Rereading Aristotle's Rhetoric

3. Aristotle on Speaking “Outside the Subject”: The Special Topics and Rhetorical Forums

Arthur E. Walzer 38 3 Aristotle on Speaking “Outside the Subject”: The Special Topics and Rhetorical Forums Arthur E. Walzer In the first chapter of the Rhetoric, Aristotle distinguishes his treatment of the art of rhetoric from his predecessors’ by claiming that previous work focused too much on what is not essential—“speaking outside the subject.” Aristotle implies that we know that the tactics he includes under the rubric “speaking outside the subject” are not essential because they have been proscribed in some forums.This essay traces the implications of Aristotle’s description of what is essential and the basis of that judgment for our understanding of the degree of autonomy rhetoric as an art has for Aristotle by focusing especially on Aristotle’s conception of a rhetorical forum. The essay contests recent readings of the Rhetoric that claim that for Aristotle rhetoric is constitutive of politics by arguing that Aristotle understands rhetoric’s autonomy as significantly attenuated by politics, which for him defines what speaking to the subject means in a particular forum. Aristotle refers to speaking “outside the subject” (exotou pragmatos) throughout the first chapter of the Rhetoric, where the phrase (or a slight variation) occurs at least six times (at 1.1.3, 1.1.5, 1.1.9, twice at 1.1.10, 1.1.11). Interpreters have not much emphasized the phrase; yet attending to it can show us a way to heal the alleged conceptual fracture between the first chapter and the rest of Book 1. Indeed , speaking “outside the subject” signals Aristotle’s effort to make conceptual relevancy essential to our understanding of what a genuine art of rhetoric is, an effort manifest throughout Book 1. Furthermore, attending to the phrase and focusing generally on the criterion of substantive relevancy illuminates the nature of rhetorical practice as Aristotle understood it. It helps us understand Aristotle’s vision of a rhetorical forum and provides insight into the relationship between politics and rhetoric in the Rhetoric. Properly understood, this relationship (I will argue) is quite different from that supposed by recent commentators who claim to find in the Rhetoric the view that rhetoric is prior to and constitutive of politics. Aristotle on Speaking “Outside the Subject” 39 Speaking Outside the Subject The most significant instances of speaking “outside the subject” are at 1.1.3–6, where it and a variant occur: 3. As things are now, those who have composed Arts of Speech have worked on a small part of the subject; for only pisteis are artistic (other things are supplementary), and these writers say nothing about enthymemes , which is the “body” of persuasion, while they give most of their attention to matters external to the subject; 4. for verbal attack and pity and anger and such emotions of the soul do not relate to fact but are appeals to the juryman. As a result, if all trials were conducted as they are in some present-day states and especially in those well-governed [the handbook writers] would have nothing to say. 5. for everyone thinks the laws ought to require this, and some even adopt the practice and forbid speaking outside the subject as in the Areopagus too, rightly so providing; for it is wrong to warp the jury by leading them into anger or envy or pity: that is the same as if someone made a straightedge rule crooked before using it. And further, it is clear that the opponents have no function except to show that something is or is not true or has or has not happened; whether it is important or trivial or just or unjust, in so far as the lawmaker has not provided a definition, the juryman should somehow decide himself and not learn from the opponents. (1.1.3–6) Commentators often find this passage problematic, judging it inconsistent with what follows: In the second chapter and subsequently in the treatise, Aristotle devotes much attention to the pathetic and ethotic elements that these interpreters understand him censuring in his remarks on competing “arts” that emphasize speaking “outside the subject.” Jacqueline de Romilly (1975), for example, draws on Friedrich Solmsen’s conclusion that the first chapter was written earlier than the second to excise the first chapter entirely as inconsistent with, and superseded by, the second. The argument for a radical inconsistency tends to assume on the basis of the metaphor of “warping the straightedge” that the basis for Aristotle’s distinction between his approach and his...