The " art" of rhetoric
by Aristotle · first published 1926
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Yeah, I know rhetoric isn't about reading, exactly—I'm looking at the cheerful green spine of a Loeb edition of Aristotle's Art of Rhetoric on my shelf right this moment—but there seems to be a general deficiency in the ability to even follow, let alone construct, arguments or lines of reasoning. Often, bare comprehension of meaning is severely…
on “The Value of an Undergraduate Degree” ↗…long as you're not doing pure mathematics, you can't always speak on purely logical ground. Aristotle himself, who invented logic and whose picture is on this poster, wrote a different book called The Art of Rhetoric in which he fully approves of deploying e.g. appeals to emotion or authority. Most of these "fallacies" are actually good heuristics within normal discourse: even if they don't produce full logical confidence,…
on “Logical fallacies” ↗One might perhaps say that what is probable Is that men experience much that is improbable. - Fragment of a lost play by Agathon, ca. 2,400 years ago, quoted in Aristotle's The Art of Rhetoric
on “Why is everything based on likelihoods even though likelihoods are so small?” ↗This always reminds me of a fragment of lost tragic ancient Greek verse, quoted only in Aristotle's Art of Rhetoric: Often, when the gods bring great prosperity as a gift for men They do so not out of goodwill towards them But so that their ruin may be more conspicuous.
on “Tesla Is Recalling Cybertrucks Again” ↗