Rhetoric and Social Thought

Abstract

Aristotle defines rhetoric as the art of determining the available means of persuasion in a particular case. This can be interpreted in a number of ways. When considered narrowly, the study of rhetoric can be equated with the psychology of → Persuasion or with informal logic. However, when that definition is read along with the rest of the Rhetoric , as well as the Ethics and the Politics , and in the context of the rhetorical instruction given by the Sophists and Isocrates, rhetoric is better understood as the theory and practice of civic → Discourse (→ Rhetoric, Greek).