Abstract

This project examines a paradox that contemporary scholars face who appropriate Aristotle's Rhetoric for composition studies. On the one hand, many scholars maintain that there is an important historical link between contemporary rhetorical and composition studies and ancient Greek rhetoric---especially Aristotle's Rhetoric. Yet, an examination of Aristotle's Rhetoric, informed by a careful historiographical method, undermines such a view. Understood within its cultural and transmission contexts, the Rhetoric reminds us that Aristotle despised the Athenian democracy, blamed the rise of the democracy on the rhetors, claimed that deliberation concerning important civic matters was the responsibility of a "more intelligent" person and craft---the statesman and statesmanship, and understood rhetorical discourse to be that form of discourse by which the educated persuaded those lowly members of Athenian society who did not have the leisure to acquire the arete necessary to manage the state. This view of rhetoric is in sharp contrast to contemporary composition scholars who claim that Aristotle valued rhetoric. ;Moreover, Aristotle's "system of rhetoric" is a modern interpretive construct more than an organized system that can be expounded from the Rhetoric. The different conceptions of rhetoric and the crux of this system of rhetoric---the enthymeme---are both fraught with significant and irreconcilable difficulties. There is no attempt in the Rhetoric to reconcile these difficulties within a coherent system of rhetoric; and the evidence suggests that the difficulties may be due to the turbulent composition and transmission history of the Aristotelian texts. ;I contend that contemporary scholars who rely upon Aristotle's Rhetoric as a paradigm for teaching composition simplify a complex grouping of texts and do more to distort the historical understanding of the Rhetoric than build upon it. I conclude by advocating that the teaching of argument should be informed by contemporary research in argument theory and that the history of rhetoric should be pursued through a vigorous historiography that attempts to understand ancient rhetorical texts within their immediate cultural contexts first and foremost. As such, I suggest that the Rhetoric should be studied carefully in history of rhetoric courses and serve as a text that provides grounding in the possible relationships between philosophy, argumentation, and rhetoric rather than serve as a foundational source for teaching contemporary composition. This does not mean that concepts from the Rhetoric cannot be included in discussions of contemporary composition, but only that it is not the best model for teaching contemporary composition