rely theoretical. Persuasive art is tangible according as it affects outcomes and experience, and defines rhetoric in that context, as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion" (1984, p. 24).
The rhetorical/persuasive discipline for Aristotle is identified not by the specific act of persuasion, on the part of the persuader, but by the faculty of observing or experiencing one or more persuasive attributes. In Aristotle's formulation, an objective of rhetoric as a discipline is the recognition of persuasive techniques and strategies. In this gulf between the enactment of persuasion and the notice taken of how the persuasion were accomplished resides the whole range of Aristotelian ethics, which informs the fact that the Rhetoric is addressed to the future leaders of Athens and that rhetoric for Aristotle is a species of philosophy, not mere art or craft. But as an object of analysis, rhetoric is to be concerned with practitioners of the art and with observers/auditors of such practitioners.
Aristotle defines persuasion per se as "a sort of demonstration, since we are most fully persuaded when we consider a thing to have been demonstrated. The orator's demonstration is an enthymeme [reduction of an idea to a logical conclusion by means of a reasoning process], and this is, in general, the most effective of the modes of persuasion" (Aristotle, 1984, p. 22). The reason that ideas have to be demonstrated, proven, or otherwise validated is that their validity is not self-evident, or as Aristotle puts it, "necessary." Rather, he says, "Most of the things about which we make decisions, and into which therefore we inquire, present us with alternative possibilities. For it is about our actions that we deliberate and inquire, and all our actions have a contingent character; hardly any of them are determined by necessity" (Aristotle, 1984, p. 28).
Now a statement or idea may be true or false, but if it ...