The core sense of pistis as understood in Posterior Analytics, De Anima, and the Rhetoric is not that of a logical relation in which cognitively grasped propositions stand in respect to one another, but the result of an act of socially embedded interpersonal communication, a willing acceptance of guidance offered in respect to action. Even when pistis seems to have an exclusively epistemological sense, this focal meaning of pistis is implicit; to have pistis in a proposition is to willingly accept (...) that proposition as a basis for some kind of activity (albeit possibly theoretical) as a result of some kind of communicative act. This is in accordance with Aristotle’s understanding of argumentation as a social practice, entered into in order lead others to certain actions, for certain ends. Understanding pistis in this way allows us to understand how it is that pistis admits of quantitative variation. (shrink)

The ways in which the Aristotelian sciences are related to each other has been discussed in the literature, with some focus on the subalternate sciences. While it is acknowledged that Aristotle, and Plato as well, was concerned as well with how the arts were related to one another, less attention has been paid to Aristotle's views on relationships among the arts. In this paper, I argue that Aristotle's account of the subalternate sciences helps shed light on how Aristotle saw the (...) art of rhetoric relating to dialectic and politics. Initial motivation for comparing rhetoric with the subalternate sciences is Aristotle's use of the language of boundary transgression, germane to the Posterior Analytics, when discussing rhetoric’s boundaries, as well as the language of "over" and "under" found in APo. First, I discuss three passages in Rhetoric Book I and argue that Garver's (1988) account cannot be correct. Second, I look to the subalternate sciences, especially focusing on optics and the distinction between "unqualified" optics and mathematical optics. Third, I discuss rhetoric's dependence on both dialectic and politics. (shrink)

The idea that the household was the fundamental building block of ancient Greek society, explicit in the ancient sources, has now become widely accepted. It is no exaggeration to say that ancient Athenians would have found it almost inconceivable that individuals of any status existed who did not belong to some household; and the few who were in this position were almost certainly regarded as anomalous. In ancient Athens, as elsewhere, households ‘are a primary arena for the expression of age (...) and sex roles, kinship, socialization and economic cooperation’. It has been suggested for modern Greece that our own cultural biases, along with the Greek ideology of male dominance, have led to the assumption that the foundations of power in Greek society lie solely in the public sphere, and that domestic power is ‘less important’. In a less simple reality the preeminent role of the household cannot be underestimated. Here I hope to question similar assumptions about ancient Greece, focusing in particular on the relationships that existed between Athenian households and the property of the individuals, particularly women, within these households. (shrink)

: This paper offers a new interpretation of the first chapter of Aristotle’s Rhetoric and of Aristotle’s understanding of rhetoric throughout the treatise. I defend the view that, for Aristotle, rhetoric was a skill in offering the listener ‘proofs’, that is, proper grounds for conviction. His arguments in the opening chapters of the treatise state and defend this controversial, epistemically normative view against the rival views of Gorgias, Thrasymachus and the rhetorical handbook writers, on the one hand, and against those (...) of Plato, on the other. Aristotle defends his view on the basis that rhetoric is a skill in discharging an important role in the state – the role of helping citizens to good publicly-deliberated judgements. (shrink)

In this paper, I investígate a question in the Rhetoric surrounding the metaphorical sense of Aristotle’s topos: one can look to a location for “available means of persuasion,” evoking an image of seeing ; or topoi are viewed as “general lines of argument.” Are they places we go for arguments, or actual lines of arguments? The difference matters, given a propensity to view topoi as forerunners of argument schemes.