The Dialectic of Aristotle's Rhetoric

EVENT: Classical Studies Presents ... Michael Davis on Sept 24th from 11:45 to 1:00 PM on Zoom (https://duke.zoom.us/j/91345563479).

If Aristotle is a dialectical thinker (as Michael Davis has argued he is in de Anima, the Metaphysics, the Poetics, the Politics, and the Nicomachean Ethics), surely Aristotle the dialectician would reveal himself in his manner of writing, and his thoughts about how to write would be most likely to come to light in his work on rhetoric. Yet The Art of Rhetoric begins with a clear distinction between rhetoric and dialectic, between the practical and the theoretical. Davis will argue that this clear cut distinction is rhetorical, that, contrary to what we first expect, The Art of Rhetoric is an account of the necessarily rhetorical character of all logos, and that accordingly the rational/speaking animal must be understood as in some sense the rhetorical animal.