Aristoteles - Rhetoric

Aristotle

Rhetoric

Aristotle

Rhetoric

Translated
With an Introduction and Notes
By

C. D. C. Reeve

Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Indianapolis/Cambridge

Copyright 2018 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

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Cover design Deborah Wilkes

Interior design by Elizabeth L. Wilson

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Aristotle, author. | Reeve, C. D. C., 1948 translator.

Title: Rhetoric / translated with an introduction and notes by C.D.C. Reeve.

Other titles: Rhetoric. English

Description: Indianapolis ; Cambridge : Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2018. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018004944| ISBN 9781624667336 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781624667343 (cloth)

Subjects: LCSH: RhetoricEarly works to 1800. | PoetryEarly works to
1800. | AestheticsEarly works to 1800.

Classification: LCC PN173.A7 R6 2018 | DDC 808dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018004944

ePub3 ISBN: 978-1-62466-756-5

Aristotle, De Anima . Translated, with Introduction and Notes, by C. D. C. Reeve.

Aristotle, Metaphysics . Translated, with Introduction and Notes, by C. D. C. Reeve.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics . Translated, with Introduction and Notes, by C. D. C. Reeve.

Aristotle, Physics . Translated, with Introduction and Notes, by C. D. C. Reeve.

Aristotle, Politics: A New Translation . Translated, with Introduction and Notes, by C. D. C. Reeve.

Aristotle, Selections . Translated, with Introduction, Notes, and Glossary, by Terence Irwin and Gail Fine.

Aristotle, Introductory Readings . Translated and Edited by Terence Irwin and Gail Fine.

Plato: Gorgias and Aristotle: Rhetoric . Translated, with Introduction, by Joe Sachs

For

Amlie Rorty

&

Jonathan Lear

The question is not one of misrepresentation, but of adjusting fact,
so as to raise it to the power of evidence.

George Eliot, Felix Holt, the Radical

Contents

The page numbers in curly braces {} correspond to the print edition of this title.

{xi}

A worthwhile translation of the Rhetoric must be accurate and consistent and accompanied by sufficient annotation to make it accessible. Some of this annotation can consist, as it does here, of texts selected from other works of Aristotle, so that, while traveling through the region of the Aristotelian world the Rhetoric describes, the reader can also travel through other regions of it, acquiring an ever-widening and deepening grasp on the whole. But much of it must simply be explanatory, clarificatory, and interpretative. To make the journey as convenient as possible sequentially numbered endnotes take the place of footnotes and glossary entries, so that the information most needed at each juncture is available in a single location. The non-sequential reader, interested in a particular passage, will find in the detailed Index of Terms a guide to places where focused discussion of a term or notion occurs. The Introduction describes the book that lies ahead, explaining what it is about, what it is trying to do, and how it goes about doing it. It is not a comprehensive discussion of all the important subjects discussed in the Rhetoric , nor is it an expression of scholarly consensus on those it does discuss, but rather my own take on them. The same is true of many of the more interpretative notes. They are a place to start, not a place to finisha first step in the vast dialectical enterprise of coming to understand Aristotle for oneself. The place of the Rhetoric in the history of rhetoric is itself a large and complex subject, and one best explored in works, necessarily substantial, devoted to it. Some of these are mentioned in the section on Further Reading.

Some readers will, I have assumed, be new to the Rhetoric , so I have tried to keep their needs in mind. But it is resolute readers Aristotle most repays, and it is these, whatever their antecedent level of knowledge or sophistication, that my edition is intended to serve.

I have benefited from the work of previous translators and commentators, especially Edward Cope, John Freese, William Grimaldi, George Kennedy, and Christof Rapp, and from essays in the collections edited by David Furley and Alexander Nehamas and by Amlie Rorty. It was Amlie, indeed, who first encouraged me to work on the Rhetoric by commissioning a paper for her collection. For that and for her many kindnesses in the forty years we have been friends I thank her warmly.

I come now to my greatest debt, which, as in the case of my Nicomachean Ethics , is to Pavlos Kontos, who read carefully every line, correcting errors, {xii} suggesting improvements, indicating the need for additional notes (for example, those mentioning the anonymous Byzantine commentator), and carefully recording more differences between the Oxford Classical Texts (OCT) edition and that of Kassel than I had initially done. For each hour spent on this labor of love, and there must have been hundreds, I and all my readers have good reason to be grateful.

I renew my thanks to KE, the first fraternity in the United States to endow a professorial chair, and to the University of North Carolina for awarding it to me. The generous research funds, among other things, that the endowment makes available each year have allowed me to travel to conferences and to acquire books, computers, and other research materials and assistance, without which my work would have been much more difficult.

I renew them also to Deborah Wilkes who encouraged me to undertake the mammoth task of translating and overseeing the translations of all of Aristotles works for the New Hackett Aristotle series, and for her support and that of her colleagues helping me carry it out.

Finally, and very warmly, I thank my graduate student Philip Bold for his generous help with correcting the page proofs.

{xiii}

Aristotle

Citations of Aristotles works are made to Immanuel Bekker, Aristotelis Opera (Berlin: 1831 [1970]), in the canonical form of abbreviated title, book number or letter (when the work is divided into books), chapter number, page number, column letter, and line number. In the case of the Rhetoric , however, the title of the work is usually omitted. An * indicates a work whose authenticity has been seriously questioned; ** indicates a work attributed to Aristotle but generally agreed not to be by him. The abbreviations used are as follows: