Chapter 4 summary

Chapter 4 Summary:

This chapter answers the basic questions about rhetoric, what it is, where it came from, and how it’s used. The chapter first starts off by stating that rhetoric is used “as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation.” The chapter also says that rhetoric is “flowery figures of speech and double-talk give the appearance of substance but leaves the real question unanswered.” This begins the argument that many people have made, from Aristotle to Plato that rhetoric is nothing more than the use of words used to gain an unfair advantage over someone. One of the first and more convincing arguments that the book makes for this argument is the example of “Corax of Syracuse used rhetoric as a tool for help Sicilian land owners an advantage to win land in property disputes”. This starts the many different ways that rhetoric has been broken down over centuries of time.
Later on, the book goes to describe rhetoric as an “art” and gives examples and shows arguments of how rhetoric was used in a positive way. Philosophers such as St. Augustine who used this art in a positive way. The book gives the example of how people like Augustine as well as graduate students use rhetoric as a tool for writing the bible and preaching as well.
Today the word rhetoric is used as a general term that has anything to do with educating people. Rhetoric can be used to describe a text book and can be used as a general term for communication. Even today, the art of rhetoric is being broken down by people like James Kinneavvy into different styles and forms. James gives a good example in the book by saying that rhetoric is a “general science or art of communication”.

Personal Response:

This chapter was more of an eye opener to me. Going into the chapter I thought that I had a clear idea of what rhetoric was and how I felt about it. This chapter gave a history of rhetoric and clearly stated what it actually was. The chapter gave a great history on it and I could really appreciate how it gave the opinions of great historical thinkers opinions on the subject. Although I hold the thoughts of Plato and Aristotle in high regards, this was one of the few times I disagreed with what the two philosophers had to say about rhetoric. I could see what they meant about how it was a way of manipulating someone and that it was mostly "filler" to an argument. Personally I feel that rhetoric is indeed an art, as it is referred to later on in the chapter. Can it be used in a negative way to give someone an advantage over a weaker party? Of course, but then again that is one of the great things about it. One of the things that was somewhat confusing in the chapter though was the many different ways that rhetoric was broken down. So many people have broken in down into so many different forms and sections, it gets confusing to the reader which way is the correct way to break it down. While Plato gives rhetoric different sections and so does Aristotle, later on in the chapter Kinneavy and Corax do the same thing, and all of these men have different interpretations of rhetoric. Coming to a conclusion of which way was correct was a little confusing, but over all I felt that the chapter gave the reader a clearer idea of what rhetoric actually was.