The Aristotelian dialectics as an instrument for the democratic debate

Abstract

The purpose of my contribution is that of linking together two ancient systems of argumentation theory, i. e. the Aristotelian dialectics and rhetoric and trying to demonstrate their effectiveness when they are applied to the modern political debate. Namely, I’ll argue that both the Aristotelian dialectics and rhetoric are highly competitive techniques, and this feature serves well in a political debate that is unavoidably and necessarily characterized by disagreement. I’ll try to show that disagreement is a very beneficial feature if managed by the combination of dialectics and rhetoric.