Aristotelian Modes Research Articles

La visée pathémique dans le genre de la critique de cinéma comme stratégie persuasive

The pathotic dimension in the film review genre as a persuasive strategy The paper investigates the relatively little-examined journalistic film review genre from discursive, pragmatic and rhetorical perspectives. To illustrate the presented framework for genre analysis, we have selected 32 French and francophone journalistic reviews of two different film genres: a comedy (from 2017) and a drama (from 2019). The persuasive strategies of the pathotic dimension in the film review we focus on leverage two of the Aristotelian modes of persuasion (ethos and pathos) in order to instill particular views and concepts. Our study centres around those persuasive strategies that draw on the discursive construction of the reviewer’s ethos and pathos in the film review based on the concept of emotive argumentation.

Aesthetic principles, the arts, and the interpretation of culture.

Culture is symbolism. Symbols allow a distance between perception and interpretation and create space for intentional action. Science, the arts, and religions are different cultural strategies to transcend sensual perception and open up the search and representation of structures and relations in and yet beyond sensual experience. The arts demonstrate, interpret, and invent such connectivities. Knowing, feeling, and representing hidden structures influence the very ways of perception, which are categorized in theories of perception called aesthetics. The processual and non-dual character of perception can be modeled not only on the basis of the well-known distinctions in European epistemologies (based on Platonic and Aristotelian modes of thinking) but on the Buddhist theory of skandhas, which might be able to transcend the dualism of matter and mind. The dynamics of perception will be explained on this basis using the categories of beauty and sublime and veiling and revealing (unveiling). The central category of aesthetic processes is similarity or variation, being expressed in fractal proportions and relationships in the processes of knowing and feeling.

Moral Geometries

The literary and critical discourse about characters and characterization in Anglophone drama and fiction since the Renaissance shows a persistent but underrecognized presence of three idioms and vocabularies, two highly developed and one nascent, that either derive from the rhetoric of mathematics in classical antiquity or participate in its modern afterlife. Those discourses—which this article studies in detail—are, first, an explicitly Theophrastan one, in which taxonomies of character are constructed; second, an explicitly Euclidean one, in which characterization is discussed and accomplished in relatively conventional or commonsensical geometric terms; and third, a non- or post-Euclidean one, in which characterization is discussed and inchoately accomplished in the terms of the “new geometries” that emerged during the nineteenth century. What taxonomy in the Aristotelian mode (Theophrastus was Aristotle’s student) and geometry in the Euclidean mode have in common is that when their vocabularies are applied to characterization, they delimit characters in terms of established categories—whether of ideal shapes or statistically probable types—while discounting whatever features may be unique to individuals. An obliviousness to these three discourses can limit seriously what can be said about, and what can be said on behalf of, the literary and critical texts framed in their terms and also, most importantly, what can be said about the nature of literary characters.

I, Trump

Abstract This paper contextualizes Donald Trump’s political “Message” (Lempert and Silverstein 2012) within the current anti-intellectualism phenomenon in the Post-Truth era. Trump’s Presidential Announcement Speech marks the beginning of the Trump era, as it introduces critical traits of his persona, message and political agenda to the general audience. From a Discourse Analysis approach, this paper considers Aristotelian modes of persuasion and the multimodal concept of “Message” (ibid.), to contribute to the literature on Trump’s political communication by focusing on the cult of personality and self-representation (i.e. non-politician, overachieving businessman, great leader). Trump built his candidacy and presidency around his persona, distancing himself from the Republican Party and traditional politicians. These strategies allowed Trump to evoke an Ethos capable of saving America. His personal fight against every enemy and threat encapsulates a simple and ingenuous dichotomy “I vs. them” with the populist intention of completing a hyperbolic task: Make America great again.

Forståelsens praksis - Gadamers hermeneutiske ontologisering af Aristoteles' praksisanalyse

”The Praxis of Understanding” offers a comparative reading of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics as well as Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method. The article elaborates on the two following theses that turn out to be both separate and highly interconnected. The first thesis is fleshed out in an analysis of Aristotle’s three modes of activity; namely poiesis, theoria and praxis. Here, it is suggested and argued that – contrary to Aristotle’s own self-understanding – praxis (rather than theoria) is actually the most essential human form of activity. The second thesis moves on to show that there is a conspicuous and underappreciated structural analogy between these Aristotelian modes and the three modes of understanding history in Gadamer’s Truth and Method. As such, the priority of effective-historical consciousness above what Gadamer refers to as enlightenment and historicism can be said to realize a latent potential in the Ethics, which both presupposes and transcends the Aristotelian analysis of praxis.

The rhetoric of Alex Salmond and the 2014 Scottish independence referendum

This is the first article to examine the rhetoric of Alex Salmond using the Aristotelian modes of persuasion (ethos, pathos, logos) during the 2014 independence referendum. The article examines Salmond’s persuasive style, his political discourses and construction of a specific form of Scottishness between January and September 2014. The article argues that Salmond’s rhetorical style was driven in large part by a concern to reassure voters about the consequences of independence (logos-centred), combined with a positive vision informed by both civic nationalism and anti-Toryism (pathos-centred), which he constructed around his own character and credibility (ethos-centred). We conclude that Salmond’s rhetoric over the course of the referendum campaign can be understood as part of a wider political transformation in which the legitimacy of Westminster decisions over Scotland is subject to regular scrutiny and doubt.

Building intimacy through linguistic choices, text structure and voices in political discourse

This paper analyzes linguistic variables employed strategically in various instances of political communication to present different levels of intimacy in relation to a continuum between contextuality and formality (Heylighen and Dewaele, 2002) in political talk. Within a given situation, political actors express these choices also in relation to a broader context around their personas: the Message (Lempert and Silverstein, 2012, 2003). The linguistic variables under consideration range from concrete units such as lexical choices (i.e., “marked register usages” [Koven, 2007; Myers-Scotton, 2001], to narratives of belonging (Duranti, 2006), to textual organization and instances of intertextuality (Blackledge, 2005; Fairclough, 1992, 2003; Wodak, 2008), in particular, by means of different voices (Bakhtin, 1981) politicians bring into the here-and-now moment of discourse. The data for the analysis is obtained from different instances of political talk (speeches and debates) and different politicians (Palin, Biden, George W. Bush and Obama). The linguistic variables display different levels of formality indexing two Aristotelian modes of persuasion: Pathos and Ethos.

Bush, Obama

This paper, framed under the scope of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), explains social processes by analyzing discourse practices. It proposes (para)linguistic variables employed in the creation of (in)formality in discourse in relation to two Aristotelian persuasive modes: Ethos and Pathos (Kennedy 1991). These modes of persuasion reveal different ways to convey a political message in the current U.S. political scene. This paper compares the stylistic differences in speeches given by George W. Bush and Barack Obama to justify escalating troops in the conflicts of Iraq (2007) and Afghanistan (2009), respectively. I propose (para)linguistic indicators of formality associated with Aristotelian modes at the level of linguistic choices (“lexical variables” [Schilling-Estes 2004] and “marked register usages” [Myers-Scotton 2001]), textual organization (structure and predictability), non-verbal communication (i.e. laughter; Jefferson, Sacks & Schegloff 1987), and intertextuality (Blackledge 2005; Fairclough 1992, 2003) by means of new voices (Bakhtin 1981) into the here-and-now moment of discourse.

A note on reification in Hegel's logic

A note on reification in Hegel's logic

Some Historical Roots of the Ethos of Science

This comparative and historical examination of the ethos of science finds significant examples of the Mertonian ethos in university discussions from the 12th through the 14th century. The institutionalization of naturalistic inquiry based on Aristotelian modes of argument and demonstration was unique to Western Europe and did not occur in China or the Islamic Middle East. Nevertheless, Merton's writings on the ethos show no indication of his relying upon the rich historical evidence of Europe when formulating his famous conception.

"Swallowing the Lie" in Betty Lambert's Jennie's Story

In the interview with Bonnie Worthington from which the above quotations are taken, Belly Lambert describes the new "fem ale tragic form" that she tried to model in Jennie's Story. Claiming that women have been ill-served by the classic Aristotelian mode, she proposes that her more accurate ref1ection of female experience will show women the futility of sacrificing themselves in the manner of the "lonely individual making that final lofty statement" in "an act of defiance against the forces and the fates". Such heroics, when performed by women, according to Lambert, have no power to change the world. Women who choose to kill themselves to defend their principles only make it easier for other women to step into the place they have vacated

Lorenzo Valla on the Problem of Speaking About the Trinity

Lorenzo Valla on the Problem of Speaking about the Trinity Charles Trinkaus Lorenzo Valla was a major Renaissance humanist critic of scholasticism, and a proponent of empirical and language-based thought. He also ventured into the field of theology with his humanistic preconceptions that not ancient philosophy but the literary arts and philology should provide the proper model for its study. Salvatore Camporeale in his major studies of Valla, and in a recent notable article comparing the humanistic method of theologizing of Valla with the scholastic method of Thomas Aquinas, established the major features of this new mode of theologizing as based on Biblical philology and study of the Church Fathers. 1 This was taken up by Erasmus and given its fully developed form. 2 Valla was rash enough to apply his methodology to the central Christian doctrine of the Trinity, not without some disastrous results in his first effort in the 1439 redaction of his Repastinatio dialectice et philosophie, but with greater doctrinal acceptability in his later revised versions of 1448 and 1452. 3 Like all theological mysteries, the Trinity defied both ordinary human language and the most rudimentary rules of thought, i.e., grammar, logic, and “common sense.” 4 Hence there was a [End Page 27] great challenge and a real danger of falling into error in talking about the Trinity either to establish its true “nature,” or to defend it against criticism. Valla’s efforts may be considered likely paradigms of some of the ways language study played a role in unraveling one of the Christian religion’s central mysteries. It was one of Lorenzo Valla’s main convictions that the theology and religious and moral thought of his own age (namely Aristotelian scholasticism) should be purged of philosophy, which he regarded as a seedbed of heresy. Yet he himself, though a rhetorician, was not entirely pure of philosophy...just as elements of philosophical thought remained as indispensable ingredients of the rhetorical teachings of Cicero and Quintilian. Thus Valla, following them, especially Quintilian, found it necessary to retain some simplified elements of systematic thought in his primordia of linguistic theory. Nevertheless, he intended to demonstrate that a more satisfactory description of the Trinity could be attained by adhering to these rules of language than that arrived at by the scholastics seeking to affirm it by metaphysical principles. I: The Repastinatio of 1439 Valla in his proem to the 1439 redaction of the Repastinatio stresses the libertas a philosopher should have to think and express his own thoughts and protests the compulsion to think in Aristotelian modes manifested by scholastic philosophers: Why therefore should we fear to contradict this man, especially while following the approved custom of freely stating what we believe? Certainly they treat themselves badly who commit themselves to some sect in which it is necessary to praise everything of the one they follow, whatever it is. We have insisted on that liberty in other books and will hold to it in these. 5 In keeping with these sentiments Valla in this first redaction boldly sets forth his own views. For reasons which will be seen he becomes more careful to refute his opponents and justify his own views in the later two redactions. In this first redaction he begins by setting forth his reduction of the ten Aristotelian/Porphyrian/Boethian categories to three “elements,” using a term found in Quintilian. These are “substance,” “quality” and “action.” He follows this up by reducing the so-called six transcendentals to the one, multi-meaninged term res, or “thing,” which is that about which one is talking, or the subject that can comprise substance, quality and action. 6 [End Page 28] Because the res or “thing” is never substance only, since substance can never be perceived except by means of its qualities or actions which are manifest to the perceiver, Valla proposes a new term for the combination of substance, quality and action: “consubstance.” “There are two species of [consubstance],” he writes, “ ‘soul’ and ‘body.’ A third which is composed of both of these may be added, which is ‘animal.’” 7 Just before introducing the term “consubstance” for things in their combination of the three elements, and without...

Three rival versions of moral enquiry: encyclopaedia, genealogy, and tradition: being Gifford lectures delivered in the University of Edinburgh in 1988

Alasdair MacIntyre--whom Newsweek has called one of the foremost moral philosophers in the English-speaking world--here presents his 1988 Gifford Lectures as an expansion of his earlier work Whose Justice? Which Rationality? He begins by considering the cultural and philosophical distance dividing Lord Gifford's late nineteenth-century world from our own. The outlook of that earlier world, MacIntyre claims, was definitively articulated in the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, which conceived of moral enquiry as both providing insight into and continuing the rational progress of mankind into ever greater enlightenment. MacIntyre compares that conception of moral enquiry to two rival conceptions also formulated in the late nineteenth century: that of Nietzsche's Zur Genealogie der Moral and that expressed in the encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIII Aeterni Patris. The lectures focus on Aquinas's integration of Augustinian and Aristotelian modes of enquiry, the inability of the encyclopaedists' standpoint to withstand Thomistic or genealogical criticism, and the problems confronting the contemporary post-Nietzschean genealogist. MacIntyre concludes by considering the implications for education in universities and colleges.

Personal Construct Theory and the Aristotelian and Galile1an Modes of Thought

Abstract This article outlines a distinction between Aristotelian and Galileian modes of thought as they might be observed in psychology. In turn, personal construct theory is considered for its alignment with the Galileian mode of thought, and this alignment is suggested to be a valuable buttress against criticism of psychology for its manner of regarding and treating the person. This stance toward the person stems significantly from a tenacious positivist-empiricist perspective that aligns generally with the Aristotelian mode of thought. Present efforts at self-reflection apparent within psychology might be assisted by reviewing the distinction and by the discussion of personal construct theory as one Galileian mode in the discipline

Perspectives in Psychology: Integration in Clinical Psychology

In the medical field measurements of a patient’s blood pressure, body temperature, and pulse rate are routinely taken, indicative of a discipline with generally agreed-upon foundations. Nothing of the kind exists for clinical psychology because there is no agreed-upon foundation for its discipline. Q-methodology and its body of theory offer such a discipline and, as a consequence, can offer a measurement for “vital signs” as significant for clinical psychology as the familiar “vital signs” of blood pressure, temperature, and so forth are in medicine. The proposed measurement is described and its implications indicated. A reminder is given that most current clinical psychology remains in the Aristotelian mode of categorical thought, and that clinical treatment is largely “add-on” mediation.

The Aristotelian mode of thought underlying research and theorizing in the field of stuttering

As a direct result of the prevalence of Aristotelian thinking in the field of speech pathology, research and theorizing has tended to ignore the individual, his unique characteristics and differences, and to concentrate on what is common between individuals. The therapist is therefore faced with being unable to utilize effectively any particular theory, since none of them explains the unique attributes of the individual case with which he has to deal. A non-Aristotelian approach to research on stuttering seems to hold more promise of attaining an eventual understanding of the individual stutterer.

Experimental design: a cloak for intellectual sterility.

Lewin's (1931) warning against applying in psychology the Aristotelian notion that frequency of occurrence is equivalent to lawfulness fell on deaf ears. To‐day Aristotelian modes of thought are as prevalent as ever, and are backed up by an elaborate structure of statistical methods and rules for experimental design. By reason of their logical tidiness these methods have the unfortunate effect of reducing (to a level below the threshold for effective action) the discontent that should be engendered by the rotten state of current psychological theory. What psychology needs is not statistical laws but scientific laws, that is, statements, expressed in general terms, that can generate specific predictions when specific values are assigned to the general terms. Such laws are unlikely to be found by statistical investigations, since they are concerned not with populations of systems but with single systems. Thus the law of gravitation is not a catalogue of the properties of solar systems, but it explains how any given solar system hangs together. It is argued that since mind occurs in an organic system its laws are likely to be laws of an ultrastable system (Ashby, 1952), and therefore not discoverable by statistical methods. Two kinds of investigation are required. The first is exemplified by Piaget's studies of the development of mind in individual children, and the second by Kohler's work with distorting spectacles. The first shows how the organism, considered as a multistable system, adapts itself by stages to its environment. The second involves a deliberate disorganization of both behaviour and perception, and enables us to observe simultaneously the processes of behavioural re‐adaptation and the correction of perceptual distortions. It is claimed that the results are compatible with the author's theory of the behavioural basis of perception.