Aristotle RHETORIC Complete

Translated by W. Roberts.

Aristotle Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristotle in Print

128 pages - You are on Page 123

7. Another line consists in representing as causes things which are not causes, on the ground that they happened along with or before the event in question. They assume that, because B happens after A, it happens because of A. Politicians are especially fond of taking this line. Thus Demades said that the policy of Demosthenes was the cause of all the mischief, 'for after it the war occurred'.

8. Another line consists in leaving out any mention of time and circumstances. E.g. the argument that Paris was justified in taking Helen, since her father left her free to choose: here the freedom was presumably not perpetual; it could only refer to her first choice, beyond which her father's authority could not go. Or again, one might say that to strike a free man is an act of wanton outrage; but it is not so in every case-only when it is unprovoked.

9. Again, a spurious syllogism may, as in 'eristical' discussions, be based on the confusion of the absolute with that which is not absolute but particular. As, in dialectic, for instance, it may be argued that what-is-not is, on the ground that what-is-not is what-is-not: or that the unknown can be known, on the ground that it can be known to he unknown: so also in rhetoric a spurious enthymeme may be based on the confusion of some particular probability with absolute probability. Now no particular probability is universally probable: as Agathon says,

"One might perchance say that was probable-

"That things improbable oft will hap to men. "

For what is improbable does happen, and therefore it is probable that improbable things will happen. Granted this, one might argue that 'what is improbable is probable'. But this is not true absolutely. As, in eristic, the imposture comes from not adding any clause specifying relationship or reference or manner; so here it arises because the probability in question is not general but specific. It is of this line of argument that Corax's Art of Rhetoric is composed. If the accused is not open to the charge-for instance if a weakling be tried for violent assault-the defence is that he was not likely to do such a thing. But if he is open to the charge-i.e. if he is a strong man-the defence is still that he was not likely to do such a thing, since he could be sure that people would think he was likely to do it. And so with any other charge: the accused must be either open or not open to it: there is in either case an appearance of probable innocence, but whereas in the latter case the probability is genuine, in the former it can only be asserted in the special sense mentioned. This sort of argument illustrates what is meant by making the worse argument seem the better. Hence people were right in objecting to the training Protagoras undertook to give them. It was a fraud; the probability it handled was not genuine but spurious, and has a place in no art except Rhetoric and Eristic.

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