Aristotle's Theory Research Articles

Tragic Re-Presentation and the Semantics of Space in Plautus' Casina

AbstractThis article examines motivations for tragic parody in Plautus' Casina, 621 ff. It details how the Casina, and Pardalisca's parodic scene in particular, treat themes common to Greek tragedy—the spatial opposition between male and female worlds, the on-stage struggle for power between men and women, and female madness—and also explores Plautus' comic manipulation of Aristotle's tragic theory. Through her tragic performance, Pardalisca provides a very different perspective on the absent Casina from the one provided thus far in the play and believably represents Casina's possible actions and state of mind. Pardalisca transgresses the conventional boundaries between male/outside and female/inside established early in the play, and she uses the public space outside of the house to externalize and legitimize the private concerns of women inside the house, and to rupture the physical and emotional constraints on women through her paratragic scene. The final 'wedding' scene then comically mirrors Pardalisca's tragic scene and provides a glimpse of the sexual violence Casina might have been compelled to endure had she been forced to comply with Lysidamus' plan, yet neatly turns male violence back on male characters and makes them the comic victims, not just of the women characters, but of themselves.

Aristotle's Theory of Language and Meaning (review)

Reviewed by: Aristotle’s theory of language and meaning by Deborah K. W. Modrak. Agustinus Gianto Aristotle’s theory of language and meaning. By Deborah K. W. Modrak. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. ix, 302. ISBN: 0521772664. $70.00. The four chapters forming Part 1 give a detailed exposition of Aristotle’s understanding of meaning in his De Interpretatione and show its relevance within his general views on language and knowledge. In Ch. 1, Modrak, a recognized scholar in the field, begins by suggesting that the context of Aristotle’s thoughts is Plato’s attacks against two contrasting philosophical theories of language in Cratylus, namely, that either words are conventional signs and have arbitrary meanings or they are natural signs, like smoke that signals fire. Aristotle offers a compromise: The relation between written and spoken words is conventional, as is the relation between spoken words and the mental state evoked by these words. But the relation between the mental state and its external object is natural and is the same for all humans. Hence different languages use different sounds for the same object. M then explains in Ch. 2 that Aristotle opts for a correspondence theory of truth. Thus sentences about extralinguistic objects are true if what they assert corresponds to the reality. Moreover, they are necessarily true if the corresponding [End Page 661] reality is unchanging. Furthermore, as shown in Ch. 3, the meaning of words lies in their capacities to indicate objects. Ch. 4 describes how this ostensive definition of meaning perfectly accounts for Aristotle’s view that knowledge in sciences, that is, metaphysics, physics, and mathematics, is indicative of the physical objects or their properties or, in the case of abstraction, of other objects deriving from them. The two chapters that constitute Part 2 examine whether the theory of meaning reconstructed above is consistent with Aristotle’s ontology as found in Metaphysics. Ch. 5 explains that for Aristotle, a verbal definition of an object gives an ostensive definition of its form (eidos). Subsequently Ch. 6 focuses on Aristotle’s ontological claims that forms exist in the empirical world and are accessible to human minds. Thus meanings find their intelligible essence in the real world. Much of the discussion in Part 2 assumes that more comprehensive treatises like Metaphysics can justifiably be used to elucidate and systematize various seminal insights developed in an earlier work like De Interpretatione. Part 3 delineates the relation between cognition and meaning by scrutinizing Aristotle’s belief that the mental state (pathema) reflects external objects. Ch. 7 explains that imagination (phantasia) is the cognitive ability to use sensory contents to represent objects through mental images (phantasmata) which are themselves likenesses of the external objects. Furthermore, as made clear in Ch. 8, the conceptualization of such images constitutes meanings. Thus, the cognitive process of thinking and perceiving relates to external objects and shares the same structures. Ch. 9 recapitulates Aristotle’s theory of meaning and briefly concludes with some remarks on its common ground with modern philosophy of language. This highly instructive book is also a pleasure to read. Agustinus Gianto Pontifical Biblical Institute, Rome Copyright © 2003 Linguistic Society of America

Review: Aristotle's Theory of Substance: The Categories and Metaphysics Zeta

1Department of Philosophy, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA. Mary_Louise_Gill@brown.edu Aristotle's Theory of Substance: The Categories and Metaphysics Zeta Michael V. Wedin Oxford Oxford University Press 2000 xiii + 482 Hardback£42.50, $60.00

The Use and Abuse of the Enthymeme in New Testament Scholarship

Though the enthymeme is usually defined as a truncated syllogism, that definition does not go back to Aristotle. By the first century ce there were four ways of understanding the enthymeme in both Greek and Latin rhetorical theory, of which the truncated syllogism was just one. Aristotle's theory of the enthymeme had little effect on the subsequent history of the enthymeme, just as his Rhetorica had only a restricted circulation and impact from the first century bce on. In light of these considerations, the work of seven scholars who have used the enthymeme to understand argumentation in the NT is reviewed and critiqued.

Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) : From Shakespearean Tragedy to Postmodern Satyr Play

Northrop Frye followed in the footsteps of Aristotle and the author of the Tractatus Coislinianus in his attempt to define and describe the main aspects of the literary genres in the monumental Anatomy of Criticism. For centuries Aristotle's theory of poetics had been understood as prescriptive instead of descriptive; thus any effort to establish a schematic approach to literary theory in the twentieth century--the age of experimentation, rule bending, and wholesale rule breaking--was likely to encounter strong opposition. While there are certain limitations to Frye's schematic system in dealing with many modern and postmodern works that defy classification into any genre, it is precisely the clear delineation of subcategories and elements within the genres that promotes his theory as the most useful in a study of works that either are based upon a prescriptive view of poetics or are contemporary revisions of such works. I am not suggesting that Shakespeare's notions about dramatic genres were shaped by Aristotle's Poetics, or that he would have necessarily understood them as prescriptive; equally, I am not suggesting that AnnMarie MacDonald necessarily relied on Frye's theory to write her play. I am merely taking Aristotle as an example of a generic theory which, while it may not have directly influenced English Renaissance playwrights or Shakespeare himself, certainly resonates with Horace's much-read Art of Poetry and is exemplified in the much-imitated tragedies of Seneca--two crucial literary forces whose authority during the early modern period became the foundation of the future prescriptive and rigid understanding of genre theory. In a similar fashion, Frye's work is the best twentieth-century example of a schematic approach to literary theory that many understood as prescriptive, and it is, because of his appropriation of Aristotelian terminology, a perfect complement to Aristotle's Poetics in my comparative analysis of dramatic texts from two eras. For this reason, the full virtuosity and complexity of a postmodern work such as Ann-Marie MacDonald's play Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)--which not only revisits two Renaissance narratives, but appropriates them, revises them, and subverts their original genres by defusing the tragic elements and substituting them with comical ones--can be fully appreciated only through an approach based on a literary theory that clearly delineates the characteristics of and boundaries between the genres. Indeed, as Frye himself points out, the boundaries between the genres are anything but rigid. Rather, these hazy frontier areas where genres are fluid and merge into one another often become the inspirational playground of versatile artists like MacDonald who appear to enjoy thumbing their noses at form. Othello and Romeo and Juliet are both tragedies, and because much of the humor of MacDonald's play depends on the audience's acquaintance with the source narratives, and in particular on our understanding of the stories as tragic;' it is necessary first to identify briefly the generic paradigms in the narratives that define them as such. As both Aristotle and Frye point out, tragedy needs primarily a hero or heroine who is superior in degree to other men and women, but not to his/her environment. The destruction of the hero is typically a product of hamartia, a Greek term that has been traditionally translated either as a flaw in character or an error in judgment. Without getting trapped in the debate about the theoretical fallacies bred from the possible mistranslations of hamartia, we can generally accept that tragedy properly deals with an individual and the tragic hero's fall as an individual act, an inevitable outcome of the confrontation with an overwhelming and inscrutable force--be it Fate, the will of the gods, the laws of a society, or one's own psyche. Frye explains: Tragedy in the central or high mimetic sense, the fiction of the fall of a leader (he has to fall because that is the only way in which a leader can be isolated from his society), mingles the heroic with the ironic. …

"For Every Time there is a Season: John Philoponus on Plato's and Aristotle's Conception of Time"

AbstractThe originality of John Philoponus' temporal theory has been underestimated.The paper emphasizes Philoponus' creativity, especially in his reconciliation of Plato's and Aristotle's temporal theories (or at least one possible interpretation of Aristotle's account of time). To this end, the paper sketches both Plato's (and later Neoplatonic interpretations of Plato) and suggests an interpretation of Aristotle's accounts of time, which is at odds with the Platonic and Neoplatonic view of time. It next presents Philoponus' reconstruction of Aristotle's account along Platonic lines and concludes with the relevance of these ancient theories to contemporary temporal discussions.

Aristotle's semantic theory and some implications for research

Aristotle's semantic theory and some implications for research

Reading (and) Culture Wars in the Twelfth and Twenty-First Centuries

Our new century finds America still embroiled in some fashion in the culture wars that have characterized the past two decades. Conservatives still stand behind the banner of family values, Western civilization, the rule of reason, the canon of the Great Books, and a vision of history that promotes the American dream. Their enemies are still regarded as postmodern nihilists and politically correct thought-police, who promote the gospel of multiculturalism and a revisionist history of the United Sates. Most critical discussions of this conflict merely add to the already heated polarization that exists or fail to provide any illuminating analysis that might lead to some kind of resolution. Sven Birkerts, in The Gutenberg Elegies, clearly is biased in his disdain for the postmodern camp's influence within contemporary culture. While he admires some of their contributions,1 he is convinced that they have no desire to coexist with their conservative opponents, and that the latter can only have an increasingly diminishing influence in the years ahead.2 However, despite his own guarded pessimism, Birkerts does provide an analysis of this conflict that not only is quite shrewd and original, but contains the seeds for a possible resolution as well. Birkerts argues that these culture wars ought properly to be seen as wars.3 He claims that we are becoming a people who no longer print but screens. Indeed, he identifies this shift towards hypertextual as being the root cause or symptom of the rise of postmodernism in the arts.4 I shall explore his thesis in this essay, but also try to dispel his apocalyptic concerns, for the benefits of hypertextual culture need not come at the expense of the loss of intensive reading. To support this claim, I shall suggest that our current culture war in America is simply the latest in a long line of episodes that scholars have referred to as the battle between the Ancients and Moderns. I intend to examine the first occurrence of this conflict in the Twelfth Century Renaissance as a mirror for illuminating the dynamics involved in our own contemporary battle. For it too was essentially a rhetorical fight over the preferable way to and write. To understand this earlier conflict, though, I need first to provide the necessary context by examining Aristotle's influential theory of rhetoric. We may discover that our current war may also provide a mirror for understanding past ones as well. Finally, following my exploration of this parallel battle of ideas, I shall then marshal my arguments for why linear and hypertextual can indeed coexist in our contemporary culture. One prominent contention that will be considered is that hypertextual has always coexisted alongside intensive reading, as evidenced by the existence of commonplace books in the medieval and renaissance eras. But first we must examine Birkert's complex thesis itself and assess its merits and weaknesses. The reader should note that the title of this essay is carefully worded to reflect that my aim is not only to read accurately the nature of culture wars, but that to do so we must examine the very nature of reading itself. The Gutenberg Elegies Birkerts knows that his contrasting the stable hierarchies of the page with the rush of impulses on the screen has implications for our understanding not only reading, but writing and literary criticism as well.5 His description of students today and their difficulty concentrating on dense prose, dealing with allusions, and accepting digressions from the straight plot, should strike a chord of recognition among every teacher in contemporary schools.6 He acknowledges the benefits of electronic postmodernity: 1) an increased grasp of a global perspective and respect for complexity; 2) a capacity to deal with more stimuli simultaneously; 3) a relativistic tolerance for differences; and 4) a greater willingness to cope with novelty. …

Living well through chronic illness: the relevance of virtue theory to patients with chronic osteoarthritis.

Virtues and vices possessed by patients may affect their quality of life and how well they cope with disease. The objective of this study is to assess the relevance of the concept of virtue and vice to patients with chronic arthritis. Aristotle's theory of virtue and vice was used to construct a guide for in-depth interviews, carried out with 5 patients with chronic osteoarthritis. Interviews were tape recorded, transcribed, and analyzed (using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis) for information on personal qualities or intellectual approaches that participants thought necessary to thrive in the face of chronic disease. Five main themes emerged: strength, prudence, gratitude, self-worth, and insight into flourishing. The data on each of these is compared with Aristotle's definitions of virtues and vices. Aristotle's virtue theory can be applied to the narratives of these patients with chronic osteoarthritis, and may help in understanding their coping strategies and quality of life.

Aristotle's ontogenesis: a theory of individuation which integrates the classical and developmental perspectives.

The effects of the classical/developmental split in analytical psychology are described. No underlying issues explaining the nature of the split have been clearly enunciated. The schools can, however, be distinguished by their differing epistemologies. These are the hermeneutic and transcendental branches of phenomenology. The use of these epistemologies leads their proponents to either an immanent or transcendent concept of the divine, respectively. The theoretical break between Freud and Jung can, in part, be attributed to their espousal of determinism and teleology, respectively. This conflict has been continued in analytical psychology with the developmentalists most often advocating determinism, and the classicists usually championing teleology. The dissimilar causal theories lead to different concepts of the nature of individuation. Aristotle's fourfold theory of causality, of which determinism and teleology are two categories, can be seen to be an ontogenic theory rather than a classification of causal influences. Applying his theory to the process of individuation provides an ontogenesis that more accurately describes the process itself, and unifies the developmental and classical theories. Intimations of this formulation in Jung's work are described. More explicit conceptions of this idea in the work of two contemporary analytical psychologists and that of Wilfred Bion are also presented.

Doxa in Poetry: A Study of Aristotle's Poetics

The aim of this article is to show that doxa is the point of reference and evaluation from which all of Aristotle's central poetic concepts—mímesis, mythos, peripeteia, praxis téleia,éleos, phóbos, and so forth—can be properly grasped. I first show the endoxical and opinion-bound character of catharsis in discussing pity and fear within the framework of Aristotle's theory of the passions. Since the understanding of the meaning and the function of the plot necessitates a comprehension of the necessary, the probable, and the contingent, I then analyze these logical and poetic categories in the context of the Rhetoric, the Topics, and thePoetics. On the basis of these analyses, I discuss in the last part three endoxical dimensions of mimesis: (i) astonishment and pleasure, (ii)ethos and social praxis, and (iii) style and representation.

Aristotle's Theory of Language and Meaning

Aristotle's Theory of Language and Meaning

Aristotle's Notion of "Bringing-Before-the-Eyes": Its Contributions to Aristotelian and Contemporary Conceptualizations of Metaphor, Style, and Audience

In the Rhetoric, Aristotle identifies "bringing-before-the-eyes" as a capacity that is crucial to metaphors because it allows rhetors to actualize actions immediately before audiences, leading those audiences to insight. Because this description suggests that metaphors activate cognitive mechanisms on the part of their listeners, "bringing-before-the-eyes" has been considered a key element within Aristotle's theory and the nexus of that approach to metaphor and contemporary conceptual ones. Yet, no study has probed these claims to any degree. Accordingly, this paper examines Aristotle's references to "bringing-before-the-eyes" as well as to two associated concerns, energeia/actualization and sense perception. This examination demonstrates that "bringing-before-the-eyes" is not explicitly cognitive but instead a perceptive capacity. In this, Aristotle's theory anticipates recent approaches to language because it allows the audience to participate in the persuasive process at a level that extends its role beyond the traditional Aristotelian understanding that it is the target of emotional appeals.

Francisco Vallés and the Renaissance reinterpretation of Aristotle's Meteorologica IV as a medical text.

In this paper I describe the context and goals of Francisco Vallés In IV librum Meteorologicorum commentaria (1558). Vallés' work stands as a landmark because it interprets a work of Aristotle's natural philosophy specifically for medical doctors and medical theory. Vallés' commentary is representative of new understandings of Galenic-Hippocratic medicine that emerged as a result of expanding textual knowledge. These approaches are evident in a number of sixteenth-century commentaries on Meteorologica IV; in particular the works of Pietro Pomponazzi, Lodovico Boccadiferro, Jacob Schegk, and Francesco Vimercati. Vallés' conviction that Meteorologica IV is relevant to medical knowledge depends on his understanding of Aristotle's theory of homeomerous substances and their relation to composite substances. The application of Meteorologica IV to medical topics became commonplace in the following years, and this Aristotelian book became widely known as a bridge between natural philosophy and medicine.

Substantial Form and the Recovery of an Aristotelian Natural Science

The Thomist 66 (2002): 519-33 SUBSTANTIAL FORM AND THE RECOVERY OF AN ARISTOTELIAN NATURAL SCIENCE JOHN GOYETIE Thomas Aquinas College Santa Paula, California THE AIM OF THIS PAPER is to show the continued validity of Aristotelian natural science in light of the challenges posed by modern science. More specifically, I aim to defend the concept of nature as an intrinsic principle of motion and rest, especially the notion ofsubstantial form that Aristotle deems to be "more nature" than matter. The recovery of Aristotelian natural philosophy must begin with a defense of the notion of substantial form not only because this is the foundation of Aristotelian natural science, but also because it has been systematically rejected by modern science. Of the Aristotelian four causes, the formal cause has been the subject ofthe greatest attack. Modern science has, of course, always made use of material and efficient causality. And the notion of final causality, although criticized by the founders of modern science as well as contemporary scientists, has never been subject to the same kind of critique as the notion of substantial form. Newton, for example, endorses the modern rejection of "substantial forms and occult qualities" in the beginning of the Principia, but defends the use offinal causality in the "General Scholium" that concludes the work. For Newton the world is a machine, but it is a machine that exhibits purpose: "it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions.. . . This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an 519 520 JOHN GOYETTE intelligent and powerful Being."1 He explicitly defends the indusion of final causes and discourse on divine providence within the scope of natural philosophy.2 Substantial form is abandoned, but final causality is retained. We find something similar among contemporary design theorists such as Michael Behe and William Dembski, who argue, contrary to the neoDarwinian orthodoxy, that intelligent design is the only reasonable explanation of the origin of living organisms. The design theorists do not dispute that living things are mere machines, only that their "irreducible complexity" is a product of blind chance.3 While scientific reductionism goes unchallenged, the daim to explain the order of the world by chance has never gained universal approval among the proponents of modem science. 1 Sir Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles ofNatural Philosophy, trans. Andrew Motte and Florian Cajori, vol. 2 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1962), 544. 2 "We know [God] only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things, and final causes ... and a god without dominion, providence, and final causes is nothing else but Fate and Nature. Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and everywhere, could produce no variety of things. All that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places could arise from nothings but the ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing.... And thus much concerning God; to discourse of whom from the appeamnces of things, does certainly belong to Natural Philosophy" (ibid., 546). 3 Michael Behe, who coined the phrase "irreducible complexity," refers to living things as "biochemical machines." ~All organisms are made of molecules that act as the nuts and bolts, gears and pulleys of biological systems" (Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution [New York: The Free Press, 1996], p. x). William Dembski, who has a Ph.D. in philosophy, has a better sense of the position of Aristotle. In Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology (Downers Grove, HI.: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 123, he notes that modem science, which is predominantly Baconian in character, limits science to material and efficient causes, thereby exduding design, which for Aristotle is related to formal and final causality. But Dembski does not advocate a return to Aristotle's four causes: "There are problems with Aristotle's theory, and it needed to be replaced" (ibid., 124). Although he believes thatAristotle's theory has been discredited by modem science, he believes that chance and necessity are not sufficient to explain the phenomena. Thus, while he does not call into question the mechanistic approach of modem...

DE ANIMA II 5

AbstractThis is a close scrutiny of De Anima II 5, led by two questions. First, what can be learned from so long and intricate a discussion about the neglected problem of how to read an Aristotelian chapter? Second, what can the chapter, properly read, teach us about some widely debated issues in Aristotle's theory of perception? I argue that it refutes two claims defended by Martha Nussbaum, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Sorabji: (i) that when Aristotle speaks of the perceiver becoming like the object perceived, the assimilation he has in mind is ordinary alteration of the type exemplified when fire heats the surrounding air, (ii) that this alteration stands to perceptual awareness as matter to form. Claim (i) is wrong because the assimilation that perceiving is is not ordinary alteration. Claim (ii) is wrong because the special type of alteration that perceiving is is not its underlying material realisation. Indeed, there is no mention in the text of any underlying material realisation for perceiving. The positive aim of II 5 is to introduce the distinction between first and second potentiality, each with their own type of actuality. In both cases the actuality is an alteration different from ordinary alteration. Perception exemplifies one of these new types of alteration, another is found in the acquisition of knowledge and in an embryo's first acquisition of the power of perception. The introduction of suitably refined meanings of 'alteration' allows Aristotle to explain perception and learning within the framework of his physics, which by definition is the study of things that change. He adapts his standard notion of alteration, familiar from Physics III 1-3 and De Generatione et Corruptione I, to the task of accounting for the cognitive accuracy of (proper object) perception and second potentiality knowledge: both are achievements of a natural, inborn receptivity to objective truth. Throughout the paper I pay special attention to issues of text and translation, and to Aristotle's cross-referencing, and I emphasise what the chapter does not say as well as what it does. In particular, the last section argues that the textual absence of any underlying material realisation for perceiving supports a view I have defended elsewhere, that Aristotelian perception involves no material processes, only standing material conditions. This absence is as telling as others noted earlier. Our reading must respect the spirit of the text as Aristotle wrote it.

Aura glasbene umetnosti - Aristotelova filozofska estetika glasbe

Po kratkem pregledu Aristotelovih omemb glasbe v Poetiki se razprava osredotoči na Aristotelovo filozofijo oz. estetiko glasbe v Politiki. Aristotelova teorija države vkijučuje liberalno izobrazbo, ki je zasnovana na glasbi. Ob navezavi na Damona, Platona in druge glasbene teoretike Aristoteles razvije pojme glasbe kot posnemanja, razumljenega kot sorodnost med umetnostjo in življenjem. Prav ta afiniteta omogoča razumevanje različnih glasbenih učinkov: sprostitve, vzgoje in katarze. Skrb za vzgojo državljanov je pri Aristotelu zgrajena kot skrb za umetnost (glasbo), ki tako postane prava skrb za dušo, cultura animi. Razprava je razčlenjena na naslednje paragrafe: 1. Pesništvo, glasba, vzgoja, 2. Ethos in glasbena mimesis, 3. Glasba in vzgoja, 4. Blagor glasbe in muzikalična katharsis, 5. Glasbena katarza, estetsko ugodje in umetnostno izkustvo, 6. Sklepne opombe o glasbi in katarzi.

Tragedy after Nietzsche: rapturous superabundance

In Tragedy after Nietzsche, Paul Gordon sets out to rescue the notion of tragedy for the modern world: a world that has lived through the Holocaust and the death of God. In settings as far-reaching as Kant, Yeats, Freud, and the American blues, Gordon argues for the continued importance of tragedy as a genre of superabundance. In defining rapturous superabundance, Gordon explicates the tension between Apollonian principles of preservation and orderly boundaries, exemplified in Aristotle's theory of tragedy, and an ecstatic Dionysian energy - essentially a manifestation of will - that ruptures boundaries. Aristotle denied this disruptive element by focusing on tragedy as a rational framework for redefining moral boundaries. seized on it as the core of his theory of tragedy. Gordon expands on Nietzsche's definition of tragedy as the rapturous confrontation between the human and those forces that exceed it. Tapping Freud's theories about repressing forbidden desire, Gordon follows in identifying the Dionysian/Apollonian tension as the creative source of tragedy - indeed, of all great art - and also the source of the audience's pleasure at witnessing tragedy's spectacles of destruction and despair. In this context, tragic rapture becomes the pleasure beyond boundaries, and superabundance is established as a general aesthetic principle. Gordon applies Nietzsche's theory of tragedy to a variety of works that raise the question of tragic rapture in compelling ways. Why do we experience pleasure in identifying with the sadness of a blues singer? Should the Holocaust be considered tragedy? By understanding tragedy as a rapturous confrontation with the abyss of meaninglessness, Tragedy after Nietzsche affirms the eternal rebirth of a tragic spirit that unites passion and beauty with destruction.

Reading and the “written style”; in Aristotle's rhetoric

At Rhetoric 3.12 Aristotle describes differences between a “written”; style, which he associates with the epideictic genre, and a “debating”; style suited to deliberative and forensic oratory. This paper argues that this seemingly unproblematic distinction constitutes a crucial indicator of the orientation of Aristotle's style theory as a whole. Passages throughout Rhetoric 3.1–12 offer precepts oriented toward the medium of writing and the reading of texts‐that is, they describe a specifically “written “ style of prose. In contrast, Aristotle largely neglects the agonistic style of practical oratory, a fact that can be taken as another indication of the literary, and literate, bias pervading Aristotle's account of prose lexis. In addition to disclosing nuances in the text of Rhetoric 3, this study contributes to our understanding of the ways in which early rhetorical theory responds to and is constrained by the circumstances of written composition and oratorical performance.

Aristotle's Theory of Substance: The Categories and Metaphysics Zeta (review)

Michael Wedin has written the equivalent for Aristotle of what biblical scholars would call a "harmony of the gospels." It is a wonderfully rich and argumentatively dense reconstruction of Aristotle's two most important treatises on substance, the Categories and Metaphysics Zeta, works that many of our most able Aristotle scholars have declared irreconcilable.