Aristotle's Explanation Of Rhetoric

For two millennia, philosophical and pragmatic thinkers alike have endeavored to quantify the exact function, application, and intention of “rhetoric,” collectively musing through copious subjective understandings of the locution to ultimately unearth its inherently conditional, contextual, and multifaceted complexity that so effectually evades ready universal definition. While Plato avers rhetoric “a knack of producing gratification” (Plato 23), Aristotle considers rhetoric an art with tool-like utility. Edwin Black recognizes rhetoric as retaining a normative moral function and Bitzer adjudges rhetoric a “mode of altering reality” (Bitzer) which Vatz disputes by avowing that “meaning is […] created by rhetors” (Vatz). It is thus through the
Contrary to Plato, Aristotle identifies rhetoric as a practical art belonging to the genus of “dynamis: ‘ability, capacity, faculty’ ” (Kennedy). Thus it is implied that rhetoric represents potentiality in a “manner or form that is ‘actualized’ ”(Kennedy), with modern rhetoricians often interpreting such actualization as occurring “through speech” (qtd. in Kennedy), further suggesting that rhetoric may exist as a certain art of speech-making or discourse that retains practical and heuristic function in contemporary society. Additionally, Aristotle’s belief that “rhetoric usually seeks a specific judgement” supports the theory that rhetoric is always employed for some specific intention or purpose that is ultimately decided by the rhetor—based upon a personal want or interpretation of an “exigence” as defined in the context of Bitzer’s canon of the “rhetorical
Similarly, it appears that rhetoric is neither strictly situational nor the specific inventor of situation; rather, both Bitzer and Vatz’s methodologies cogently describe the binary nature of applied rhetoric. Additionally, despite various thinkers’ favorable or disparaging opinions of rhetoric, it is probable that the discipline exists as a neutral “tool”—neither intrinsically “good” nor “bad”—by which to pursue or perform goodness or immorality through discourse based upon the intentions of the rhetor. Peripherally, there may exist instances when rhetoric ought to be employed as fulfilment of a moral obligation related to a situational or contextual exigency; thus, rhetoric may retain a normative function as an anthropocentric means by which to address perceived or veridical issues needing