@tldr

I’ve been reading Aristotle’s Rhetoric from cover to cover for the first time. It’s been fascinating. Rhetoric is the art of persuading people through speech. But Aristotle is clear about this: when you teach someone, you don’t need to “persuade” them. You have given them the truth itself. So why would Aristotle, the teacher of teachers, endorse and convey an art that wants to replace teaching with persuading? His answer: not all people can be taught about all things. Sometimes the issue is that you the teacher don’t have the time; sometimes, it’s that they the student don’t have the patience. But in one very important case, it’s because you are speaking to a crowd. And this by its nature is not conducive to teaching. So in self-government especially (where there must be deliberations toward stakeholders, appeals to jurors, election speeches — here most of all rhetoric (ie, persuasion of probabilities, not sharing of certainties) is a necessity. Watching Aristotle teach a thing that is in a certain way antithetical to his personal vocation, but is important for political cohesion, is very interesting, and inspiring. After having read his Politics and Ethics many times over the years, I can say that spending time with this work that is treated by many as a kind of bastard child is very much affecting the way I see the world.

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