Rhetoric

Use in the book

The explicit description as persuasion places rhetoric among disciplines while contrasting the received rules of logic and poetics. The literature passage then locates literary excellence in forms of expression rather than perfection of doctrines, concluding that morality and rhetoric must not be confused. This is a distinction of evaluations, not an instruction to ignore every moral effect of writing. The countinghouse satire makes another substitution visible: syllogistic figures and calculation replace rhetorical figures, while literary values are appraised by a banker’s mentality. It criticizes the manner of assessment rather than providing a literal economic analysis.

Places to read

1. I, p. 195, entry 2, ¶1Rhetoric is named as the art of persuasion.
2. II, p. 518, entry 9, ¶2Forms of expression and moral doctrine require different evaluations.
3. II, p. 807, entry 3, ¶3Syllogistic calculation displaces rhetoric in a satirical comparison.

Translation in this edition

The English translation renders élocution as expression, not exclusively voice training, and reads the printed ne negatively without adding pas to the French. Taxées becomes appraised in the financial metaphor rather than implying a literal tax.

Irony

French: ironie.

The Apollo comparison gives irony the motion of a released projectile: an orator has just “loosed an irony.” The later instruction excludes coarse irony, with bitter laughter, from discussions governed by moral beauty. The English translation preserves the physical verb and the qualifying coarse; these witnesses do not prohibit every irony or identify the Apollo more precisely than the source does.

Places to read: I, p. 413, entry 8, ¶1; II, p. 505, entry 2, ¶1.

Use in the book

Diogenes attributes the strong invention claim to Aristotle’s Sophist and pairs it with Zeno’s invention of dialectic. Sextus’ report of Aristotle is less absolute in wording: Empedocles first stirred rhetoric into motion. Quintilian qualifies the priority by excluding legendary predecessors and distinguishes this initial movement from the earliest writers of arts, Corax and Tisias. Gorgias’ pupilage supplies continuity between an originating figure and a documented rhetorical tradition. The Aristotle passage printed from Sophistical Refutations does not itself name Empedocles; it describes cumulative improvement through a succession including Tisias and Thrasymachus. The edition links that passage to the other reports, but the linkage is an interpretive reconstruction. The Life’s political speeches and civic confrontations provide a setting in which oratorical authority could be imagined, while its poetic judgments show that persuasive force was not restricted to prose speech. Aristotle’s complaint about listeners nodding at obscure verse is itself evidence for an ancient perception of powerful verbal performance.

Places to read

1. A 1 §§ 56–58 (testimony)2Diogenes Laertius VIII 57–58, reporting Aristotle, Sophist, and Satyrus. Gives invention and exemplary-practitioner claims.
2. A 19 (testimony)Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors; Quintilian, The Orator’s Education. Preserves differently qualified accounts of rhetorical beginnings.
3. A 19 (testimony)Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations. Describes successive improvement without naming Empedocles in the excerpt.
4. A 24–A 25 (polemical)2Aristotle, Rhetoric. Criticizes the persuasive effect of extended ambiguous poetic speech.

Translation in this edition

“First to set rhetoric in motion,” “discoverer,” and “earliest handbook writer” are not interchangeable claims. The edition’s heading that all four witnesses repeat one Aristotelian claim risks flattening these differences.