George A Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric and it’s Christian and Secular Tradition

Chapter 2: Technical Rhetoric

• Technai logon “Arts of Speech” (handbooks on speech)
  • mentioned in Plato’s Phaedrus
  • Phaedrus notes: the earliest handbooks offer a definition of rhetoric, more like the pattern or style to compose a speech
    • prooemion (introduction), diegesis (narration), witnesses, evidence, and probabilities
  • Socrates’s divisions:
    • pistis (proof), epipistis (supplementary proof), refutation (elenchos), supplementary refutation (epexelenchos), conclusion (epilogos)
    • Socrates mentions that in such a definition of rhetoric, probabilities are more important than facts
    • diction:
      • proper words, figurative words, poetic words
  • What Phaedrus tells us is not the nature of rhetoric, but the outline/organization of a speech (4 parts)
    • proemium: to win audience’s good will and attention
    • narration:
    • proof: construct or refute an argument
    • epilogue: conclusion
    • The context: for lawcourt
• eikos: argument from probability, seems to be true
  • one probability was more probable than another probability
  • probability vs certainty
    • prefer evidence of the probable, not the hard evidence
    • prefer: the probability of basic human action
      • The probability rests on the assumption of a shared human nature.
• Techne rhetorike (techne logon) or handbooks
  • different from classical rhetoric; handbooks have a more narrow definition of rhetoric
    • rhetoric is about: public speaking, with examples, focus on judicial rhetoric, and turn to letter writing, composition, and preaching.
    • they care more about “success” not “truth”
• Rhetoric for Alexander: the only surviving Greek handbook
  • oratory into 7 species:
    • exhortation & dissuasion
    • encomium and vituperation
    • prosecution and defense
    • examination (including the questioning of an opponent)
  • common topics:
    • amplification, proofs, anticipation of the opponent, irony, choice and arrangement of words, style
• 4th Century BC theorists: Plato, Isocrates, Aristotle, and Anaximenes
  • 3 subjects of rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style
  • Aristotle adds “delivery”
• Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria
  • 8 parts of an oration in order
  • exordium, narration, digression, proposition, partition, proof, refutation, and conclusion (peroratio)
• Progymnasmata
  • progymnasmata: fore-exercises, preliminary exercises
  • some etymology knowledge: gymnasium: place for exercise; gymnazein: to train; gymnastics.
  • Aelius Theon (100 BC)
    • earliest writer on progymnasmata
    • method: read, listen, write from memory; paraphrase and amplify
  • Hermogenes of Tarsus (2nd century)
  • Aphthonius (4th century)
    • his handbook was popular till Renaissance
  • Nicolaus (5th century)
  • In 19th century: romantic movement
    • against the highly restructured handbook
  • 20th century: recovery of rhetoric in classical tradition