Rhetorik

Rhetorik / retórica

We are better off since we possess the Aristotelian Rhetoric rather than a philosophy of language. In the Rhetoric, we have something before us that deals with speaking as a basic mode of the being of the being-with-one-another of human beings themselves, so that an understanding of this λέγειν [legeiin] also offers the being-constitution of being-with-one-another in new aspects. Since the Rhetoric thus gives access to this original phenomenon, it is important to understand what Aristotle   designates as ῥητορική [rhetorike]. Ῥητορική is a δύναμις τοῦ θεωρῆσαι, “the possibility of seeing”; specifically, of seeing περὶ ἕκαστον, seeing at each moment into what, exactly, speaks for a matter that is up for discussion, that is in conversation [Rhet. A 2. 1355 b25 seq]. By way of speaking itself, a definite opinion is to be cultivated with others. Whoever appropriates rhetoric, thereby places himself within the possibility of seeing, at each moment, what speaks for a matter. What is suggested by this determination is that rhetoric provides a particular knowing-the-way-around, but in such a way that rhetoric does not deal with a definite subject area, as does, say, arithmetic. It has no underlying matter, no ὑποκείμενον [hypokeimenon], that it itself is to cognize. It has a τεχνικóν [technikon; Rhet. A 2, 1355 b34], the possibility of providing a knowing-the-way-around, but not about a determinately demarcated region of beings. Instead, its cultivating of πιστεύειν [pisteuein] in an audience involves as many various matters as does language. A definition of rhetoric: to see that which speaks for a matter; to cultivate, in speaking itself, πιστεύειν with those to whom one speaks, specifically, about a concern that is up for debate at the time; to cultivate a δóξα. [GA18  :117-118; GA18MT  :80-81]