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Aristotle's Manipulative Maxims

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2020

Daniel DiLeo
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Abstract

In actual regimes as described by Aristotle, authoritative civic choices were not the outcome of speech among citizens about the noble things and the just things. Rather, he saw them as products of the flawed presuppositions and misperceptions of dominant factions. Since he held that the human good was dependent on the persistence of lawful systems of rule, no matter how flawed, he viewed the tendency of dominant factions toward regime-destructive extremism as the fundamental political problem. His short-term response was to teach manipulative rhetoric and the outline of a strategy for regime preservation to his students. This equipped his students to prevail against the speech of the ignorant and malevolent and impressed those students with the need to acquire political knowledge. His long-term response was the initiation of a system of education that would turn citizens away from regime-destructive predilections.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 82 , Issue 3 , Summer 2020 , pp. 371 - 392
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of University of Notre Dame

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References

1 Quotations and paraphrases from Aristotle's texts are from the following: Ars Rhetorica, ed. Ross, W. D. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963)Google Scholar; Ethica Nicomachea, ed. Bywater, I. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1894)Google Scholar; Politica, ed. Ross, W. D. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957)Google Scholar; Topica, ed. Forster, E. S. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; De Anima, ed. Ross, W. D. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956)Google Scholar.

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7 I will not translate politikē. “Political art” would be inappropriate because “art” is the best translation of technē, which, in Aristotle's usage, involves production (EN 1140a6–16). “Political science” is not appropriate either, because “science” is used to translate epistēmē, by which Aristotle denotes knowledge of unchanging things (1139b19–24), which he denies to politikē (1094b14–19).

8 This is true even of the model oligarchies of Carthage, Sparta, and Crete as discussed in Politics 2.

9 Garsten, Bryan, Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 125–27Google Scholar; Yack, “Rhetoric and Public Reasoning,” 432–33.

10 Waldron, “Wisdom of the Multitude,” 569–70.

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13 Waldron, “Wisdom of the Multitude,” 569–70. Waldron qualifies his claim by saying that there is no wisdom of the multitude when the regime is so corrupt that citizens “are talking at or past one another” (578). This type of regime is the rule rather than the exception in the cities observed in the middle books of the Politics and described by Aristotle in The Constitution of Athens, trans. Rackham, H. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), 2, 5, 8.5, 13.4–5, 28.2–4Google Scholar.

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16 Schwartzberg, “Judgment of the Many,” 741.

17 Cammack, “Virtue of the Multitude,” 181, 185, 187.

18 Cherry, “Certain Kind of Multitude,” 187.

19 Schwartzberg takes note of this possibility. See “Judgment of the Many,” 741.

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25 Larry Arnhart, Aristotle on Political Reasoning, 26, 84.

26 For reasons I will discuss below, I will not paraphrase or translate pisteōs here, or any other occurrence of forms of pistis as “proof.”

27 See Sousa, André Luis Cruz, “Thoughts on Leo Strauss's Interpretation of Aristotle's Natural Right Teaching,” Review of Politics 78 (2016): 419–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Sousa calls attention to Strauss's claim that under circumstances of “exceptional threat,” the boundaries of legal right must extend to include actions that are otherwise ruled out. I would add that it is Aristotle's position that threats to regime preservation should be viewed on a continuum of severity. The desires and demands of individual citizens and factions can present incipient threats to regimes on a regular basis. When addressed promptly, such threats generally do not require “exceptional” responses. A prudent statesman's deceptive rhetoric is one of the responses that may suffice in such situations.

28 Bartlett (Art of Rhetoric, 223) notes that Averroës identifies the “more phronetic and more truthful art” referred to in this passage as “philosophy.” However, given the concerns of the Rhetoric, it is more likely a reference to politikē.

29 This implies an increase in the aristocratic component of the regime because aristocracy prioritizes “things related to education and the traditions of law” over liberty, wealth, or the preservation of the ruler (Rhet. 1366a2–6).

30 See Renon, Luis Vega, “Aristotle's Endoxa and Plausible Argumentation,” Argumentation 12, no. 1 (1998): 95, 96, 103Google Scholar. He notes that endoxa are “plausible propositions” that may or may not “involve certain ‘empirical’ references, e.g. to ‘for the most part’ regularities that people know or believe.” See also Brunschwig, Jacques, introduction to Topiques, Livres I–IV, trans. Brunschwig, Jacques (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1967), cxiii, note 3Google Scholar, cited by Spranzi, Marta, The Art of Dialectic between Dialogue and Rhetoric: The Aristotelian Tradition (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2011), 181CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Brunschwig maintains that Aristotle values endoxa for the authority of those who endorse them rather than for their “inherent qualities.” For a dissenting view, see Reinhardt, Tobias, “On Endoxa in Aristotle's Topics,” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 3, no. 4 (2015): 225–46Google Scholar.

31 These are the forensic rhetoric that establishes what is just, the deliberative rhetoric that establishes what is beneficial to the city, and the epideictic rhetoric that establishes what is noble and base (Rhet. 1358b6–13).

32 While it is certainly true that Aristotle does not see politikē as an epistēmē in the technical sense of knowledge of unchanging things, he never refers to rhetoric as an epistēmē. This reference to politikē as an epistēmē suggests that, at a general level, certain features of political life are permanent, or at least permanently associated with certain forms of human association.

33 See book 2 on Sparta, Crete, Carthage; book 5 on causes of faction and revolution.

34 See the discussion on the nature of citizenship, including its use of the function (ergon) argument, found at Pol. 1275a1–b21.

35 Arnhart, Aristotle on Political Reasoning, 26, 84.

36 This account is derived from On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, trans. with introduction and notes by Kennedy, George A. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 182, 183, 185Google Scholar.

37 Ibid., 182.

38 This is a move indicative of Aristotle's misogyny or that of his students or both. The misogyny lies in associating irresponsible eloquence with women, not in seeking to place eloquence under the control of politikē.

39 Kennedy, On Rhetoric, 183.

40 At the conclusion of the tragedy, after having blinded the murderer of her son and killed his sons, Hecuba is told of the prophecy that she will become “a dog with blood-shot gaze” (Euripides, Hecuba, in Children of Herakles, Andromache, Hecuba, ed. and trans. Kovacs, David [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995], line 1265Google Scholar).

41 Given Gorgias's praise of what he takes to be the supreme power of rhetoric in the Encomium of Helen, Aristotle's selection of Hecuba's refutation of Helen's crafty speech, a refutation based on knowledge of human nature, may be read as a particular attack on unguided rhetoric within the larger general attack.

42 See Bartlett, Art of Rhetoric, 266.

43 Kennedy, On Rhetoric, 185. References to The Iliad are from Homer, The Iliad, 2 vols., trans. Murray, A. T. (London: Heinemann, 1924)Google Scholar.

44 See Aristotle's rejection of a life devoted to the acquisition of political power for the sake of doing noble things at Pol. 1325a31–b10.

45 Kennedy (On Rhetoric, 185) identifies Thucydides 1.70 as the source. Bartlett (Art of Rhetoric, 126) does not attribute it to Thucydides but claims that it is a traditional proverb understood as a criticism of Athenian imperialism.

46 I am indebted to Nussbaum, Martha C., Aristotle's De Motu Animalium (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), 248Google Scholar, for calling my attention to this passage.

47 For example, the attribution of virtues and vices to persons who do not actually possess them (Rhet. 1367a32–b3, cited by Robert Wardy, “Mighty Is the Truth and It Shall Prevail?,” in Rorty, Essays on Aristotle's “Rhetoric,” 75).