Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, Book 1, Reading and Analysis

welcome back to the channel scholars in today's video we're going to be wrapping up our conversations about the ancient Greeks with probably my favorite of the three ancient Greeks that were really focusing on and that's Aristotle we talked a little bit about Socrates not too much we got him mostly through the writings of Plato we focused a good deal on Plato we talked a little bit about Homer through the fundamental and absolutely amazing work of book 9 and the Iliad and now we're going to talk about Aristotle Aristotle was Plato's student so Socrates first then Plato than Aristotle Homer was of a different tradition a Bartok tradition that existed much much earlier Aristotle lived from 384 to 322 BCE he was not an Athenian unlike Socrates and Plato he was born outside of Athens and was sent to study at Plato's Academy at a very early age and what developed was an absolutely outstanding mind a mind that some people recall Polymathic a Polymathic mind is a mind that's like a genius genius mind like the genius of geniuses someone who's who's great at many many many different types of thinking so Aristotle was a brilliant logician he's incredibly good at logic you was brilliant at psychology he taught biology he taught zoology he was incredibly intelligent in terms of politics and ethics and philosophy just one of those people that's not good at even 3 or 4 things but someone who's good at everything so he was brilliant he differed from play-doh in certain important respects Plato thought that the truth with a capital T existed outside of human experience and that through conversation through philosophy and through discussion or what he called dialectic which is the coming together of different viewpoints and different ideas in order to form a truer one's if you imagine two things coming together and colliding and creating something new right that's the way that we get to something that's that's true Aristotle thought that the real and the true existed in the world in which we live so for him understanding the material world understanding the world of objects and people and things was essential to understanding what's real and so if we want to think about it in modern terms Plato we might say is the grandfather of philosophy from him all the different schools of trying to reason and philosophize about the real world emerged from Aristotle we get science trying to understand the material world in order to better understand the world in which we live they different in other ways as well at the time of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle there were another group of thinkers called the Sophists s o P H is TS s s OPH I s TS Sophists it's kind of a hard word to say now the Sophists were fundamentally concerned with the art of persuasion how can we get people to believe certain things one of the reasons why Plato and Socrates hated them so much is this very reason they weren't concern what's with what's really true and in any given instance they were only concerned with how do we get people to believe something so what they were accused of his one day arguing one thing and the other and the next day arguing the exact opposite thing and so for people like Socrates who was ultimately concerned with knowing what's real and what's true and what's getting in getting to the truth he looked at them as just tricksters and and frauds and so did Plato Aristotle was a little bit different he said wait a minute wait a minute let's let's really look at this here because maybe there's something there's something useful here maybe we can think about dialectic and rhetoric as as working together in order to get to the truth they're not totally separate forms of communication but more they're sort of like your arms and your legs they perform different functions and you know you can get by without arms or without legs but if you have both sets you may potentially be more successful so don't throw rhetoric out completely let's keep it and let's see if we can adjust it a little bit in order to make it more attuned with the idea of finding truth so that's gonna bring us to the essential question that Aristotle raises for us how can you discover the means of persuasion available for any subject or situation in other words if you're trying to persuade a given audience what are the available means of persuasion you or the speaker can use given the subject matter now there's a lot more variables variable then what's the thing I need to say in order to win right it's not that simple what this form of rhetoric requires is logic discovery and evaluation and I'll give you a more concrete example let's go back to book 9 I'm sure everybody's dying and do that let's go back to book 9 in the Iliad and let's take the Sophists strategy and potentially Aristotle strategy now the sawfish strategy might follow what Agamemnon did they might think okay so there's plenty there's a point I don't wanna kill these to stab me in the guts so why don't I just ransom things off here let me just give them a bunch of stuff and that way I can win they say here Agamemnon say this and you'll win Aristotle would think about it in a completely different way Aristotle would say all right what am I trying to do here well I'm trying to win achilles over what are all the arguments I can muster to try to do that and what will be the effect of each of these arguments given the situation given my nature as the speaker and given a Pili's nature as the listener so again this is focused on thinking things through very carefully and meticulously it's focused on logic it's focused on reason and it's focused on knowing an enormous amount so having a lot of knowledge and knowing a lot of information it is in that way both moral and pragmatic it's not just one or the other it's not just useful and it's not just good it's both of those things and it's still concerned about what the best way of being six festival is but it's not sacrificing being successful for being right and it's not sacrificing being right for being successful so ultimately what we're going to learn from Aristotle is that rhetoric is useful when you don't have perfect knowledge of the facts okay when you're given a public speech okay one of the things that you need to be able to do is to be able to think critically about the thing that you're talking about because many things aren't cut and dry simple for example in the United States we constantly have debates and discussion about many things but probably the two most recurring things or what are we gonna do about all these guns in our society and what's the right stance on abortion these are not simple issues in order to be able to give a constructive and productive public speech on these issues you've got to be able to think through both sides of the argument in order to give the most convincing presentation in addition Aristotle points out that rhetoric depends on enthymeme en th y m e m e and the meme is a logical statement like a syllogism there is a logical statement but it leaves out a singular term now if that isn't totally clear to you we're going to have our key terms up on the board in our next video and enthymeme and syllogism are going to be defined and we're going to go through them in greater detail in that video so don't worry if that's not entirely clear just note that enthymeme and Aristotle's style of rhetoric and in a style of rhetoric that we're going to be studying is extreme important in addition aristotle will point out in the reading that we're going to do that there are several types of speech and each one of these types of speech is characterized by a different time the past the present and the future and a different set of important let's call them things okay its facts values and future action so for example he identifies one style of speech as being forensic this is what you would see in the court of law this is concerned with the production of facts and their explanation the second style that he identifies concerned in the present is about values this is about giving honor or blame to some person or something so we might see this kind of speech at a funeral at a graduation at a wedding in which you're extolling the virtues of the couple being married talking about the grandeur of the accomplishments of the graduating class or in dying some terrible behavior of past dictator or something like that right there are these kinds of value Laden speeches that kind of fancy Greek word for that is epideictic the final type of speech that aristotle identifies is what's called a deliberative speech now this might be a type of speech that you would encounter in a government proceeding what should be our future course of action given what we already know and so you've kind of got to balance this idea of facts and values in a deliberative speech one of the reasons why aristotle will hold it up as being the most i think he calls it the most noble yes it's the most the most noble of the three types of speeches and finally what aristotle isn't is interested in outlining are the reasons why rhetoric can be important so if you remember your history you remember that Socrates is ultimately forced to kill himself right even though he may have been right he lived his life in such a way that by the end of it he was forced by the powers that be to to end his life okay so what Aristotle would say is wait a minute what we can do here is use rhetoric in order to defend ourselves right we might have the facts on our side but if we can deliver them in such a way that they're convincing and compelling and interesting then they're in some ways worthless so what he would say his rhetoric is useful because it will help you to defend yourself if you're being unjustly or maybe even justly accused of a crime you can defend yourself it will help to prevent fraud and injustice as well so if someone is trying to engage in some some sophistry and some fallacious argument ation you can say wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute let me tell you exactly why that's wrong and points ABCDE up and boom boom above them and just demolish their arguments so it will totally prevent in Aristotle's estimation fraud and injustice it will aid in your ability to communicate if you're eloquent in your ability to convey ideas then there's literally nothing more powerful than that in our society think about the most powerful people right these people are extraordinarily good at communicating their ideas and getting people to follow them so it will be extraordinarily useful if you're eloquent and powerful in your speech so our views Aristotle and I agree very much so there is nothing more powerful than a person who is very very eloquent and and and successful with their speeches is it the thing that you should shoot for above all other things that's up to you but there's very few things that are more powerful than an eloquent speaker and finally what Aristotle would say is that this type of rhetoric will make you knowledgeable because in order to be an eloquent speaker a truly eloquent speaker you need to know the ins and outs of all the sides of the arguments that you would engage with right it's not just being right and it's not just being eloquent it's both of those things put together and seeing all of the different arguments that can come about with regards to a given topic given audience and a given speaker so in that way you become extraordinarily knowledgeable if you study rhetoric and it's one of the reasons why ap thought it would be an important class for everybody to engage in prior to going to college and it's one of the reasons why I'm so excited to talk to you about it so we are going to be reading book one of Aristotle's ARS rhetoric we are going to keep this essential question and the reading strategy that I'm going to outline for you is to make it simple we try to make it as simple as you can this is a very difficult read and so what will help you is to try to simplify it one of the ways that I tried to simplify it in this video is to go back to the example of book 9 and look at the sophistry of Agamemnon's behavior along with what Aristotle might think about doing in that given situation using his rhetorical strategies so what I suggest that you try to do is to simplify it by annotating in the text and I certainly do that to a great extent and applying examples either ancient examples from book 9 or modern examples any modern issues that can help provide context that are commonly discussed one of the ones that we mentioned earlier was guns and abortion which you can also think of spree free speech or LGBTQ I a rights etc as a way of of thinking these issues through these complex issues through giving a more modern context so take very copious notes or take a lot of notes make sure you write a lot in your notebook the questions that I'd like you to consider and be ready to talk about are what are the two kinds of logical proof and how are they different what are the three kinds of artificial or perhaps a different word for that is artistic proofs so what are the three kinds of artistic proofs and then what are the three types of oratory and how are they different we're going to pick up reading in book one as soon as we get back and I'm going to offer some terms in their definition in order to help that reading you're in just a moment thank you very much for your attention see you momentarily okay so we're going to go ahead and dive in now to Aristotle's first book of the ARS rhetorica keep in mind that you're going to need to be taking copious notes a lot of notes because this is quite a difficult read also refer back to the earlier part of the video where we introduced those questions for analysis and of course keep in mind the essential question which is ultimately the question of rhetoric in general which is how can you discover the means of persuasion available for any subject or situation for a given audience and speaker now listed here are the vocabulary words that we're going to be going through what I strongly recommend is that you're writing these down in a notebook you can also annotate on the reading itself though I strongly recommend taking notes in a notebook and as we're going through pause the video of course jot down some thoughts got down some ideas I'm really eager to hear what your thoughts and your ideas are on these topics as this is going to form the basis of our discussions going forward because many of the things that we're going to be talking about our focused on rudder so we're going to go ahead and dive in now as we come to a vocabulary word I'll gloss it verbally so I'll go through it verbally but then at the bottom of the screen you're going to see a definition please make sure you're writing those definitions down okay point one now remember Aristotle is our great classifier I call him sometimes the man of the means or the great classifier because Aristotle was all about finding the means between the extremes of two different things I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that but more to the point on this particular reading Aristotle is an incredible classifier so you're going to see I and then one and two and so on and so forth just keep in mind that those are different subsections of what he's going to be talking about because he's very fastidious he's very meticulous about his recording and is a classification of different things keep that in mind 1 rhetoric is a counterpart of dialectic which it resembles in being concerned with matters of common knowledge and not with any specific science so already we've got two vocabulary terms here number one rhetoric rhetoric is the Faculty of finding the possible means of persuasion in each particular case given a situation okay so it's it's the ability of finding the means of persuasion it's not just the art of persuasion as the Sophists say in their definition of rhetoric and Aristotle's definition of rhetoric it's the faculty or the ability or the science or the art as he calls it later of finding the possible means so if it's an art it's going to have gradations it's going to be a more refined ability for some expert rhetorician and it's going to be a less refine or less sophisticated form of rhetoric for other reparations in addition we have the idea of dialectic now dialectic to the ancient Greeks was kind of what we would think of as logic today but I think another way of understanding it that might be helpful is thinking of it as two ideas that come together to form a more complete unified idea so two ideas synthesizing or coming together to form a more complete coherent ideal so if you think about it in terms of politics let's say the left wing usually the Democratic parties and the right wing usually the conservative parties form two different sides of this dialectical discussion you need both sides and together ideally they come together in a more complete comprehensive understanding through logic and discussion that's the ideal so you can think about rhetoric is the art of public speaking generally and dialectic as the art of logic in general but more specifically rhetoric is the Faculty of finding the possible means of persuasion in each particular case and dialectic is the Faculty of finding the truth through logic and discussion so all that in one sentence continuing on rhetoric is also an art since it is possible to reduce to a system the means by which the rhetorician obtains success so you can be better or worse at it previous compilers of arts of rhetoric have neglected and the means which are the body of proof and have confined themselves to appeals to the passions which are irrelevant only and only have the effect of biasing the judge so here Aristotle is smacking the Sophists around a little bit and saying all they're doing is biasing judges and not necessarily focusing on logical proof which we can find through enthymeme and the mean is comprised of two parts a premise or a starting point of basic understanding and a conclusion that can be drawn from that premise and an unstated or already understood premise now let me give you a series of examples here for enthymeme and syllogism and then later on for logical fallacy which are going to focus on zoology because that was Aristotle's specialty okay we're gonna say mammals are one blade that's our premise it's our starting point it's our Universal understanding based on the terms mammals and warm-blooded will be understand by those in terms therefore so this is my indicator that I have a conclusion coming out therefore is a good conclusion indicator humans are warm-blooded so mammals are warm-blooded therefore humans are warm-blooded two parts there's a part that goes unstated however which is that humans are mammals they we generally understand that to be true most people know that if it was a surprise to you then it's a surprise to you but we can say in an enthymeme those two parts and leave that other part out and that's generally what you'll find in rhetoric that set up a syllogism is a little bit longer that's the two premises and a conclusion which are mammals are warm-blooded humans are mammals therefore humans are warm blood if that's the 3-step enthymeme is the two-step aristotle is saying that if you're going to engage in rhetoric as he's this understanding it you need to understand the enthymeme because logic is essential if you're going to be performing rhetoric correctly otherwise Socrates and Plato are totally justified in saying that rhetoric is just chicanery and trickster dumb right it's just it's just magic tricks they're just tricking you because it's not really the truth it's just they're playing with words and then they're convincing you or something even though it may not be true as he says all it would do is have the effect of biasing the judge moving on second paragraph so a lot in that first paragraph second paragraph although deliberative oratory is nobler than forensic men prefer the latter because it offers more opportunity for irrelevance in chicanery so chicanery as I said is trickery we'll talk more about deliberative and forensic oratory later on he'll define those in greater terms but I think what he was just here was just to start to introduce how earlier rhetorician the Sophists are primarily using rhetoric they're using it in the courts and they're using it for trickery okay third paragraph the rhetorical as contrasted with the strictly scientific method of demonstration is the enthymeme which is a kind of syllogism therefore one who is thoroughly acquainted with the nature of the logical syllogism will be most likely to prove a master of enemies so go back and look at those definitions of enthymeme and syllogism again familiarize yourself with them look up other examples of them and keep the example that I brought up in mind next paragraph however notwithstanding the unsatisfactory nature of previous parts rhetoric is undoubtedly useful so again so this is where he's going to start talking about the usefulness of rhetoric which we talked about Regan previously in the earlier part of the video when the truth and justice failed through inefficient advocates so when truth fails because you're not articulate enough to proclaim it or to describe it rhetoric is helpful that skill rhetorician will set this right it enables a man to state his case in [Music] popular not scientific language which would be unintelligible to some heroes that are curious it cures so here he's saying hey you know some people aren't going to understand all the scientific jargon so it's useful to be able to communicate in such a way that multiple different types of audience are going to be able to understand what you're saying so it's important to keep your audience in mind three it enables him to prove opposites and to refute an opponent who makes an unfair use of arguments now on unfair use of arguments could loosely be defined as a logical fallacy so I'm going to give you an example of a logical fallacy and let's see if you can spy mammals are warm-blooded therefore birds are mammals okay that's the enthymeme version say it again mammals are warm-blooded therefore birds are mammals now if you couldn't catch it in the enthymeme version let me say it in a syllogistic version and I bet you'll be able to catch it mammals are warm-blooded birds are warm-blooded therefore birds are mammals did you catch the trick there the trick is that just because mammals are warm-blooded and birds are warm-blooded does not mean that birds are mammals because it's saying if a then B it's not saying if B then a so because we're inverting those terms it's not logically consistent it does not work out so it's what's called a logical fallacy and the logical fallacies are many and kind or talk about them in greater detail and later videos and in class but keep in mind that what it is is it's using arguments unfairly or inaccurately for it provides an efficient defense of yourself remember we use the example from Socrates earlier if it be objected that it does much harm when unfairly used this applies to every good thing except urgent to his second point a lot already even in the first point rhetoric may be defined as the Faculty of discerning the possible means of persuasion in each particular case there's our definition of rhetoric again these consist of two proofs which are in artificial or what I might call in artistic and if you like in a set of examples for that it comes all the way at the end of this essay so you go ahead and glance at that now if you like and then we'll come back here in just a second but in artistic which might you thought of as evidence so you can see fifteen the other type 2 is artificial or what I would call artistic the latter are three kinds there's a hairstyle degree classifier ethical derive from the moral character of the speaker the fancy Greek word for this is ethos ethical emotional the object of which is to put the hearer into a certain frame of mind the fancy Greek word for this is pathos emotional how the hearers will feel and the third logical contained in the speech itself when a real or apparent truth is demonstrated the fancy Greek word for this is logos or lagos so ethos pathos logos we'll talk more about those as time goes on just store those definitions in your mind now the ORAC the order must therefore be a competent judge of virtue and character he must have the thorough knowledge of the emotions or passions and he must possess the power of reasoning this being so rhetoric must be considered as an offshoot of dialectic and politics including ethics there are two types of logical proofs deductive which is the enthymeme and inductive which is the example deductive reasoning is like logical reason you're figuring things out through a series of steps inductive reasoning is like scientific reasoning you're setting out a series of examples studying them and coming to a common understanding based on those those examples enthymeme is a rhetorical syllogism example a rhetorical induction rhetoric does not consider what is probable for individuals but for certain classes of individuals and derives its material from the usual subjects of the liberation which are necessarily contingent for no one delivered deliberates what is certain so these have to be arguments about what is still uncertain it can't be rather it can't be focused on what we already know because there's nothing to discuss hence enthymeme and example are concerned with things which generally speaking admit of being otherwise than they are which means that they're debatable and potentially ideological topics that need to be discussed and the memes are formed from probabilities and signs signs are of two kinds one necessary or tameria and two unnecessary which have no distinctive name and are related a as particular to universal or B as a universal to particular the example defined and the memes are of two kinds those are deduced from one general truce or two so choose from general to special topics or common places so this is giving a very broad definition of enthymeme as being two-part syllogistic statements that include a premise and a conclusion and a part that is supplied by the audience there are three kinds of rhetoric corresponding to the three kinds of yours for the hero must be either one a judge of the future - a judge of the past three a mere spectator or critic of the orders skill this is then the deliberative oratory the epideictic oratory and the forensic oratory or as he says here hence the three kinds of rhetoric are deliberative forensic and up deducting the business of the deliberative kind is to exhort or dissuade it's time the future its end the expedient or the harmful of the forensic to accuse or defend it's time the past its end adjust or unjust of the epideictic praise or blame it's time the present sometimes the past or the future its end the de novo or disgraceful we went through this a little bit earlier on in the video I would recommend going back and looking at those just that discussion in order to better understand what these three types of oratory are but very briefly what I can just run through is that forensic is based in the past deliberative is based in the future epideictic is based in the present each one is focused on a different style of oratory based on justice based on praise or blame or based on what we should do about systems are organizations in ourselves in the future how we should behave going forward and so when you can deliver speeches like this you can get people to think a certain way about the past behavior a certain way in the present and then furthermore behave in such a way in the future to continue that system of behavior that you've already kind of laid out so again being a powerful orator is one of the most powerful things that you can be all orders must in addition have ready for use a stock of propositions relating to the possible and the impossible to the truth or the contrary of a past or a future fact to the great and small and the greater and less beginning in paragraph four or iv4 deliberative oratory deals with contingent things not with all but only with such as are within our control that which necessarily happens or cannot possibly happen is not a subject for consideration that is to say what deliberative oratory focuses on is that which is upcoming but not that which is not going to happen or not subject for consideration so things like the government science the economy all of those are within our purview and those consist of what we can do with in the future should we allocate money to this should we research that should we establish policies that allow for this and so on those kinds of discussions that happen in a public forum like a Senate or what are called deliberative oratory it's most important topics as out as subtle goes on to enumerate or one ways and means how can we spend our money how can we conduct our business war and peace' defense of the country imports and exports legislation such as voting and passing of laws paragraph 5 the aim of all men is happiness which is the subject of all exhortation and dissuasion definition of happiness is components our noble birth many and good friends wealth the blessings of many and good children a good old age health Beauty strength stature athletic skill a good reputation good fortune virtue I'd be interested to see what you have to say about this particular paragraph whether or not you disagree with it or you agree with it but one thing that's totally clear is that Aristotle loves his categories but I'd be interested to see if you disagree or agree with his categories paragraph 6 the special end of deliberative oratory is that which is expedient expedient means useful valuable worthwhile and since that which is expedient is a good he must establish the general principles of the good and the expedient the definition of the good indisputable and disputable goods the greater and less degree of the expedient good the deliberative order must also be acquainted with the different forms of government you might call this a politician or at least a politically wise person maybe even a political scientist democracy oligarchy aristocracy monarchy the ends of which our freedom wealth education in a court with the Constitution an unrestricted monarchy is called a tyranny and its end his personal protection epideictic oratory deals with praise or censure the objects of which are the noble and the discrete grit disgraceful virtue and vice in discussing these incidentally the order will be able to produce a certain impression as to his own moral character the ethical kind of proof mentioned in section 2 that is to say one establishes their credibility their ethos in delivering and delivering and epideictic oratory like at a graduation speech who do you invite to a graduation speech well you might invite someone who's accomplished something great you might invite a very funny comedian you might invite a successful politician and so that reflects on them and their abilities right they're there because of who they are as people and we think of this as ethos that's what he's pointing out here the component parts of virtue are justice courage self-control magnificence Magon nanofy the liberality mildness wisdom both practical and speculative for purposes of praise or censure qualities which are closely akin may be regarded as identical we should consider our audience and praise that to which they attach special importance we should think about who our audience is and we should be able to praise that which they attach special importance this is extraordinarily useful if you are going into politics think about how useful it is when trying to secure someone's vote to talk to them about things that they're interested in right you cannot get someone's vote by talking against their interest unless they're crazy and also endeavor to show that one whom we praise has acted with deliberate moral purpose even in the case of mere coincidence and accidents praise and econo Miam differ in that the former commands the greatness of a virtue while the latter is concerned with things actually but cheat so one has to do with character and one has to do with accomplishment in rhetorical appeals perhaps you do want to appeal to someone's character and talk about how kind and funny and generous they are or perhaps you want to talk about instances in which they exhibited these qualities and why they're such important characteristics it depends on the audience it depends on the situation amplification all should be frequently made use of and the person whom it is desired to praise should be compared with men of renown or at any rate with other men generally amplification is most suitable to epideictic oratory example two deliberative and the mean to forensic so here he's laying out what to use when you're giving an epithet dick orator you want to amplify you want to exaggerate you want to stretch as far as you can the appeal to the greatness of virtue or the greatness of the things achieved in order to achieve your ends as long as you're not committing a logical fallacy when you're when you're delivering a deliberative oratory which is that speech which argues for a course of forward action you want to be able to provide examples you want to be able to conduct that inductive style of reasoning in order to show well this is how we need to move forward based on these previous examples that are arrayed here here here here here here and here and enthymeme should be used when you're talking about forensic oratory not to say that you couldn't use example in forensic oratory but you want to try to deduce what very probably happened based on the evidence at hand when you're talking about things in a trial or forensic evidence because that's really what history boils down to it's a deduction of what very probably happened based on the facts that you have at hand because we don't have perfect knowledge of what happened in the past so let's talk about forensic oratory here forensic oratory in paragraph 10 or X which deals with accusation and defense requires the consideration of one the motives and wrongdoing to the frame of mind of the wrongdoer 3 the kind of people to whom he does wrong wrongdoing is defined as voluntarily inflicting injury contrary to the law this is where the Greeks differ from us a little bit most modern countries wrongdoing in most modern countries doesn't have that idea of voluntary in there you can still do wrong even if you're not voluntarily committing it but for the Greeks it was all about the the the direction of your of your behavior are you aimed at the wrong and so I think that this is very interesting and I'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions on this do you think that wrongdoing is based on voluntarily inflicting injury contrary to law or can it be mere accident a voluntary act is one committed with full knowledge and without compulsion and as a rule with deliberative purpose do you agree or be a disagreement be interested to hear what you say the causes of wrongdoing are depravity and lack of self-control it's a motives arise from human actions generally which are voluntary and involuntary there are four causes of voluntary action habit reason anger and desire involuntary action there are three causes of this action chance nature and compulsion or the absolute mean to do it the motives are the of the first or the good or the apparently good and the pleasant or the apparently pleasant the good has already been discussed oh yeah he already talked about your good completely and six or VI so you can go back and look at that if you need a little bit more clarification on the good but I'd be interested to hear what you have to say about that so that it only remains to speak of the pleasant so let's talk about the pleasant because he's gotta define that now to definition of the pleasant and the list of pleasant things that's nice season the frame of mind of the wrongdoer and the classes of people liable to suffer wrong laws being special or general so also are just and unjust acts according as they affect the individual or community hence it isn't necessary to have an exact definitions of acts of injustice because it often happens that a person while admitting the commission of an act will deny the description of it and its application there are two kinds of rules in regard to just and unjust acts called these written prescribed by a laws and unwritten or not prescribed by laws we would call this on these on written laws de-facto these are the unwritten eggs is in the very nature of the society in which you in which you live right these your rules or rules that are set out by law so when the facto rule might be that you should respect your parents your brothers and sisters and other people within your community there's no absolute law that says you have to respect them but it's accepted within almost all modern societies to respect your parents your brothers and sisters your children and so on your teachers these your rules are literal laws written into the Constitution or the law books of the respective society that were that that you're discussing so does your law would be laws of regarding murder it's a legal to murder someone so these are the difference between written prescribed by law does your or unwritten the factor the latter refers to the excess of virtue or vice involving praise or disgrace honor or dishonor and they supply the omissions voluntary or involuntary in the written law this supplementary justice is equity defined as justice independent of the written law equitable acts are such as may be treated with leniency and equity considers the intention of moral purposes of the agent rather than the act itself the degrees of wrongdoing and then finally we get to the end here where he starts to talk about in artificial proofs which if you remember he mentions much earlier in section 2 where he talks about artificial proofs and in artificial proofs or what I call artistic proofs and in artistic proofs and basically what in artistic or in artificial proofs are they basically break down into what we might think of as evidence now they can be they range here in terms of their quality as evidence but they would include laws witnesses contracts torture because at this time you could torture slaves in order to get a confession and oaths so these are types of evidence you can't really crack them or adjust them in oratory and so that brings us to the end of Aristotle's first book of the ARS rhetorica what I would like you to do is to make sure you have definitions for these words as well as have answered the three analysis questions to facilitate the discussion in class of this complex highly ordered highly structured reading I'm curious to see what your thoughts are on it and I'm looking forward to discussing it with you thank you so much for your attention have a wonderful day bye-bye

Channel: Classic Lit Classroom

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Keywords: Aristotle, rhetoric, plato, analysis, art of rhetoric

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Length: 55min 59sec (3359 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 23 2018