Classical Rhetoric: Aristotle and Plato

In the 4th Century BC; Aristotle addressed his concerns with rhetoric. He defined  it as discovering all available means of persuasion on a topic (3). Aristotle saw rhetoric as a way to persuade, but he also saw as a way to discover what is known and what can be known about a project. He thought that every time we use language in speech, or writing we engage in a rhetorical act. Basically Aristotle thought that all communication was rhetorical. He thought whenever we use language we have an intention, which is message to communicate, or a goal to achieve. So in other words all of us  use rhetoric every time we use language/ communicate. Aristotle and others  were both Greek and Roman, and they worked to organize rhetoric, identify it's parts and functions.

Aristotle two proofs:
-artistic-----> appeals
- inartistic

Aristotle believed in:

1. Ethos--  Ethos is all about credibility, reliability, and the authority as a speaker, or a writer.ethos is your reputation with your audience and the strategies you use to convince your audience that you should be believed or taken seriously. For the Greeks, who put a great deal of emphasis on citizenship, ethos had a lot to do with a rhetor's status in the community. 
2.) Pathos--  is all about appealing to feelings , or emotions. The focus of pathos is on the audience.
3) Logos-- ( logic( thought and action). It focuses on the text itself, the data.


Aristotle five Canons of rhetoric:
1) Invention
2) Arrangement
3) Style
4) Memory
5) Delivery

Aristotle influence was-----> St Augustine


Plato:

His epistemology  is the truth is absolute and other wordly.

He believed in two types of people:
1) material
2) Spiritual

Plato also takes from Aristotle
-- his speech genres---> preaching's
--his message is the most important because it comes from God. Then the speaker because god gives the speaker the message and then the speaker tailors the message. The audience is last because the audience needs the message, their the ones that need to be enlighten.

Aristotle kind of builds on Plato's view of rhetoric but they do have major differences concerning rhetoric. They both are concerned with truth however, Plato views rhetoric as away tot distort the truth; Plato criticized sophists. Aristotle saw it as a way of effective communication and as means of finding truth. In the end both of them wanted truth and justice.