need must st rike.Logic and Rhetoric are alike;They ' re bo th employ 'd on common th ings .Which all men know, from slaves to kings;But neither art nor science teach.As matters far beyond their reach;That is , they 're matters separate qui te .From art or science definite;Thus men, we see, of al l condit ions.Chop Logic or turn Rhetoricians;And al l to ski l l make some pretence.In accusat ion and defence.

There a re a l so nu m ero us spec ia lized s tud ies and add resse s , ou ts ide of the com m entary tradition itself, which grapple with this problem; e .g . , Korberi (Helmstadt ,1686); Sch m idt (Le ipzig, 1764); Sp eng el (Leipzig, 1867); Ka lisher (H alle, 1869);Dittme yer (M unich , 1883); K ante lhar dt (G otting en, 1911); usw ., as well as the ever-increasing number of studies in this century. Many critical editions of the Rhetoric,such as Kassel (Berlin, 1976), also include discussions of dvtioxQocjjog.



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Aristotelian Rhetoric 21ho w to m ak e se n se of A ris tot le's dvxioxQO(l)05 an d th e rel atio ns hiphe proposes between rhetor ic and dia lect ic .

I t is the very energy of this dispute that has been obscured forus today, or pe rh ap s " resolve d" for us today, by the mo dern consensus to translate this word as counterpart.But th is modern consensusis a re luctant one, and each commentator or t ransla tor puzzlesw h e t h e r correlative or analogue might better express what Aristotleintended.^^ The puzzlement itself is part of the problematic criticalheritage of dvxioxQOclJog, and the early history of counterpart suggests that the consensus is an evasion, not a solution. Two Englishtianslations ap pe ar ed in 1823, an d bo th took a ha rd line on dialecticwith "Rhetoric is the counterpart of logic. " ^ One of these translations had immense influence on English acceptance of the wordcounterpart, s ince the t ransla t ion went through more than twentyedi t ions during the next century , and was canonized in Bohn 'sClassical Library.^' The notes and marginalia for both of these modern tianslations m ak e it clear th e int erp ret ers m ea n "Rhetoric corresponds to Log ic," as did the m yste riou s an d often reprin ted "G radu ate in Honours" who explained that "Rhetor ic is a correspondingscience to Logic" and "Rhetoric agrees with L og ic." " The Englishuse of counterpart, in fact, continues the earlier EngUsh traditionwhich offered "Rhetoric and Logic are near of kin the one to theother ," and which glossed th is k inship with a miss ta tement ofAlexander 's posit ion (by now no longer even attr ibuted to him)that "Rhetoric and Logic treat of the same Subject"; the translatorsof this early En gh sh ve rsion identif ied them selve s only as the sam e

^ 'Cope , Commentary (1877), 1:1-3; John Henry Freese, Aristotle: The "Art" ofRhetoric, Loeb Classical Library (London: W. Heinemann, Ltd., 1926), 2-3; W. RhysRoberts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924); Lane Cooper, The Rhetoric of Aristotle (NewYork: D. Appleton and Co., 1932); William M. A. Grimaldi, S. J., Aristotle, "Rhetoric" I: A Com mentary (New York: Fordham University Press, 1980), 1-3.

^^John Gillies, A N ew T ranslation of Aristotle's Rhetoric (London: T. Cadell, 1823),152; for the second, see next note."Aristotle's treatise on rh etoric, literally translated from the Greek; with notes. By a

gradua te of the unive rsity. To which is added an analysis of Aristotle's Rhetoric, by ThomasHobbes ofMalmsbury (Ox ford, T. A . Talboy s, 1823). Rep rinte d 1833, 1847, 1850, 1851,1853, 1857, 1869, 1872, 1878, 1880, 1883, 1888, 1890, 1894, 1900, 1903, 1906, 1910,1914.

^ " A G r a d u a t e i n H o n o u r s , " Aristotle's Treatise on Rhetoric (Oxford: C. Richards,1849), 1, 159.



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22 R H E T O R I C Apeople who had recen t ly t rans la ted Arnauld ' s L'Art de Penser, sug gesting a French parallel in this tradit ion.If m od ern Engli sh t rans la to rs and com m enta tors a re u nea syabout the use of counterpart, they share their uneasiness with others, since the unsteadiness of this consensus is not a tr ick of theEnghsh language. Recent effor ts in German provide "Gegenst i ick"and "ko rrespo ndie rend e G egen s t i ick ."^ In French th is un eas y consensus p rov ides "correlatif," "co r resp ond ant , " an d "ana log ue , " ^preserving the earlier and tradit ional uncertainty of "fait le pendant" '* and "La rhetor ique a du rapport avec la d ia lect ique." ' ' Spanish offers "paralelo,"'" while Italian still follows the Renaissance"corr ispondente ," '^ which seems to have been preferred even inTuscan ," a long wi th the La t ina te "s imi l i tud ine .""

The great advantage of the word counterpart is that i t can meanwh atev er each of us ne ed s it to m ea n; it pro vide s the lowest com m onde no m in at or am o ng co m pe tin g in ter pr eta tio ns of dvxioxQO


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Aristotelian Rhetoric 23opp osite of Y, or (3) th at X is an exact para llel of Y, or (4) th at X-in-its-conte xt is th e s am e as Y -in-its-context, or (5) th at X an d Y (Uke yinand y ang ) fit tog eth er in suc h a w ay as to mak e a w hol e, an d so forth.Earlier co m m en tato rs , w ha tev er their success , t r ied to be more precise about the relationship Aristofle proposed, and their efforts atprecision accentuated the differences which today we no longeremphas ize .

When modern commenta tors do take a s tand on th is i s sue ,they generally side with those who view Aristotie's dvxi^oxQocjJog asanalogue, indicat ing only a "general" or " larger correspondence.""This may finally be the most defensible position, but if so, Aristotie 's choice of language is odd. In the entire tradition of thisproblem in the Rhetoric, one th ing that has never been quest ionedis the authority of the word itself, and no one has ever suggesteddvdXoyog as a better reading. If modern commentators are r ight,then we have one of those rare instances in which Aristotle doesnot follow his usual procedure and start with a declaration, or adefinition, or a classification (the notable exceptions are the Eude-mian Ethics and the Problems, both of which are probably spuriousworks) . Ins tead, he apparent ly s tar ts with a mis leading and vaguehint.

There are other problems for those who view dvxioxQO


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24 R H E T O R I C Aan unqualified occurrence of the word as analogue, and may actual lybe evidence to the contrary. The most celebrated unqualif ied instance of the word, other than that at Rhetoric 1354al, and cited byBarbaro, Vettori , Muret, and on up into the present, occurs in thePolitics (1293a33): x6 XExagxov 1605 xfjg oXtyaQxiag xoiix' EOXIV,dvxiox90(})ov xo) Tskevxaiw xfjg 81^.0x90x105 ("this is the fourth sortof ohga rchy, a n d it is th e dvTiOTgo


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Aristotelian Rhetoric 25making inadmissible the very quest ion of what Aris to t le had inm ind b y dvxioxQ0(t)05. Th e first ap pr oa ch co ntin ue s to be arg ue d inthe modern period that Aristotie used the phrase dvxiox0O(J)O5 xfjSiaXexxixfj explicitiy as a rebuttal to Plato, who had derided the artof rhetoric as dvxioxQO(|)ov ooi^ojtoiiag (Gorgias 465E).''^ The argument is found at least as early as Marc Antoine Muret, whosediscussion of it in 1585 is repeated for centuries. As Aristotle 'sproblematic l ine was paraphrased in 1833, "Rhetoric is the counterpart, not of cookery, as Plato asserts, but of his own favouritescience, dialectics."^^ Thus the point of the use of the worddvxioxQO


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25 R H E T O R I C Aand "exact paral le l ," ' ' suggest ing that the kinds of problems I haveoutiined for the consensus about Aristotie 's dvxioxgo


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Aristotelian Rhetoric 27from other legit imate Greek arts , but Aristotie did not invent anew intellectual discipline by cobbling them. Subsequent effortsto understand rhetoric as an art , or to take Aristotle seriously inthis particular respect, have led to endless confusion within thephi losophical t radi t ion.

In closing, let m e stress tha t my pre sen t pu rp os e is not to resolvethis crux in Aris totle 's text, bu t to start to sur ve y th e history of effortsto resolve it. It should be clear from the foregoing that almost everyon e of the m o d e rn critical po sit io ns ab ou t dvxiox9o


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green l. d., aristotelean rhetoric, dialectic, and the traditions of antistrofos, „rhetorica”...

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