Aristotle and Kenneth Burke on Rhetoric

This study will compare and contrast the ideas of Aristotle and Kenneth Burke on rhetoric. The study will argue that Aristotle is determined arrive at a rhetoric which is based on reason and which yields an ideal portrait of the art, whereas Burke, while he deeply appreciates Aristotle, does not believe that such an ideal can be found, although he has not given up the search.

To Aristotle, language and the use of language in effective speech can bring human beings nearer and nearer their higher purpose, which is happiness as that ideal, but for Burke words and their use are much more problematic. Words for Burke are much more mysterious and playful entities than for Aristotle. For Aristotle, the broad class of the audience is what is foremost, while with Burke the reader suspects that Burke is enjoying himself far too much in his search to truly expect to arrive at the kind of full-scale rhetorical scheme which Aristotle seeks.

As Richard McKeon writes in his Introduction to Aristotle's Rhetoric,

Rhetoric is closely allied to logic, for it is the counterpart of dialectic, in Aristotle's analysis. . . It has a moral and political dimension, and the Sophists, as Aristotle views their practices, confused it with the art of politics. . . . It is finally a verbal art. . . . (Aristotle 620).

Aristotle believes that the art of rhetoric is an art of persuasion which is itself based on reason. However, the reason upon which it is based is the reason of the rhetorician, not

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hetorical study and analysis is meant to help a man who wants to teach the audience or to persuade it. This reader believes that, for all of Aristotle's high-mindedness about character and reason on the part of the speaker, the audience is essentially treated like a bundle of reflexes and reactions by the speaker. Certainly Aristotle in his scientific pursuits sought to speak as truly and clearly as possible, but rhetoric, as Aristotle notes, is an art and not a science. The speaker following Aristotle's lead will not be trying to teach the audience to think for themselves or to come to know the details of the art of rhetoric. To the contrary, the speaker will not want to audience to be aware of those details or that art at all. If the audience were aware, it might arm itself against the rhetorical tools of the speaker. The speaker seeks not to educate or awaken the people in the audience; he seeks to persuade them. Aristotle does differentiate between the messages of a good man (such as himself) and the messages of a bad man (such as the Sophists), but as far as techniques of persuasion and manipulation go, all speakers employ the same means. Moving to Kenneth Burke, the reader finds a man who is far more open to the reade

Category: Philosophy - A