Aristotle and Confucius on Rhetoric and Truth: The Form and the Way 1472487362, 9781472487360

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Aristotle and Confucius on Rhetoric and Truth

The current study argues that different cultures can coexist better today if we focus not only on what separates them but also on what connects them. To do so, the author discusses how both Aristotle and Confucius see rhetoric as a mode of thinking that is indispensable to the human understanding of the truths of things or dao-the-way, or, how both see the human understanding of the truths of things or dao-the-way as necessarily communal, open-ended, and discursive. Based on this similarity, the author aims to develop a more nuanced understanding of differences to help foster better cross-cultural communication. In making the argument, she critically examines two stereotyped views: that Aristotle’s concept of essence or truth is too static to be relevant to the rhetorical focus on the realm of human affairs and that Confucius’ concept of dao-the-way is too decentered to be compatible with the inferential/discursive thinking. In addition, the author relies primarily on the interpretations of the Analects by two 20th-century Chinese Confucians to supplement the overreliance on Western scholars’ renderings of the Analects in recent comparative rhetorical scholarship. The study shows that we need an in-depth understanding of both the other and the self to comprehend the relation between the two. Haixia W. Lan received her PhD in English from Purdue University with an emphasis on Rhetoric and Composition and Literary Theory. She works at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, teaching writing as a process of learning; theories of rhetorical invention; the grammar, politics, ethics, and diversity of style; and comparative rhetoric. Her research is in all of these areas, and she is the academic director of 2+2 English degree program.

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Aristotle and Confucius on Rhetoric and Truth The form and the way

Haixia W. Lan

First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Haixia W. Lan The right of Haixia W. Lan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lan, Haixia W., author. Title: Aristotle and Confucius on rhetoric and truth: the form and the way / Haixia W. Lan. Description: New York: Routledge, 2016. Identifiers: LCCN 2016024134 ISBN 9781315400426 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Aristotle. | Confucius. | Rhetoric, Ancient. | Persuasion (Rhetoric)—History—To 1500. Classification: LCC B485 .L36 2016 | DDC 181/.112—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016024134 ISBN: 978-1-4724-8736-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-40042-6 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra

To Michael

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Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction: Living the form and knowing the way

1

Similarities and differences 2 Rhetoric and the other 5 Rhetoric and truth 8 Rhetoric and sophistry 13 A twofold argument 14 Translations of works by Confucius and Aristotle 16

1

Aristotle and rhetorical invention: A legacy of interdisciplinary inquiry

22

Interpreting the Analects: Need to address rhetorical invention

47

Episteme and techne 23 Sophistical reasoning 27 Dialectical reasoning 30 Both sophistical and dialectical reasoning 33 Classical rhetoric 35 Rhetorical invention today 40 Conclusions 42

2

Confucius and rhetoric 47 Confucius as a rhetorician 50 Confucius and rhetorical invention 57 Studies of Confucius’ Analects 59 Religious and philosophical interpretations 60 Literary interpretations 65 Rhetorical interpretations 68 Conclusions 80

viii Contents

3

Rhetorical probability: Form, eikos, tianming, and rendao

4

Rhetorical reasoning: Epieikeia, kairos, ren, and yi

128

Rhetorical education: Topoi, stases, li, and yue

178

Epilogue: Crossing disciplinary and cultural boundaries

220

Index

223

5

Form and eikos in Aristotle 88 Truth, form, and logos 90 Form, logos, and nous 93 Form, logos, and pathos 98 Tianming (天命) and rendao (人道) in Confucius 103 Tianming-the-cosmic-order (天命) 106 Ghosts, spirits, cosmos, and cosmic order 107 Tianming-the-cosmic-order and learning 112 Progressive and deferential rhetorical thinking 115 Conclusions 122

Enthymemes and syllogisms 129 Epieikeia and kairos in Aristotle’s Rhetoric 136 Epieikeia or equity in Aristotle 136 Kairos or appropriateness in Aristotle 139 Ren and yi (仁、義) in Confucius’ Analects 145 Ren and epieikeia: Enthymemes of continuity and change 147 Epieikeia and ren: Enthymemes and the ideal of the mean or yinyang 157 Yi and kairos: Enthymemes in action 163 Conclusions 167 Rhetorical inventiveness of topoi and stases in Aristotle’s Rhetoric 179 Three kinds of topoi 180 Inventiveness of topoi 183 Inventiveness of stases 194 Rhetorical inventiveness of li (樂) and yue (樂) in The Analects of Confucius 202 Inventiveness of li 203 Inventiveness of yue 209 Conclusions 213

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Acknowledgments

Writing this book has been a humbling experience; therefore, I am indebted to numerous authors. At times, writing this book has also been a lonely experience, an experience, however, that prompted me to inquire further, to forge friendships, and to get to know so many in the two cultures under comparison. I thank these fellow travelers collectively and wholeheartedly for leading the way in promoting cultural exchange and understanding. I thank Janice Lauer for guiding me and believing in the value of this project throughout the years, Roger Ames for introducing me to comparative studies and being so very gracious about our different views. And I thank the National Endowment for the Humanities for supporting me with two grants early in this project. I thank the College of Liberal Studies at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (UW-L) for its unfailing psychological, financial, and academic support throughout the years. I thank all of my colleagues at UW-L and beyond for insisting on the importance of connecting research and scholarship with teaching. A special thank-you to my students at UW-L for their open-mindedness, critical attitudes, and perceptiveness, all of which helped deepen my understanding of Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking. As well, I thank Dana Chellman and Kyle Stokes for proofreading the text. Thanks also to my husband, Fusheng, for encouraging me on this journey but also for invigorating my lifelong endeavor to study classical Chinese by sharing his knowledge of it with me.

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Introduction Living the form and knowing the way

Aristotle (384–322 BCE) and Confucius (551–479 BCE) are influential thinkers from two ancient cultures that did not have direct contact with each other; therefore, important differences exist in their teachings. In this study, I focus on the question of what these differences are and, relatedly, whether these are fundamental differences or differences in emphasis. To address these questions more meaningfully than we currently do, I argue that we need to understand the similarities as well as the differences between them. I therefore examine both the similarities and the differences in this study and limit the scope of the examination to Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking. To do so, I engage scholarly discussions or debates on what rhetorical thinking entails according to Aristotle and Confucius while reading closely Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Confucius’ Analects in the socialhistorical but also discursive contexts. In doing so, I hope this study’s findings could help facilitate communication between East and West, assuming that Confucius’ and Aristotle’s teachings are still informing parts of Eastern and Western cultures today, that cultures need to and can learn from each other and complement each other, and that knowledge of similarities can help to invent ways for differences to coexist productively in the globalized 21st century. The findings of this study, as well as its scope and method, underscore the relatedness of human inquiries. The scope of the study encompasses similarities in connection with differences; the method crosses disciplinary boundaries, rhetorical inquiry in conjunction with inquires in other fields; and the findings show that both Aristotle and Confucius think in ways that are hylomorphic, they both discourse in ways that are inclusive, but they also analogize their visions of ultimate realities, respectively, as the form and the way. The differences between these two metaphors can be seen in their rhetorically different predilections for discursive clarity or resilience, different preferences for ethos of equilibrium or harmony, and different priorities of technicality or flexibility. Indeed, these differences heighten our awareness of two generally different emphases on progress and deference that are grounded on the different metaphors of the form and the way. Still, the findings emphasize relationality because the differences are differences of emphases that complement each other, because the differences are based on the similarity that Aristotle and Confucius both have visions of ultimate realities, and because recognizing this fundamental connection makes appreciating

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Introduction

subtle and important differences possible. These similarities need much research to substantiate, research I will discuss in this study. In this introduction, I hope to situate the current study in the context of comparative rhetorical studies by focusing on some reasons this relational characteristic is important and engaging some critical issues and challenges this study faces.

Similarities and differences The scope of this rhetorical study comprises similarities and differences and is based on the understanding that rhetoric is an integral part of human endeavor to understand differences, negotiate boundaries, and build communities. This view of rhetoric entails that rhetorical activities are dynamic and complex, in the midst of forming and transforming interdependent ideas in human situations. Take my experience in conducting this study as an example. Examining Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Confucius’ Analects, I realized quickly that most passages in the Rhetoric led me to the development within the Aristotelian corpus, but most passages in the Analects led me to the historical anecdotes of Confucius’ time. While facts like these reinforce our intuition that differences definitely exist, the textual and contextual evidence also prompts us to examine closely what these differences are and to reconsider dichotomizing hypotheses such as that Aristotle’s discourse is abstract and linear while Confucius’ discourse is pragmatic and circular. Is Aristotle’s cross-referencing not a kind of circularity and is Confucius’ historical referencing not a kind of linearity? More challengingly perhaps, what does it mean to suggest that Aristotle does not discourse pragmatically and Confucius, not abstractly? As much as these sound like rhetorical questions, they actually do not have easy or univocal answers. Tracing textual and historical leads provided by the Rhetoric and the Analects, for example, I consulted and in the end brought into this rhetorical inquiry studies from other fields on Aristotle and Confucius. Some may argue that engaging interdisciplinary conversations synchronically this way bolsters the idea that Asian discourse is circular, non-linear, as seen in the proverbial Confucian view of transmission, the transmission that preserves but does not revolutionize: “I impart and do not invent” 「 ( 述而不作」 Analects 7.1). But, do we really understand this Confucian view of transmission? As Jiyuan Yu points out, interpreting 7.1 above as that Confucius “created” nothing new “is like taking ‘I don’t know anything’ by Socrates literally” (42). Yu’s informed cross-cultural observation, of course, is far from settling the quest, but it does remind us of the need to engage texts in their multifaceted cultural contexts and of the importance of testing our perceptions of differences in the context of similarities. In the end, therefore, it is indeed daunting to take on the study of differences in relation to similarities and it may not produce clear theories as quickly as we would like. However, to achieve comparative rhetorical insights into the world’s dynamic contexts and complex cultures and to explore viable alternatives to the violent clashes of differences in general but those in the globalized 21st century in particular, comparative rhetoricians need to follow as many textual and contextual leads as possible and allow similarities and differences to speak for themselves.

Introduction 3 Some comparative rhetoricians question the ethics of such a directed effort to include similarities, and such a serious criticism deserves a careful response. In the 2009 article “Recent Advances in Comparative Rhetoric” in The Sage Handbook of Rhetorical Studies, the authors claim that, ethically avoiding impositions of Western rhetoric onto the rest of the world, most comparative rhetoricians today have moved beyond the study of similarities. They state, “Given globalization in the wake of decolonization, currently most comparative work is concerned with the development of global consciousness and communication in the battle between McWorld and Jihad,” concerned with what is “revolutionary to Western rhetoric” (Hum and Lyon 155), “rather than commonplaces and universals” (154). The authors contend, George Kennedy’s inclusion of communications among birds into the definition of rhetoric “diminishes recognition of culture, human culture, as a defining aspect of rhetoric”; Mary Garret’s inclusion of the poetic into the definition of rhetoric is “to the diminishment of politics, the connection that makes rhetoric vital to the understanding of power” (154); and rhetoric as “Aristotle’s persuasion and Burke’s identification,” if focused on, “diminishes the primary motives for the evolving field of comparative rhetoric” (155) that focuses on differences. In contrast, the authors maintain, Steven Mailloux’s definition of “rhetoric as the political effectivity of trope and argument in culture” provides “a middle way” (154), an ethical way. Certainly, comparative rhetoricians should be ethical, and rhetorical studies are not about forcing ideas onto others. However, it is the authors’ limiting vision of rhetoric as “either-or” that lends itself to such imposition more readily than the inclusive visions of both birds and humans, both poetry and politics, and both identification and difference. For example, despite the authors’ intent to champion the middle-way, they in effect depict the ethical scope of rhetoric as defined either by Kennedy, Garret, Aristotle, and Burke, or by Mailloux. In trying to use these either-or boundaries for rhetoric in their survey of recent comparative rhetorical studies, the authors are more likely to exclude and dismiss the other—as they did—than those who see the scope of rhetoric as more inclusive and more interdisciplinary. As the authors make clear repeatedly throughout the article, they have the good intention to prevent the West from colonizing and imperializing the world, but policing scopes and visions of rhetorical studies creates ethical concerns of its own. My point is that there is not one perfect way to engage comparative rhetorical inquiries. No matter how we envision the disciplinary domain, we face our own ethical dilemmas. Yet, inclusive and tolerant visions contain more diversity and dynamics within and are therefore more inductive to responsive perceptions of the other and reflective knowledge of the self in dealing with ethical quandaries. For example, to prevent comparative rhetoric from being “comparative literature, comparative philosophy, comparative anthropology” (154), the authors admit that recent comparative rhetoricians “avoid references to and assumptions about tradition” (155). But had they not done so or had they referenced philosophical, literary, historical as well as rhetorical texts understood in contexts, from East and West, they would have been compelled to problematize and refine, as opposed to state as facts, the following impositions on the Chinese rhetorical thinking: “the

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Introduction

Chinese do not share our rhetorical ‘tradition’”; “the ancient Chinese had little systematic grammar” (155) and “had never heard of topic, let alone used them” (159); systematic thinking appeared later in Chinese history and “is often viewed by the Chinese as marginal and/or immoral and sophistic” (155). I hope to show that when we let Aristotle and Confucius speak for themselves and when we try to listen to what they say in context, we will hear both of them teach that there is the form and there is the way, both of which human communities must and can know but only through living them in the world and in time, and that language-use plays an indispensable role in the human journey to live and to know. These findings resonate with many studies of Confucius and Aristotle by scholars in other disciplines of inquiry. As Chinese literary scholar Longxi Zhang astutely observed, for instance, “understanding the other is always a ‘fusion of’ the self’s horizon and that of the other” (108). As American philosopher Christopher Long elegantly described, “It is not just difference that marks our being in and with the world; it is also resonance, sympathy, and cooperation” (“My Responses”). There are other challenges to pursuing both similarities and differences at the same time, and the issue of ethics merits more in-depth consideration. I discuss some of these challenges and engage the ethical debate throughout this study, but in this Introduction, I would like to address preliminarily a few issues. Take as an example the practical and obvious issue of whether it is even meaningful to talk about studying similarities when some ideas in one culture do not seem to be found in another. Indeed, the ancient Chinese did not study grammar systematically under the name grammar and had not heard of the Greek word topoi; however, these facts do not necessarily lead to the conclusion that the ancient Chinese had no grammar or rhetoric in ways meaningfully recognizable to the West. In the extensive linguistic study, Science and Civilisation in China / Vol 7 Science and Chinese Society: Language and Logic, Christoph Harbsmeier concludes that not only did the ancient Chinese have grammar but also their grammar does not differ from English grammars as much as many think: One reason why the Chinese did not (need to) develop systematic grammar is that in an analytic language like Chinese the lexicon of words plus the lexicon of grammatical particles taken together go a long way towards accounting for what it takes to understand the texts—a much longer way than would be possible in more synthetic languages like Greek or Sanskrit. … In general a great deal of the grammar of Classical Chinese can be formulated as an extended dictionary entry under the various grammatical particles of that language. Grammar therefore could take the form of dictionaries of grammatical particles, which is exactly what happened. The grammar of English is not as different from that of Chinese as one might think. (87) In other words, even though grammar was not studied as a discipline in ancient China, it existed and was studied in the form of dictionary entries. Therefore, a systematic grammar of sorts did exist in ancient China and there is no reason to dismiss the possibility of studying ancient Chinese grammar and comparing it to

Introduction 5 other grammars. Chinese grammar was different but was not absent. Regarding rhetoric, Harbsmeier is also helpful although in an unexpected way. He uses a common and limited definition of rhetoric as persuasion that comprises three elements: “grammar and logic of sentence” (163) and “psychological tactics” (265). Using this limited interpretation of persuasion, Harbsmeier states that rhetoric “is not of immediate concern in the context of the history of science in China” (265). However, he also concludes, “the art of plausible reasoning formed an integral part of intellectual life in China from the time of Confucius’ disciples onward” (265). Plausible reasoning, or probable reasoning, helps to invent probable knowledge, and probable knowledge is produced through rhetorical invention according to both “Aristotle’s [view of rhetoric as effecting] persuasion” and “Burke’s [view of rhetoric as inducing] identification.” In other words, if we interpret the scope of Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric as grammar, logic, and psychological strategies that go beyond sentences and into arguments in context, into discursive and probable thinking, then the conclusion of Harbsmeier’s study is that the ancient Chinese did have rhetoric. Differences and similarities are intertwined.

Rhetoric and the other Harbsmeier’s common but limited definition of rhetoric is a fitting segue to my next point, that the current study is relational in its method. Harbsmeier is a linguist who relied on a common but cursory interpretation of Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric “as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion” (1355b26–27). But this is where comparative rhetoricians should contribute to and carry on the inquiry. It is not hard to see how, extracted from the Rhetoric itself, Aristotle’s view of rhetoric can be taken as merely grammatical, logical, and psychological manipulations at the presentational level, creating the dichotomy between style and content, means and ends. However, rhetoricians are more familiar with Aristotle’s Rhetoric and know that this interpretation of Aristotle’s view of rhetoric encounters major difficulties in explaining some important dimensions of that text. More specifically, it excludes virtually all of Aristotle’s concept of rhetorical invention and partially his, and the classical, concept of techne (art). While this general and truncated understanding of rhetoric is due partly to the fact that it is truly rooted in Aristotle’s Rhetoric, it is perhaps due also to us comparative rhetoricians who inadvertently help to perpetuate this partial understanding as the full understanding of Aristotle’s conceptualization of the rhetorical art. In comparative rhetorical studies of Chinese rhetoric, for example, there is a need to understand more fully Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric as techne, to understand more thoroughly Aristotle’s understanding of rhetorical invention as a mode of thinking, which, as acknowledged by Hayden White, helps to reach consensus “in those practical situations in which there is not only no agreement on first principles or on the facts of the matter at hand but not even any agreement on what shall constitute the facts themselves” (28). I am not alone in this assessment. Problematizing the effort to search for “essential characteristic in Chinese or any other rhetorical tradition,” Yameng Liu points out that part of the

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Introduction

problem lies in an “unfamiliar[ity] with Western scholarship” (324, 326) and in a “misunderstanding of textual basis of Chinese rhetoric” (333). Similarly, Mary Garrett urges comparative rhetoricians to incorporate into comparative studies the fact that rhetoric even in the West is a “contested” term because its “definitions within the Western rhetorical tradition vary according to the historical period” (54). To this I would add that it varies also within each historical period. Nearly two decades after these calls for investigating the complexity of rhetorical thinking not only between but also within East and West, only a rather limited number of studies in comparative Chinese rhetoric have devoted much space to in-depth inquiries into the complexity of Aristotle’s view of rhetoric as a mode of thinking, into his conception of rhetorical invention. Without doing so, however, we are not in a position to presuppose that we all agree that the art of rhetoric according to Aristotle is merely about the self’s effort to persuade the other, to assume that we are ready to adjudicate the dispute over what persuasion entails for Easterners and Westerners, and to conclude “If cultures do not share the concept of rhetoric, what are we comparing?” (Hum and Lyon 153). To be willing to address, as a genuine question, whether cultures share the concept of rhetoric, we need to examine more carefully texts under comparison in their cultural contexts. One of the reasons we have not done so is the presupposition that comparative rhetoric is based on clearly defined and prohibiting boundaries. Certainly, boundaries have indisputable value, but the issue is whether we can base comparisons of the entire Eastern and Western rhetoric on the definition or boundary of rhetoric that we prefer. In other words, general observations of rhetoric, East and West, are indeed only possible when we recognize certain boundaries of rhetoric, but these boundaries should be based on our examinations of diverse views of rhetoric within each culture under comparison. Focusing on Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking, for instance, this study finds that the boundaries according to Aristotle and Confucius are porous, despite the facts that Aristotle wrote a treatise on rhetoric separately from others and Confucius did not. What is probable knowledge or, as Aristotle puts it in the Rhetoric, what is the “approximately true” (1355a13) or the “usually true” (1357a33) that is rhetoricians’ main concern? Aristotle addresses this question a few times in the Rhetoric, and the following characterization could be one of the most helpful here: “a Probability is that which happens usually but not always. Enthymemes founded upon Probabilities can, it is clear, always be refuted by raising some objection” (1402b22–23). This characterization of the rhetorical subject matter in relation to probable reasoning and knowing puts rhetorical invention in the larger context of human inquiry and characterizes it as an open-ended process of transformation. In other words, even though Aristotle is known, correctly, for his emphasis on categorization, as G. E. R. Lloyd’s lifelong study of Aristotle concludes, there is unmistakable tension in Aristotle’s own works (220), tension that is not hard to see in his view of rhetoric. On the one hand, Aristotle clearly sees the value in categorizing different kinds of knowledge and modes of thinking as philosophical, scientific, and artistic or rhetorical. On the other hand, his actual discussion of techne (art) and rhetoric as probable reasoning is not limited by the boundaries among these categories,

Introduction 7 not outside of his Rhetoric and not within it. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defines techne as “a state concerned with making, involving a true course of reasoning, the guidance of true reason” (1140a20–21), and in the Metaphysics, he characterizes techne as producing “universal judgment about similar objects” from experience (981a6). In the Poetics, he describes rhetoric as the “department of inquiry” into thought, which differs from the “departments” of character and plot (1456a). Again, in theNicomachean Ethics, he discusses how epieikia or equity is a virtue (v10), a key concept to understanding pathos. In the Physics, he investigates how change is of different kinds (v2), an indispensable notion to understanding kairos and stases. In the Rhetoric, Aristotle repeatedly refers his readers to the Topic and the Analytics (1355a29; 1356b10, 12; 1396b4; 1398a28; 1399a8; 1402a35; 1403a32; 1419a24), and he states explicitly that rhetoric “is partly like dialectic and partly like Sophistical reasoning” (1359b11). Dialectic, a logical method, is also said to be “of criticism wherein lies the path to the principles of all inquiries” (Aristotle Topics 101b4), that is, to Truth of all truths (Irwin). Not only is rhetoric partly like dialectic, Aristotle emphasizes as well that the logical syllogism in rhetoric is actually enthymematic and he describes rhetoric as being also partly like sophistical reasoning. One has to conclude that, despite the value of the rigorously analyzed categories, Aristotle himself does not confine rhetoric within a narrowly defined and discretely separated space called technical manipulation at presentational, stylistic, and psychological levels. Rather, he contextualizes it in relation to thinking, to inventing probable thoughts or truths. Given all this, we must be willing to consider this trans-disciplinary dimension of Western rhetoric as we deepen our insights into comparative rhetoric. On the Chinese side, more effort has been made to examine rhetorical invention, but there is room for more thorough exploration. Studying rhetorical thinking from Chinese perspectives may seem uncomplicated at first. Confucius’ Analects, for example, focuses on thoughts, and Confucius is seen clearly and repeatedly as being impatient with pure semantic manipulations. Therefore, observations like the following frequent many Chinese rhetorical studies. Xing Lu states, “The Chinese notions of ming gu (understanding causes) and lei tui (classification by kinds) were regarded as modes of inquiry for arriving at truth and gaining knowledge”; “face-saving is a universal concern of human beings”; and “For Zhuanzi, there is no fixed category of this or that or truth and falsehood” (“Influence” 6, 15, 17). Rita Mei-Ching Ng observes: For the Confucians, harmony is the universal way of the world and of all things. Harmony has been described … as the way to the realization of essence. Confucians believed that when all things realize their essences, the world is on the right path. (45) Mei-Ling Wang comments that the Confucian “Heaven is seen as the laws of nature or cosmological order” (182). As I will argue, in agreement with Lu, Ng, Wang, and others, truths, essences, falsehood, universals, heavens, and laws of nature are critical concepts in Confucius’ rhetorical thinking, just as they are in

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Introduction

Aristotle’s. The question is—and comparative insights are shaped by our answers to—how we interpret these concepts. Even though our interpretations are often, to quote Garrett’s apt description again, contested and complex, if Chinese rhetoricians are compelled to discuss these concepts in discussing Chinese rhetoric, then we must inquire not just cross-culturally but also cross-disciplinarily. In other words, like with Aristotle, Confucius should be approached as a thinker whose view of rhetoric is embedded in the larger contexts of philosophy, history, literature, religion, and others.

Rhetoric and truth A reasonable question to ask of this interdisciplinary approach is whether it is not overconfident for comparative rhetoricians to be entangled in the sophistical or postmodern critique of the essentialist views of knowledge, truth, and universals. The burden of proof seems better-defined and more manageable if we either join or reject, from the outset, the postmodern challenges than examine and attest whether the dichotomy of essentialism and postmodernism can accurately characterize the teachings by Aristotle and Confucius and the differences between their rhetorical thinking. To negotiate the minefield of what essentialisms are, what the critiques are, what kind of essentialism Aristotle’s thinking is, and where Confucius is in all this seems too much for the pursuit of already elusive answers to the deceivingly simple-looking question of what rhetoric is. Again, however, as formidable as interdisciplinary inquiries are, rhetoricians may not be able to avoid them, because the sophistical and postmodern critique of Essentialism and of Truth is not just a philosophical one; it is a rhetorical one as well. In concluding that the entire Chinese culture and its rhetorical thinking differ fundamentally from those in the West, for instance, the comparative rhetoricians already engage comparative rhetoric as “comparative literature, comparative philosophy, and comparative anthropology,” as they should—and as should we all, despite the fact that cross-disciplinary approaches have the potential to become untidy and even unwieldy. Ultimately, we cannot understand well the concepts of probable knowledge, truths, and universals without considering the concepts of knowledge, truths, and universals; we cannot draw comparative observations appropriately about Aristotle’s and Confucius’ views of rhetorical form and way by ignoring their views of truth and tianming-the-cosmic-order. These concepts will receive more careful discussion later, but a key to the discussion is Aristotle’s multidimensional notion of truth. There is one better-known aspect of that notion, and Richard Tinerney depicts it cogently: to study Aristotle is to presuppose a metaphysics and ontology according to which there are not only individual substances present in the world but also real universals—forms or essences realized in matter—and it presupposes an epistemology according to which those forms or essences are ultimately accessible to human minds. (204)

Introduction 9 Metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology are indeed philosophical concepts, but we can learn about them. Metaphysically, for example, form or essence in the matter is like truth in the expression “the truth of the matter” when we refer to a state of being that is stable relative to our perceivable experiences. Truth simply is, whether we see it or not. As seen in Aristotle’s concrete description of truth: “he who thinks the separated to be separated and the combined to be combined has the truth, while he whose thought is in a state contrary to that of the objects is in error” (Metaphysics 1051b3–5). This characteristic of truth, form, or essence indeed suggests that to Aristotle truth is the domain only of philosophers. In fact, Aristotle states so himself, “philosophy should be called knowledge of the truth [episteme tes aletheias]” (Metaphysics 993b20); he identifies truth and being (Metaphysics V7), thus defining it again, as an ontological endeavor; and he describes truth as infallible grasp of indivisible essences (Metaphysics IX10) since one cannot be right or wrong about truth of a certain kind. Even though none of this is saying that rhetoric has nothing to do with the discovery of truth, it is easy to take Aristotle’s concept of rhetoric as having the boundary of merely expressing the truths of things. However, Aristotle also reveals a view of truth that almost demands interdisciplinary inquiries: The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, we do not collectively fail, but every one says something true about the nature of things, and while individually we contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed. Therefore, since the truth seems to be like the proverbial door, which no one can fail to hit, in this respect it must be easy, but the fact that we can have whole truth and not the particular part we aim at shows the difficulty of it. (Metaphysics 993a30–b4) This view of truth as seen in the investigation of it reflects the complexity of Aristotle’s view and explains why Aristotle iterates, rather conspicuously, the concept of truth in the beginning of Rhetoric (for example ἀληθὲς/truth, ἀληθείας/true, ἀλήθειάν/true, and τἀληθῆ/true 1355a14–17, 21–23, 38). Rhetoric does express truth, but it also helps to inquire into it. The political, judicial, and ceremonial expression of probable knowledge necessarily entails the deliberation of that knowledge. A jury, for example, cannot express its decision by only knowing the law; it must take into consideration the kairos of the situation and determine the levels of guilt or innocence, the truth of the matter, in a given case. The two visions of truth do not cancel out each other; rather, they form Aristotle’s hylomorphic view of it, a view I explore in Chapters One and Three. But, interpreting Aristotle’s concept of truth or ousia (substance, form, essence), Christopher Long provides a quick look into how the two sides coexist. First, Long traces the etymology of the word as follows: Ουσια names a dynamic activity in which the being-at-work of a being does not relinquish its own potency-for-being. Such beings embody the living

10

Introduction activity of possibility that Aristotle names τόδε τι [ousia, substance, essence], “this something” or “a certain thing.” Here the demonstrative τόδε articulates the irreducible singularity of that which presents itself, while the indefinite τι shatters the heretic isolation of the singular, calling it into community with others. The τόδε τι expresses the individual as such. No longer singular, but not yet particular, the individual gives itself to articulation even as it retains something of an irreducible unicity. (“The Duplicity of Beginning” 154)

Essence, form, or truth is dynamic, as seen in the very formation of τι the universal and τόδε the singular. Long then takes the discussion explicitly in the direction of language studies when he points out that τόδε τι is an articulation, a formula, or logos. In other words, given that τόδε τι is how some human beings say or describe essence in Greek, the very understanding of essence requires language, discourse, which is the dynamic relation or transformation through which singularity engages universality before it becomes a particular, that is, becomes merely a part of the universal. As Long and his colleague Richard Lee point out, in fact, understanding of essence is only possible, according to Aristotle, for beings that have logos (Posterior Analytics 99b36–100a6) or discursive languages. Aristotle does not say that this logos is just philosophical; it is simply logos. As we know, one of the three rhetorical or artistic proofs, in Aristotle’s rhetorical thinking, is logos. Essence, form, or truth has a discursive dimension, or, as Jonathan Lear explains, understanding, philosophical or otherwise, starts with the dynamic sense perception in the world and in human communities. Seeking truth, in other words, does not bypass discursive rhetoric but goes right through it. It is this hylomorphic or combined nature of Aristotle’s view of truth that gives rhetoric its function to participate in the discovering and shaping of ideas. Hylomorphism also characterizes Aristotle’s views of universals and of the art of rhetoric: Spoken sounds are symbols of affections in the soul, and written marks symbols of spoken sounds. And just as written marks are not the same for all men, neither are spoken sounds. But what these are in the first place signs of—affections of the soul—are the same for all, and what these affections are likenesses of—actual things—are also the same. (On Interpretation 16a3–8) The objects, which various languages refer to differently, are universals in a specific sense that Aristotle uses that concept, the sense that to have art (techne) such as the art of rhetoric requires certain common understandings of what the art refers to, understandings that form the basic principles of the art. “Art arises, when from many notions gained by experience one universal judgment about similar objects is produced” (Metaphysics 981a6). In the Rhetoric, Aristotle explains this concept of universals—or art-as-tenets—more concretely: none of the arts theorize about individual cases. Medicine, for instance, does not theorize about what will help to cure Socrates or Callias, but only about

Introduction 11 what will help to cure any or all of a given class of patients; this alone is its business; individual cases are so infinitely various that no systematic knowledge of them is possible. (1356b28–32) Using this theoretical aspect of techne, Gail Fine explains that having Aristotelian techne is understanding the underlying, explanatory, or universal properties or components of a thing or an activity (74–75). Why do we persuade each other, for instance, and why do we invent probable, imperfect knowledge, or probable truths? Having techne means also honing understandings, solving problems, and inventing ideas. Our probable knowledge of these basic principles, as pointed out by Deborah Modrak, is indeed established mainly through linguistic and rhetorical languages and therefore does not have the same level of unity in defining truths as scientific and philosophical knowledge does, knowledge that results from attempts to separate the essential features from the others. However, Modrak argues, “Aristotle believes that common usage can provide a handle on understanding the concept” because, in the end, “the scientific and linguistic definition of ‘cat’ are about the same object” (171). Modrak describes the linguistically and rhetorically less pure understanding as “a bridge” between the everyday and the scientific or philosophical phases of our understanding of essences or truths (172). Acknowledging the value of probable knowledge, Modrak illustrates the need, the value, and the feasibility of interdisciplinary approaches according to Aristotle’s view of language-use. Certainly, hylomorphism is only one interpretation of Aristotle’s conception of truth, but this is precisely the point when comparative rhetoricians like Garrett and Liu argue that, to advance comparative rhetorical studies, we must engage a variety of views and interpretations. None of us has the correct interpretation, but together we may move towards more complex and richer understandings. For example, looked at one way, Aristotle’s view of the metaphysical truth and universals may seem antiquated. Yet, looked at from the perspective that it offers a way to understand the dynamic inseparableness and inevitable transformation of change and continuity, creativity and tradition, revolution and negotiation, it has a complex relation with many current concerns and debates in the 21st century. “Truth,” as described by Paolo Crivelli, “is a relational property” to Aristotle (30). Crivelli explains that this is so because “Aristotle conceives of the history of the universe as an accumulation of events: new events are added to the stock of earlier ones to constitute the universe ‘to date’” (36). In other words, while the metaphysical truth may not experience change perceivable to us, it does not exclude other kinds of changes1. Truth as “a relational property” explains why in Aristotle’s world there is a need for different fields of study like science, philosophy, and rhetoric, and yet human inquiries are also interdependent. It is by using this complex view of truth that we will see Confucius and Aristotle as sharing cultural and rhetorical similarities, ones that are complex, not nonexistent. As the brief review below shows, when we subject comparative studies to lively interactions, we benefit from a diversity of insights. Do truths exist for Confucius? Does Confucius teach a concept of truth similar to that taught by Aristotle? If so, to what extent is that truth also open to human

12

Introduction

and rhetorical inquiry? Some scholars argue that the concept of truth is alien to the ancient Chinese. Donald Munro states, “in China, truth and falsity in the Greek sense have rarely been important considerations in a philosopher’s acceptance on a proposition; these are Western concerns” (55). Similarly, Fredrick Mote advances the view that the ancient Chinese had “an essentially naturalistic conception, in that it describes ‘spirit’ as having the same qualities and as being subject to the same processes as all other aspects of nature” (17). Kwang-Chih Chang explains further that the Western and Chinese cultures differ fundamentally in that the former has “a cosmology that emphasized the separate existence of gods” (421) while the latter has one that emphasized an “interlinked world continuum” (418). To Mote and Chang, Western thinking is theistic and ancient Chinese thinking, monistic. The two differ in that the theistic view looks at gods and humans, truths, and untruths, as fundamentally separated, while the monistic view looks at them as one that is fundamentally inseparable. Truth that simply is, according to Munro, Mote, and Chang, is unknown to the ancient Chinese. Others disagree. Harbsmeier found the evidence to the contrary. Acknowledging that there is indeed “no one standard Classical Chinese noun for truth” (195) and quoting Aristotle on having truth as considering “that things which are separate are separate and that things which belong together belong together” (1051b3), Harbsmeier states: “The question is whether we have statements of [the Aristotelian] sort in ancient China. We do” (194). Of many examples he offers is one from the Analects: “These words are so very true!” 「 ( 誠哉是言也！」13.11). Similarly, Michael Puett argues that both theistic and monistic thinking existed in ancient Greek and Chinese cultures. “Just as in early Greece,” states Puett, “a highly theistic vision of the world was … fully dominant from at least the time of the late Shang, and it continued well into the early Han” (63), a period that includes the time when Confucius was teaching. Similarly, against the dominance of theistic views of truth in ancient Greece, “a naturalistic system” was proposed, for example, by Empedocles (Puett 59), the Greek physician, philosopher, and poet whose works Aristotle drew upon. Puett’s point is that theistic or monistic view contains diversity within itself and that comparative analysts should attempt “first to locate similar tensions and concerns in the cultures in question and then to trace the varying responses to those tensions and concerns” (71) in relation to other cultures. I discuss in Chapter Three my view that Confucius has both a theistic and monistic view of truth that is similar to Aristotle’s. I do want to point out here that due to our own time and place, we must be careful neither to identify the Christian kind of theism as the one and only kind in the West, nor to identify it completely with Aristotle’s, and then contrast it with Confucius’. In fact, Jiyuan Yu argues, “Contrast between Confucian and Christian beliefs is not contrast between Confucius and Aristotle” (184). Certainly, we start with what we know, but we must be willing to examine what we think we know carefully if we want to compare it meaningfully with others. Examining what we think we know carefully entails that we interact with the rich and dynamic insights provided by Munro, Chang, and Mote and Harbsmeir, Puett, and Yu and consider them carefully as we try to use comparative rhetorical inquiries to help further cross-cultural understandings in the 21st century.

Introduction 13

Rhetoric and sophistry As it should be clear by now, the hylomorphic view of truth entails something more than truth, and this complex characteristic of hylomorphism can be seen in how Aristotle characterizes rhetoric as “partly like dialectic and partly like Sophistical reasoning” (Rhetoric 1359b11). Therefore, to understand Aristotle’s Rhetoric, one must also ponder over its sophistical aspect. For instance, Robert Wardy questions in his “Mighty Is the Truth and It Will Prevail?” whether rhetorical persuasion, to Aristotle, is not just “the befuddlement of the ignorant by the ignorant” (78) and if Aristotle is not merely paying “lip service to [Plato’s] Gorgias, while actually in cahoots with Gorgias” (81). In a more indirect way, George Kennedy also notes the potential conflict between rhetoric’s commitment to the merely logical and the genuinely true. Commenting on the examples Aristotle uses to illustrate the koinos of possible and impossible, Kennedy states that “Aristotle is talking about what is logically possible, not what is necessarily true in a particular case” (174 On Rhetoric footnote 110). Such comments raise important questions. What does the logical but untrue entail for rhetoric? What should rhetoricians do at the crossroads of the logical and the untrue? An oversimplified answer is suggested in The Sage Handbook, as seen earlier, where immoral and sophistical are coordinated with the conjunction and, indicating that to the extent Aristotle’s view of rhetoric is partly sophistical, it is partly immoral. Another answer is suggested by a more common interpretation of Aristotle’s view of rhetoric as a neutral tool, ultimately not responsible for its products. The difficulty with this reading is that Aristotle says explicitly that rhetoric is partly like sophistical reasoning, which is necessarily political, interested, or partial. How then do we understand this sophistical aspect of Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric? There is no easy answer to this question, but it is still important for comparative rhetoricians to tackle it. For instance, in a passage in the Analects, Confucius says that in his hometown an upstanding son would not report his father for stealing a neighbor’s sheep (Analects 13.18). The passage has been taken as reflecting a “major difference” between Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking because to Confucius “relationships and propriety [are] the most significant of human qualities” (Lyon “Confucian” 140–41). Yet, the issues raised here seem much more similar to, than different from, those underlying many passages in Aristotle’s Rhetoric that puzzle so many of its readers, as seen in Wardy’s musings above. To be “partly like dialectic, partly like Sophistical reasoning,” it would seem, rhetoric cannot be simply immoral, or merely neutral; rather, it is an activity that invents probable knowledge, which is invaluable to the human inquiry into what is just and true but is nonetheless refutable. This interpretation of Aristotle’s view of rhetoric entails that rhetorical activities indeed contribute to the invention of probable truths and, in doing so, contribute to the discovery of truths in general; however, rhetoric does so in the midst of activities that take place in the realm of the contingent, the impure, and the human. As a result of the fact that human beings are rational but also emotional, rhetorical invention is guided by stable truth but also entails improvisational construction.

14

Introduction

Corresponding to the commitment to finding invariable truths, therefore, is a clearly sophistical and dynamic facet of rhetoric, and this interpretation of Aristotle’s view of rhetoric has much scholarly research behind it. Aristotle himself states, “the true and the approximately true are apprehended by the same faculty” (Rhetoric 1355a15). In addition, Aristotelian scholars have warned against “the divorce of fact and value” (Booth 95), change and continuity, in reading Aristotle. Troels Engberg-Pedersen argues that there is an “intrinsic connection between endoxa [opinion] and truth” (130); Amelie Oksenberg Rorty sees discursive, logical, or rhetorical thought in Aristotle as “by definition truth-oriented” (13); and William Grimaldi puts it similarly that “rhetoric qua rhetoric reaches out to truth” (173). Janet Atwill states, “Outside the domain of metaphysics, form is seldom something static” (87) and that “For Aristotle, the rhetor’s world of doxa is not antithetical to the philosopher’s world of certain knowledge. It is Plato who insists on the strict separation of the two” (141). George Kennedy draws readers’ attention to Aristotle’s description of metaphors as “a form of mental and emotional energy” (Comparative 3). M. F. Burnyeat differentiates probable knowledge of “likelihood” from mathematical truth by characterizing it as being “culture-relative” (108). Stephen Halliwell, in fact, highlights the connection between Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Politics as follows: Aristotle accepts the existence and the validity of a rhetoric unregenerated by philosophical means. He countenances the fact that the functions of persuasion can be independent of the grounding commitments on which his own conception of a philosophical ethics and politics is built, but he nonetheless concedes the capacity of rhetoric to serve as a vital expression of the forces and processes of civic morality. (186) It is when rhetoric is perceived as this kind of human effort to understand, producing thinking that is not absolute truth, albeit inseparable from it, that comparative rhetoricians may discover important similarities and differences helpful to the communication between Confucian and Aristotelian cultures.

A twofold argument Consistent with the scope and the method of this study in general, my findings challenge two overgeneralizations of Aristotle and Confucius, respectively. One is that Aristotle’s concept of essence or truth is static, unable to explain change, and irrelevant to rhetorical studies that focus on the fluctuating events in the world. The other is that Confucius’ dao-the-way is decentered, incompatible with inferential thinking, and unreceptive to discursive endeavors that form an essential part of the studies of language-use in the world. Two parallel lines of inquiry unfold throughout the ensuing chapters to explain my findings. On the one hand, I examine a dynamic dimension to Aristotle’s concept of form or essence, the dimension that connects his rhetoric to the general human effort to search for truth. On the other hand, I trace a linear dimension to Confucius’ concept of dao-the-way,

Introduction 15 the dimension that connects tianming-the-cosmic-order to the human effort to know while walking the way 「 ( 適道」9.29). Several similarities are discussed. In Chapter Three, I discuss Aristotle’s notion of rhetorical probability in relation to his notion of the Mover and Confucius’ dao-the-way in relation to his concept of tian-the-cosmos or the cosmic force. In Chapter Four, I discuss the Aristotelian rhetorical enthymeme as having the characteristic of bi-directionality and the Confucian yinyang (陰陽) as having the characteristic of linearity. In Chapter Five, I discuss the Aristotelian rhetorical topoi and stases as techniques intertwined with the arguments they embody and the Confucian ethical li-thedeferential and aesthetic yue-the-harmonious as ways of thinking intertwined with the techniques they rely on. Throughout these chapters and based on these similarities, I discuss some important differences of emphasis between Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking: prototypes of discourse that aim to be more certain or more open-ended; strong ethos of equilibrium or disequilibrium; and the pedagogical emphases on technicality or flexibility. As mentioned earlier, these subtle but important differences resonate with different emphases on progress or deference and with different analogies of truth as form or as way. Aristotle characterizes this conception of rhetoric, which invents probable truths and participates in the discovery of truth in general, as enthymematic and topical. In doing so, he emphasizes rhetorical activities as processes through which a kind of culture is fostered, where probable truths are valued, investigated, and invented for functional human communities and good human lives. Based on this understanding of rhetorical invention of probabilities, I discuss the similarities and differences between Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking developed in Chapters Three, Four, and Five. But to prepare for the discussion of these rhetorical similarities and differences, I offer in Chapter One an account of Aristotle’s view of rhetorical invention and its history in the West, a history where exploring and developing probable rhetorical knowledge have received much scholarly scrutiny. This account is helpful because, as seen in Harbsmeier’s otherwise erudite analysis of Chinese classical texts, many are unfamiliar with the long history of rhetorical invention of probable knowledge in Aristotle and in the West, invention that goes beyond merely manipulating semantic and psychological tactics. My account also treats Aristotelian rhetoric as representative of a kind of Western rhetoric that makes an effort to be inclusive. As Aristotle says, his view of rhetoric is “a combination of the science of logic and of the ethical branch of politics” (Rhetoric 1459b9). Correspondingly and in Chapter Two, I treat The Analects of Confucius as representative of a kind of Chinese culture and rhetoric. The first section of this chapter addresses the view that Confucius has no rhetoric as the West knows it. It is important to elaborate on an alternative reading to refute this view and demonstrate the scope of Confucius’ rhetorical ideas and practices before I focus on his work on rhetorical invention. It is important because it is indeed well known and true that in the Analects Confucius frequently denounces glibness (ningzhe 「佞者」) or “mere rhetoric” (1.3, 5.4, 5.24, 6.14, 11.24, 14.29, 15.10, 15.26, 16.4, 17.172). He also describes two of his best students, Yan Hui and Zeng Zi, as being slow 「 ( 愚」 2.93) and thick (魯 11.174), respectively.

16

Introduction

He seems to be speaking against competition in general in 3.75 「 ( 君子無所爭」) and 15.216 「 ( 矜而不爭」). In 12.137, Confucius even says that he would like “to bring it about that there were no civil suits!” 「 ( 必也使無訟乎」). All of this, taken out of the context of the Analects, seems rather uncharacteristic of rhetoricians who have “a certain readiness of mind and speech, and a zest for rhetorical encounters” (Halloran 189). However, these passages in the Analects are juxtaposed with many passages that show Confucius as valuing very much probable knowledge. Chapter Two, therefore, explores the tension between these two kinds of passages in the Analects. Just as I never question the existence of differences between Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking, I do not challenge the view that rhetoric is a technique for persuasion. However, I do try to complement these views by arguing that both probable thinking and the technique are within the purview of rhetoric, both similarities and differences exist between Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking, and this complexity needs to be explored as we search for comparative insights to help foster better communication between East and West today. Translations of works by Confucius and Aristotle Many comparative rhetoricians today rely nearly exclusively on Western translations of the Analects, for example, the translations by the missionary James Legge (Liu, X.), literary writer Arthur Waley (You), or philosophers Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont (Mao, Lyon). I consulted these translations as well. However, while they are invaluable to rhetorical studies, they also do not emphasize explicitly the rhetorical aspect. The Analects is laden with background stories and implicit theories crucial to a rhetorical understanding, and therefore I chose to rely primarily on Qian Mu8 and Yang Bojun, two renowned Chinese Confucian scholars of the 20th century who translated the Analects from classical Chinese to modern Chinese and who explicated most explicitly the rhetorical dimension of the Analects. At the same time, despite the significant differences between classical and modern Chinese, Qian and Yang could still rely on the overlap between the two and, as a result, often did not translate certain key concepts such as ren-the-equitable (仁), yi-the-appropriate (義), li-the-deferential (禮)9, a practice indicative of the tremendous difficulty to attempt to translate these key concepts into one or two words even in modern Chinese. In these cases, I relied on their extensive commentaries but also benefited immensely from English translations. Among the many resources I consulted, the philosophical translation by Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont was invaluable. One of the most insightful translations I borrowed from them, for instance, is their interpretation of Confucius’ concept of yi as appropriateness10. In addition, I consulted the translations by James Legge, Arthur Waley, and Edward Slingerland, among others. Finally, I decided to translate some key concepts with hyphenated Chinese and English expressions, a decision that, I hope, reinforces the relational characteristic of this study. One final note on the translations of the Analects has to do with the way the passages are arranged or numbered. There is not one authoritative version

Introduction 17 of the Analects, and the archeological findings unearthed in the second half of the 20th century have only increased the number of—thus, the variations among—the collections. Even though most versions of the Analects arrange the passages in the same sequence and divide the book into the same twenty chapters, some notable differences exist in the breaking and numbering of the passages within each of the twenty books. As Qian’s commentary is the primary source for the interpretation in this study, I used the numbering system Qian had adopted. Readers therefore cannot merely rely on the number of a passage but must also be prepared to locate it sometimes among those in proximity. To help readers, I always accompany mentioning the number of a passage with the passage itself. There are basically two translations of Aristotle’s Rhetoric that are used most often in contemporary rhetorical studies; they are by W. Rhys Roberts (1954) and George A. Kennedy (1991). I decided to use the one by Roberts. Indeed, each translation has its advantages, and choosing one means missing out on the benefit of the other. The translation by Kennedy provides many key concepts in the original Greek language as well as extensive commentaries. Both features complement Roberts’ carefully edited and lucid translation. As a later translation, Kennedy’s also benefited from Roberts’ existing translation and is more concise. In addition, the spelling and punctuation conventions of the American English that Kennedy used would have created more textual consistency with mine because those are the conventions I tried to observe. In the end, however, I did not find the two translations substantially different enough for me not to adopt the one by Roberts, whose use of the easy-to-find line reference system, known as Bekker numbers, was very important to me. At the same time, I compared both translations for the passages I quoted from the Rhetoric. Occasionally, I did switch to Kennedy and footnoted the switching and the reasons. With Aristotle’s other works, I used The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation edited by Jonathan Barnes. Again, I footnoted the reasons for my occasional switching away from the collection. However, I chose not to use the version of Roberts’ translation of the Rhetoric in this Oxford collection. This version was edited by R. Kassel (1976), and at times it is quite different in meaning from the Modern Library version of Roberts’ translation. I chose the Modern Library version of Roberts because this version of Roberts and Kennedy’s translations are similarly different from Kassel’s version.

Notes 1 The concept the Cambridge change is helpful here, and it is a change relative to circumstances. To use the classical example, the height difference between a newborn and a 30-year-old today is a truth, and this truth does not change. While the height difference 20 years from now may be different, the truth of today’s height difference does not change really, but a change of a relational sort has taken place to that truth. 2 子曰：「巧言令色，鮮矣仁！ 」“Those who say only words that please others and show only appearances that make others happy can hardly be ren.” (1.3; 17.17); 或曰： 「雍也仁而不佞。 」子曰：「焉用佞？禦人以口給，屢憎於人。不知其仁，

18

3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10

Introduction 焉用佞？」Someone comments, “Ran Yong is ren but is not slick at speech.” The Master says, “What is the use of slickness of speech? Those who are slick at speech can be annoying. I don’t know if Ran Yong is ren, but what does he need slickness of speech for?” (5.4); 子曰：「巧言、令色、足恭，左丘明恥之，丘亦恥之。匿怨而 友其人，左丘明恥之，丘亦恥之。」The Master says, “Glib tongues, faked countenances, and deliberate step management to pretend respect: Zuo Qiuming deems these shameful, and I do, too. Disagreeing with someone but hiding the disagreement in order to feign concurrence: Zuo Qiuming deems it shameful, and I do, too.” (5.24); 子曰： 「不有祝鮀之佞，而有宋朝之美，難乎免於今之世矣。」The Master says, “In today’s world, [unfortunately,] a person without the glibness of Priest Tuo of Wei but with the beauty of Prince Chao of Song can hardly avoid being harmed.” (6.14); 顏淵問 「為邦」。子曰：「行夏之時，乘殷之輅。服周之冕。樂則韶舞。放鄭聲，遠 佞人；鄭聲淫，佞人殆。」Yan Yuan asks about governing effectively. The Master says, “Use the calendar of the Xia Dynasty; drive the chariot of the Yin Dynasty; wear the ceremonial caps of the Zhou Dynasty; and listen to the music of shao from the times of Sage Yao and King Wu. Abandon the sound of Zheng, and keep yourself away from those with glib tongues. The sound of Zheng corrupts and the glib tongued are dangerous.” (15.10); 子曰：「巧言亂德。小不忍，則亂大謀。」The Master says, “Glibness corrupts. And, if one cannot endure smaller injustices, one will ruin greater justices.” (15.26); 孔子曰：「益者三友，損者三友；友直，友諒，友多聞； 益矣。友便辟，友善柔，友便佞損矣。」The Master says, “There are three kinds of friends that are beneficial and three kinds that are harmful. Friends who are upright, trustworthy, and well-informed are beneficial, while those who are flattering, insincere, and glib-tongued are harmful.” (16.4). (2.9): I translate this passage in Chapter Two where I discuss it in more detail. (11.17): Ibid. (3.7): Ibid. (15.21): Ibid. (12.13): Ibid. Qian Mu is the author’s pen name, where Qian is the family name. To write the name in the order of Qian Mu is to observe the Chinese custom of writing the family name first. This Chinese custom is the opposite of the custom in English; therefore, writing names in English but in the Chinese order causes confusion. However, there is not yet a solution to this problem. People like Qian Mu are so well known and for so long that to use the order in English is at best as confusing. For example, many people have heard of Mao Tzetong, but perhaps none of them would recognize the name when it is in the correct order in English, Tzetong Mao. As we learn more about the Chinese cultural history, we have an increasing number of names that need to keep the Chinese order for the same reason: they have been known that way for hundreds and thousands of years. I do wish there were a solution to the problem of confusion. Similar names include Yang Bojun, Tu Weiming, but also all of the names in the Analects. I translate and discuss these concepts in detail in the last three chapters. John S. Major challenges Erica Fox Brindley’s translation of yi as justice in her study Individualism in Early China: Human Agency and the Self in Thought and Politics. Major states, “I am not at all sure that one could identify a substantial discourse on justice (understood as the fair and equitable treatment of individual within society) in early Chinese social philosophy, nor that yi would be the correct term for ‘justice’ to the extent to which the concept existed” (332). I agree with Major’s critique of Brindley’s rendering of “individualism,” but I do not think the “individual” in the definition of justice, quoted by Major, is necessarily and exclusively in the sense of individualism. In other words, justice is not a concept operative exclusively in individualism. I accept Ames and Rosemont’s translation of yi as appropriateness in the sense of justice. I discuss this idea further in Chapter Four.

Introduction 19

Works Cited Aristotle. The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation. Ed. Jonathan Barnes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984. ———. On Rhetoric. Trans. George A. Kennedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. ———. Rhetoric. Trans. W. Rhys Roberts. New York: The Modern Library, 1954. Atwill, Janet M. Rhetoric Reclaimed: Aristotle and the Liberal Arts Tradition. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998. Booth, Wayne C. Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974. Burnyeat, M. F. “Enthymeme: Aristotle on the Rationality of Rhetoric.” Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Ed. A. O. Rorty. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. 88–115. Chang, Kwang-Chih. The Archaeology of Ancient China, 4th ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986. Confucius. The Analects of Confucius. Trans. and Anno. Arthur Waley. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. ———. The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation. Trans. Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr. New York: Ballantine Books, 1998. ———. The Analects of Confucius: A Translations with Annotations. 論語譯註》Anno. Yang Bojun (楊伯峻). Beijing: Zhonghua shuju (中華書局), 1980. ———. Confucian Analects. Trans. James Legge. Confucian Analects, The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean. 1893. New York: Dover Publications, 1971. 137–354. ———. Confucius Analects: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Trans. Edward Slingerland. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2003. ———. Lun yu xin jie. 《論語新解》Anno. Qian Mu (錢穆). Taipei Shi: Lian jing, 1994. ———. Lun yu yingyi jinyi《論語英譯今譯》The Confucian Bible. Trans. and Anno. Qiu Wenming, Qiu Wenjiao, Qiu Wenxing, and Qiu Wenqi (邱文明，邱文郊，邱文星， 邱文祁). Beijing: World Affairs Press, 1996. Crivelli, Paolo. Aristotle on Truth. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Engberg-Pedersen, Troels. “Is There an Ethical Dimension of Aristotelian Rhetoric?” Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Ed. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. 116–41. Fine, Gail. On Ideas: Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato’s Theory of Form. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Garrett, Mary M. “Some Elementary Methodological Reflections on the Study of the Chinese Rhetorical Tradition.” International and Intercultural Communication Annual. 22 (1999): 53–63. Grimaldi, William M. A. “Rhetoric and Truth: A Note on Aristotle. ‘Rhetoric’ 1355a21–24.” Philosophy and Rhetoric. 11.3 (1978): 173–77. Halliwell, Stephen. “The Challenge of Rhetoric to Political and Ethical Theory in Aristotle.” Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Ed. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. 175–90. Halloran, S. Michael. “Rhetoric in the American College Curriculum: The Decline of Public Discourse.” Composition in Four Keys: Inquiring into the Field. Ed. Mark Wiley, Barbara Gleason, and Louise Wetherbee Phelps. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1996. 184–97. Harbsmeier, Christoph. Science and Civilisation in China / Vol. 7 Science and Chinese Society. 7.1, Language and Logic. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Hum, Sue and Arabella Lyon. “Recent Advances in Comparative Rhetoric.” The Sage Handbook of Rhetorical Studies. Eds. Andrea A. Lunsford, Kirt H. Wilson, and Rosa A. Eberly. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2009. 152–65. Irwin, T. H. Aristotle’s First Principles. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

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Introduction

Kennedy, George. Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Liu, Yameng. “To Capture the Essence of Chinese Rhetoric: An Anatomy of a Paradigm in in Comparative Chinese Rhetoric.” Rhetoric Review. 14.2 (1996): 318–35. Lloyd, G. E. R. Aristotelian Explorations. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Long, Christopher P. “The Duplicity of Beginning: Schürmann, Aristotle and the Origins of Metaphysics.” The Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal. 29.2 (2008): 145–59. ———. “My Responses and the Q and A.” The 11th Annual Ancient Philosophy Society Conference, Sundance, UT. March 4, 2011. Response. May 2, 2011. Available online at www.personal.psu.edu/cpl2/blogs/cplportfolio/APS%20Book%20Panel%20Long%20 Response.mp3 (accessed June 15, 2014). Lu, Xing. “The Influence of Classical Chinese Rhetoric on Contemporary Chinese Political Communication and Social Relations.” Chinese Perspectives in Rhetoric and Communication. Ed. Ray Heisey. Stamford, CT: Ablex, 2000. 3–23. ———. Rhetoric in Ancient China, Fifth to Third Century B.C.E.: A Comparison with Classical Greek Rhetoric. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1998. Lyon, Arabella. “Confucian Silence and Remonstration: A Basis for Deliberation?” Rhetoric before and beyond the Greeks. Ed. Carol S. Lipson and Roberta A. Binkley. Albany, NY: SUNY, 2004. 131–45. ———. Deliberative Acts: Democracy, Rhetoric, and Rights. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013. ———. “Rhetorical Authority in Athenian Democracy and the Chinese Legalism of Han Fei.” Philosophy & Rhetoric. 41.1 (2008): 51–71. ———. “‘Why Do the Rulers Listen to the Wild Theories of Speech-Makers?’ Or Wuwei, Shi and Methods of Comparative Rhetoric.” Ancient Non-Greek Rhetorics. Ed. Carol S. Lipson and Roberta A. Binkley. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2009. 176–96. Mao, LuMing. “Returning to Yin and Yang: From Terms of Opposites to Interdependence-in-Differences.” “Symposium Comparative Rhetorical Studies in the New Contact Zone: Chinese Rhetoric Reimagined.” Ed. C. Jan Swearingen and LuMing Mao. College Composition and Communication. 60.4 (2009): W32–W121. n.d. Web. June 8, 2009. W43–W56. ———. “Studying the Chinese Rhetorical Tradition in the Present: Re-presenting the Native’s Point of View.” College English. 69.3 (2007): 216–37. ———. “What Is in a Name? That Which Is Called ‘Rhetoric’ Would in the Analects Mean ‘Participatory Discourse.’” De Consolatioine Philologiae. Eds. Anna Grotans, Heinrich Beck, and Anton Schwob. Gopingen: Verlag, 2000. 507–22. Modrak, Deborah K. W. Aristotle’s Theory of Language and Meaning. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Mote, Fredrick W. Intellectual Foundations of China. New York: McGraw Hill, 1989. Munro, Donald. The Concept of Man in Early China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1939. Ng, Rita Mei-Ching. “The Influence of Confucianism on Chinese Conceptions of Power, Authority, and the Rule of Law.” Chinese Perspectives in Rhetoric and Communication. Ed. Ray Heisey. Stamford, CT: Ablex, 2000. 45–55. Puett, Michael. “Humans and Gods: The Theme of Self-Divinization in Early China and Early Greece.” Early China / Ancient Greece: Thinking through Comparisons. Ed. Steven Shankman and Stephen W. Durrant. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2002. 55–74. Rorty, Amelie Oksenberg, ed. Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. ———. “Structuring Rhetoric.” Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Ed. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. 1–33. Tinerney, Richard. Review of Aristotle’s Theory of Language and Meaning, by Deborah K. W. Modrak. The Journal of Philosophy. 99.4 (2002): 203–09.

Introduction 21 Wang, Mei-Ling. “Humanism and Human Rights: A Comparison between the Occidental and Oriential Traditions.” Chinese Communication Studies: Contexts and Comparisons. Eds. Xing Lu, Wenshan Jia, and D. Ray Heisey. Westport, CT: Ablex, 2002. 181–96. Wardy, Robert. “Mighty Is the Truth and It Shall Prevail?” Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Ed. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. 56–87. White, Hayden. “The Suppression of Rhetoric in the Nineteenth Century.” The Rhetoric Canon. Ed. Brenda Deen Schildgen. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997. 21–31. You, Xiaoye. “The Way, Multimodality of Ritual Symbols, and Social Change: Reading Confucius’s Analects as a Rhetoric.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly. 36.4 (2006): 425–48. Yu, Jiyuan. The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2007. Zhang, Longxi. Mighty Opposites: From Dichotomies to Differences in the Comparative Study of China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998.

1

Aristotle and rhetorical invention A legacy of interdisciplinary inquiry

Aristotle offers one of the most systematic studies of rhetorical invention, but his view emerged—and studies of his views have continued to develop—out of dynamic interactions with other perspectives on it. This chapter provides a brief historical and interdisciplinary review of rhetorical invention, focusing on the dynamic relation between discoursing and thinking, in different periods of the Western world up to the present. This effort to survey the history of rhetorical invention in relation to Aristotle’s teaching is important to the current comparative study because it helps to show that the West in general and Aristotle in particular have wrestled with issues of language-use in relation to thinking, as have the East and Confucius, despite the fact that rhetoric is analyzed as a discipline of study by Aristotle but is integrated into studies in general by Confucius. Some issues introduced here will be discussed further in other chapters, especially Chapter Three, but the purpose of this historical survey and of the studies of the Analects in the next chapter is to prepare for a discussion that is less on whether but more on how the two teachings on rhetorical invention are both similar and different. Rhetorical invention in the West, as well as in Aristotle’s consideration, has an ambiguous dimension. It is ambiguous because it seems to deal with two disciplines of study, disciplines that are deemed as separate endeavors in the West in general: inventing effective ways of expression or inventing probable ways of thinking. This tendency to separate thinking and expression is rooted in a view of reality that dichotomizes form and matter, the truth of the matter and the matter itself. Investigating this ambiguous nature of rhetorical invention, Aristotle shows that he values probable thinking that is between the truth of the matter and the matter itself, and he sees rhetorical invention as activities that genuinely and truly invent both probable truths and expressions for conveying them. To Aristotle, in other words, rhetoric operates in the space between the permanent and the random and, subsequently, rhetorical knowledge is neither identical with nor separable from either. To discuss this Aristotelian view, I will start by examining some issues in the study of Aristotle’s treatment of invention. Aristotle is generally considered one of the first Greek thinkers to theorize invention as one of the five canons of the rhetorical art, the other four being arrangement, style, delivery, and memory. According to Aristotle, rhetorical invention is accomplished artfully or artificially and discursively through the credibility

Aristotle and rhetorical invention 23 proof, emotional proof, and rational proof. Even though classifications like canons and proofs are predicated on the understanding that each in the system plays its different role, taxonomies by definition are also indicative of an ecosystem of coexistence. Therefore, Aristotle discusses the scope and function of rhetorical invention in a way that is as dynamic as it is systematic and, in doing so, he both continues and contributes towards the effort to understand the nature of rhetorical invention. More specifically, what and how do rhetoricians invent? This question leads to the enduring issue in studies of language-use: what is the relation between thought and expression, content and style, episteme and techne—knowledge of certainty and of probability? Could there be deep relations between sophia and techne— philosophical wisdom and productive knowledge—or between nous and techne— intuitive grasping of first principles and discursive reasoning or understanding? Addressing these questions entails explorations beyond as well as into Aristotle’s Rhetoric, despite the fact that some scholars do not agree. Quoting from Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, Nicomachean Ethics, as well as his Rhetoric, Barbara Warnick argues that Aristotle clearly divides the five faculties into distinct modes of thought and therefore “rhetoric has its starting point in general opinions, its fruition in right action” (306). Warnick is right about Aristotle’s delineation of modes; however, the characterization of inflexible and impermeable borderlines is too definite for Aristotle. For example, Aristotle discusses logos in relation to nous (Posterior Analytics 100a2), showing the complexity of the boundaries he draws. I will explore further the complexity of these views in later chapters where the specifics between Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking will be compared and contrasted, but it is important to emphasize that the issue here is not whether these modes of thinking are identical but how they relate. Therefore, I will examine the tension among different dimensions in Aristotle’s thinking in general and his Rhetoric in particular, exploring the relations between episteme and techne. This chapter will conclude with a survey of the investigation into this inclusive Aristotelian view of invention in contemporary Western communication and composition studies. Overall, I argue that rhetorical invention in the Aristotelian vein stands for a way of thinking that is by nature relational and supports a kind of inquiry that is interdisciplinary. Aristotle sees language-use as inseparable from thinking that is philosophical, spiritual, cultural, and historical, and Aristotelian rhetoricians and writers engage the mutually constituting relations between what they think and what is thought by others, especially by their audience and their readers, in the ongoing search for expediency, justice, and honor.

Episteme and techne Aristotle’s view of distinction and relation is complex, often simultaneously differentiating and synthesizing. An example of this view can be seen in the Nicomachean Ethics VI, where Aristotle discusses the scientific and calculative parts of the soul as distinct but also related, as shown below: And let it be assumed that there are two parts [of the soul] which possess reason—one by which we contemplate the kind of things whose principles

24 Aristotle and rhetorical invention cannot be otherwise, and one by which we contemplate variable things; … Let one of these parts be called the scientific and the other the calculative; for to deliberate and to calculate are the same thing, but no one deliberates about what cannot be otherwise. Therefore, the calculative is one part of the faculty which possesses reason. (Nicomachean Ethics 1139a6–15) The calculative and scientific parts of the soul are differentiated clearly by the changing and unchanging objects they contemplate. On the one hand, scientific knowledge, which is episteme, is about objects invariable, “of necessity … eternal, … ungenerated and imperishable” (Nicomachean Ethics 1139b23–24). On the other hand, calculative knowledge, which is “the same” as techne, deliberates matters of contingency in the changing world. Aristotle reiterates this same point in the Rhetoric as follows: The subjects of our deliberation are such as seem to present us with alternative possibilities: about things that could not have been, and cannot now or in the future be, other than they are, nobody who takes them to be of this nature wastes his time in deliberation. (Rhetoric 1357a4–7) Dealing with the contingent or the invariable, techne and episteme, according to Aristotle, represent knowledge of probability and of certainty; they differ clearly and in fact contrast sharply. However, the two are also connected by reasoning and the soul, and the difference is therefore not one of mutual exclusion. The techne of rhetoric, according to Aristotle, deals with the probable, the multitude of variables that connect to the invariable. For example, Aristotle describes “art, scientific knowledge, practical wisdom, philosophical wisdom, intuitive reason” all as “states by virtue of which the soul possesses truth by way of affirmation or denial” (Nicomachean Ethics 1139b15–17). Art helps to affirm and deny what is true and what is not; it does not merely convey what is affirmed and denied by other faculties. Assisting in this process of affirmation and denial, techne is itself a kind of thinking that is inherently connected to truth. Furthermore, Aristotle describes rhetoric as “partly like dialectic” (Rhetoric 1359b10) and as not about “anything whatever” (Rhetoric 1357a361). Giving the art of rhetoric a stable dimension in these descriptions, Aristotle reveals that the rhetorical art is both dynamic and connected with knowledge of certainty. This twofold characteristic of techne suggests a partial overlap between episteme and techne. Far from identifying the two, therefore, Aristotle nevertheless points to the need to inquire into how both certainty and uncertainty inform the art of rhetoric. This complex relation between episteme and techne in Aristotle’s thinking has been noted and examined by many others. Tracing “a general mixing of episteme and techne” or Aristotle’s seeming indifference in “using episteme and techne” (Parry 3.10) in Physics, Metaphysics, and Nicomachean Ethics, Richard Parry points out a primary and then a more lenient “secondary sense of episteme” that

Aristotle and rhetorical invention 25 “is important to understanding the relation between techne and episteme” (3.4). Parry alludes to the following example. Having established that episteme is not knowledge of contingency, “Aristotle still describes medicine—which does deal with contingency—as an episteme” (3.10). Parry’s observation is supported by Aristotle’s description of science in the Metaphysics, “all science is either of that which is always or of that which is for the most part” (1027a20–21). And “for the most part,” or what science is about, actually characterizes probability, which is said repeatedly to be what rhetoric is about in the Rhetoric: “probability is a thing that usually happens2” (1357a35), “is that which happens usually but not always3” (1402b22), and is “only usually true4” (1357a33). Therefore, the strict sense of episteme, as explained by Aristotle in the Metaphysics, seems to be limited to rather specialized fields like formal mathematical studies; even natural sciences deal with both certainty and probability and, in that sense, are about both episteme and techne. What Parry describes as Aristotle’s indifferent mixing of episteme and techne is what I view as a fundamentally relational element in Aristotle’s thinking, the thinking that prompts him to examine the value and the workings of rhetoric as an art or techne. As expressed in the Introduction, this is hylomorphism that I will discuss in Chapter Three, but it is also the main reason that I see Aristotle’s more lenient use of the word episteme not as misapplications of episteme to ideas that are probable but instead as indicative of his relational treatment of different fields of study. I see this use as indicative of Aristotle’s insight that, as important as specialized pursuits of both episteme and techne are, inquiries into how episteme and techne relate and interact are also essential. In other words, many fields of study are concerned with, to various extents, the search for an element of truth, certainty, or episteme. While some fields focus on episteme per se, others focus on techne in relation to episteme. To Aristotle, rhetoric is among the latter. To study techne or knowledge of probability in relation to episteme or knowledge of certainty is to deliberate and calculate primarily the contingent matters and connect them to the “knowledge … of universals” (Metaphysics 981a16), as described below: From many notions gained by experience one universal judgment about similar objects is produced. For to have a judgment that when Callias was ill of this disease this did him good, and similarly in the case of Socrates and in many individual cases, is a matter of experience; but to judge that it has done good to all persons of a certain constitution, marked off in one class, when they were ill of this disease, e.g., to phlegmatic or bilious people when burning with fever—this is a matter of art. (Metaphysics 981a6–12) Aristotle adds in the Rhetoric: In the same way the theory of rhetoric is concerned not with what seems probable to a given individual like Socrates or Hippias, but with what seems probable5 to men of a given type. (1356b33–35)

26 Aristotle and rhetorical invention Aristotle explains further, technites can generalize because they “know the ‘why’ and the cause”; that is, they “know in a truer sense” (Metaphysics 981a31). Similarly, the function of rhetoric is “to inquire the reason why some speakers succeed through practice and others spontaneously” (Rhetoric 1354a10). For example, similar to the techne of medicine that guides the physician with the knowledge of what could help all individuals with an affliction like lethargy or nausea, the techne of rhetoric guides the rhetorician with the knowledge of how to invent probable knowledge in rhetorical situations of certain types like deliberation and disputation. As a result, just as “we think art more truly knowledge than experience is, for an artist can teach and men of mere experience cannot” (Metaphysics 981b7–9), the art of rhetoric teaches how to invent the particular judgment, “that which happens usually but not always,” based on general principles. In these discussions, Aristotle connects techne to, or even gives it a characteristic of, episteme and shows that a techne like rhetoric connects the world of generality and certainty, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the world of particularity and contingency. By the same token, then, technites like rhetoricians are valuable precisely because they are good at operating in the realm between the purely scientific certainty and the purely random unpredictability, between the world of necessary truth and the world of senseless arbitrariness. This in-between realm is the world of the human and the domain of the rhetorical. These words by Aristotle are crucial to understanding his view of rhetorical invention, which is about experiences of truths and truths of experiences, not merely truths or merely experiences. Such a dynamic conception of rhetorical invention does not make it perfect; however, it does make it valid as well as viable. It depicts an aspect of the human condition as at once powerful and vulnerable. At times, rhetoricians seem to be and may very well be “of two minds, [leaving] many particulars of the theory unexplained” (Graff 125) for the time being. In Aristotle’s Rhetoric, for example, the element of certainty enables orators to sound convinced that “things that are true and things that are just have a natural tendency to prevail over their opposites6” (1355a21–22); that “things that are true and things that are better are, by their nature, practically always easier to prove and easier to believe in” (1355a35–39); and that “the arousing of prejudice, pity, anger, and similar emotions has nothing to do with the essential facts” (1354a16–17). Yet, contingencies compel orators to appreciate the shaping impact that strategies have on probable knowledge, strategies, such as the following: “things look better7 merely by being divided into their parts since they then seem to surpass a greater number of the things than before” (Rhetoric 1365a10–11). In the ensuing chapters, I will discuss strategies like this and the element of truth in them in more detail, but even though these strategies can make us question Aristotle’s faith in truth and his ethical compass, they do not have to. The absolute value, truth, or episteme of a whole may be constant, and studies of it in fields like theoretical mathematics are crucial to everyday lives. But absolute values are only one dimension of the dynamic human world where contingencies also operate and where therefore what only seems true, or what is only mostly true, can also become indispensable and thus true for a time being. This is why, as discussed

Aristotle and rhetorical invention 27 above, Aristotle describes probable truth as “what seems true” and yet as having an element of episteme in it, believes that it must be studied, and sees the techne of rhetoric as such a field of inquiry. To be sure, this kind of intellectual activity and knowledge that a techne like rhetoric deals with only contains episteme; it is not identical with it. As Aristotle states: We must be content, then, in speaking of such subjects and with such premises to indicate the truth roughly and in outline, and in speaking about things which are only for the most part true and with premises of the same kind to reach conclusions that are no better. (Nicomachean Ethics 1094b20–23). While Aristotle uses mathematics and rhetoric as examples to illustrate different levels of precision, he also connects ethics and rhetoric by pointing out that rhetoric is “a combination of the science of logic and of the ethical branch of politics”8 (Rhetoric 1359b10). Below I will first examine, historically, this dynamic and political aspect of Aristotle’s view of rhetoric: the sophistical reasoning that Aristotle inherits from his culture but then tries to revise, amend, and give a new “start” in his Rhetoric.

Sophistical reasoning As Aristotle states clearly, rhetoric is “partly like sophistical reasoning.” Examining the historical turning point when rhetoric becomes a distinct discipline of study, Edward Schiappa characterizes sophistical thinking before Plato and Aristotle as “less differentiated and more holistic in scope”—not drawing “a sharp line between the goal of seeking success and that of seeking truth—than is the case once Rhetoric and Philosophy were defined as distinct disciplines” (23). Other scholars reach similar conclusions and offer similar characterizations. Edward Hussey observes, for example, “It must not be thought that there was any consciousness at this time [of the Sophists] of a difference between a training in speaking and a training in thinking” (115). The quick review below of some scholarship on this earlier Sophistical tradition will show that while Aristotle draws a sharper line, than do the Sophists, between seeking success and seeking truth, between speech and thinking, between techne and episteme, he has preserved and thus continued partly the sophistical tradition, especially the willingness to maintain and investigate the tension and relation within the whole. Studies of the teachings by the Older Sophists Protagoras (480–411 BCE) and Gorgias (485–c380 BCE) can illustrate this more holistic Sophistic tradition that Aristotle preserves in his conception of rhetoric. Protagoras, who was expelled from Athens and whose books allegedly were publicly burned (Barnes 449), is well known for the words “Man is the measure of all things—of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not” in Fragment 371. In Fragment 216, according to the 2nd-century

28 Aristotle and rhetorical invention commentator Sextus Empiricus, Protagoras explains that man is the measure of all things because even if reason is “present in the matter,” human perceptions of it necessarily vary: The man whose condition is natural grasps, out of what is contained in matter, what can appear to those in a natural condition, whereas the man whose condition is not natural grasps what can appear to those in his condition. The same account, moreover, must be given of differences in age, the question whether one is asleep or awake, and every type of variation in one’s condition. (Sprague 11) It is because human beings perceive differently, they must judge for themselves, as opposed to senselessly accept judgment and values formed according to others’ perceptions. Sextus then reintroduces Fragment 371, “Man becomes the standard of judgment of things that are. For all things that appear to men also exist, but things which appear to no man do not exist either” (Sprague 11). Even though these words seem to deny reality of its independent existence from human perception, they have been interpreted differently. The difference in interpretation helps to show both the holistic characteristic of and the tension within Protagoras’ thinking. Mario Untersteiner argues that the word things in Protagoras refers to the “phenomenality” of things, thus permitting Protagorean things to have meanings of their own (42). The Protagorean “matter in flux,” Untersteiner explains, means that “the metaphysical concept of essence and all abstract concepts derived from it are subject to contradictory opinions”; as a result, “the only way left open to Protagoras was to turn his own attention to Man’s sense-experience, with a view to determining its value” (41). Untersteiner interprets the remark that human beings are the measure of all things as different human perceptions shaping different human conceptions of reality—not as a comment on whether a reality that is independent of human sense perceptions exists. This interpretation is consistent with the account by the historian Diogenes Laërtius (circa 3rd century), author of a ten-volume history of Greek philosophy. Diogenes, too, records Fragment 371, but he also follows it up with the following: “Where the gods are concerned, I’m not in a position to ascertain that they exist, or that they do not exist. There are many impediments to such knowledge, including the obscurity of the matter and the shortness of human life” (Waterfield 211). This addition helps to shed light on Jonathan Barnes’ terse remark that “371 is not atheistical” (449). Edward Hussey comments, too, that in these words Protagoras expresses a “general skepticism about any broad assertions going beyond ordinary experience” (116). According to this interpretation, Protagoras’ 371 is about how people’s perceptions, conceptions, and ideas about the true meaning of reality—not the true meaning of reality itself—are necessarily conflicting. Opponents to this view, however, interpret Protagoras as indeed commenting on things themselves, and one of them criticizes Untersteiner’s interpretation as a “wanton ink shed translation” (qtd. in Donovan 90). According to this second interpretation, admittance to not knowing

Aristotle and rhetorical invention 29 whether the gods exist “amounts to saying that [Protagoras] knows that they do not exist” (Sprague 15). Regarding the issue of “whether Protagoras might have held [the view] that the wind in itself is neither warm nor cold, or both warm and cold,” Robin Waterfield states that “in all likelihood Protagoras would have resisted the very idea of a wind-in-itself” as opposed to a “wind-perceived as warm” and a “wind perceived as cold” (207). Waterfield argues that since to Protagoras “all impressions are equally true” (207), “we are even justified in denying the possibility of falsehood” (211) and therefore should withhold “assenting to the moral superiority of one side of the case over another” (208). In short, these commentators contend that Protagoras purposefully does not acknowledge the possible existence of a meaningful reality independent of human activities or the role of that reality in shaping the meaning of human reality; rather, he views human perception, cogitation, deliberation as entirely responsible for coming up with the meaning of human reality, thoughts, and beliefs. This interpretation renders Protagoras’ view of human reasoning and value as unique and relativistic, with no elements of certainty. The two interpretations of Protagoras reflect the existence of two opposing interpretations of the relation between episteme and techne, an existence that characterizes Sophistical thinking. The issue of contention here is in fact about the role language-use plays in human perception and conception of the phenomenal world or reality. These two different interpretations show the vigorous state of tension within Protagoras: what is the role of language-use in that process of human perception and conception? To me, this tension gives rise to the elevated valuing of probable knowledge. This tension is what Aristotle inherits from his Sophistical predecessors and is what makes his rhetoric partly like Sophistical reasoning. Studies of another Sophist, Gorgias, help to illustrate the same tension and therefore support this point. Works by Gorgias that have survived include “On the Nonexistent” or “On Nature” and “Encomium of Helen.” Gorgias states in “On Nature,” “first and foremost, that nothing exists; second, that even if it exists it is inapprehensible to man; third, that even if it is apprehensible, still it is without a doubt incapable of being expressed or explained to the next man” (Sprague 42). Sextus explains Gorgias’ third point as follows: For that by which we signify is a formula (logos), and what lies outside us and exists is not a formula; therefore we do not signify to our neighbors what exists but a formula which is different from what lies outside us. Thus just as what is visible could not become audible, or the reverse, so, since what exists lies outside us, it cannot become our formula; and if it is not a formula, it will not be signified to anyone else. (qtd. in Barnes 471) In other words, when people see a tree in their yard, they think of the shade it allows them to enjoy in the summer and the leaves it forces them to rake in the fall; the feelings felt by their bodies and the ideas thought in their heads are

30 Aristotle and rhetorical invention realities or meanings that they perceive and conceive, not the meanings of the tree and the leaves themselves—even if such meanings do exist. Furthermore, Gorgias continues, even supposing the soreness people suffer and the comfort they enjoy are the meanings of the tree, human beings cannot communicate these meanings; instead, they communicate logoi or discursive words. Just as their understanding of existence is not the essence of the tree itself, their words cannot be their true perceptions of reality—even if such true perceptions of the tree-in-itself exist. Untersteiner argues that Gorgias is explaining how the metaphysical concepts of essence are subject to contradictory opinions (42). In other words, Gorgias is commenting on how human perceptions, understanding, and expressions are finite; he is not commenting on the existence of reality-in-itself that is perceived, understood, and expressed. This interpretation helps to explain why in the Helen Gorgias says that speech has the power of necessity. To other critics, however, Gorgias gives language-use the determining or exclusive power in shaping human thought and constructing meaning. Brian R. Donovan maintains that Gorgias’ second and third statements should not be “taken to mean that Gorgias is suddenly sincere in one of his apparent concessions to realism. There is every reason to believe that with this discourse he was renouncing all loyalty to the enterprise of cosmology” (113). Bruce McComiskey treats the Gorgianic trilemma as “a rhetorical ontology and epistemology” (34), a philosophy or an ontological skepticism that undermines the existence of “essentialist and totalizing entities” (35), the existence of the unchanging essence of reality. Similarly, William Seaton states, “In Gorgias’ view aesthetic texts embody the contradictions of reality and reproduce the ambivalences of the human mind as reflected in the ambiguities of language and therefore … [are] more true” (175). To these scholars, Gorgias is an anti-essentialist and his statement “nothing exists” indicates unambiguously the nonexistence of an unchanging and totalizing essence of things. Whether Protagoras and Gorgias are seen as agnostics regarding the human understanding of ultimate reality or taken as constructivists regarding the discursive power in relation to realities and the human understanding of them, both views deeply involve the epistemological dimension of the art of language-use, negotiating the tension between episteme and techne. As shall be seen shortly, this tension is palpable in Aristotle who also focuses on the complex relationality between episteme and techne, knowledge and language-use. I argue that understanding Aristotle’s observations of this complex relation between the human understanding of reality and the discursive art of rhetoric is crucial to understanding the sophistical characteristic of rhetoric according to Aristotle.

Dialectical reasoning His connection with sophistical reasoning notwithstanding, Aristotle also states that rhetoric is “partly like dialectic,” characterizing rhetoric as connecting to the philosophical method that can help to reach true realities. One way to understand this dialectical function of rhetorical invention according to Aristotle is through its complex connection with Plato’s views of dialectic and rhetoric. In comparison

Aristotle and rhetorical invention 31 with Aristotle, Plato prioritizes dialectic in a way that allows it a fundamentally governing relation with techne. In contrast with the one interpretation of the Sophists as emphasizing the determining impact of expression on meaning, Plato emphasizes the dictating impact of meaning on expression. Both Plato and Aristotle deem “the composite structure of soul and body … a living being” (Plato Phraedrus 246c) and the function of rhetoric, an “ability to move others toward justice by means of words” (Long “Attempting” 165). But Plato dichotomizes the soul and the body, the pure and the impure, the constant and the changing, episteme and techne more than Aristotle does. “I refuse the name of art to anything irrational,” says Socrates in Plato’s Gorgias (465e). In Plato’s Phaedrus, similarly, Socrates finds in the body, the world, and techne— “knowledge that is neighbor to becoming and varies with the various objects to which we commonly ascribe being”—of little value to “justice, its very self, and likewise temperance, and knowledge … the veritable knowledge of being that veritably is” (247d–e). Plato goes on to describe the changing realities of the world as places where the soul suffers the “extreme of her toil and struggling” (247b), imprisoned like “an oyster in its shell” (250c). The only exception is the lover of truth, who forgets “mother, brother, friends”; “worldly possessions”; and “all the rules of conduct, all the graces of life” (252a). The only role of techne for such lovers of truth is to explain the truth in appropriate ways to people whose souls are in poor conditions. In the words of Troels Engberg-Pedersen, such techne is “a mere redetechnologie (speech technology)” used only by those who are “morally good or ethically and politically insightful” (127–28) and on those who are not. In other words, thinking and expression, episteme and techne are separated and, in fact, dichotomized. Art is merely used for the true messages or purposes. As Robert Wardy puts it, techne is “firmly subordinated to” episteme (482): rhetoric, to be rhetoric, only expresses philosophical ideas. In contrast with the Sophists, Plato dichotomizes the mind and the senses, the immutable essences of reality and the changing shadows of reality, episteme and techne. Indeed, Aristotle “agrees with Plato that the nature of beauty and justice must be unchangeable to be known” (Stone 67) and that “the domain of physics is thus defined by metaphysics” (Pellegrin 569). However, Aristotle also sees the unchanging as known to people only in the world of the changing. The relationship between these two views in Aristotle’s thinking, like that between his view of episteme and techne, has been a longstanding focus of study among philosophers. One interpretation of Aristotle’s view of dialectic emphasizes its Platonic element, offering a more dichotomous reading of the relation between the mutable and the immutable. For example, Jacques Brunschwig argues that Aristotle’s rendering of rhetoric in his Rhetoric leads to the conclusion that “the history of rhetoric is … an utterly irregular and meaningless sequence of tiny and disconnected findings” necessitated by the “open air of the city and the public places” (51). Such an assessment of Aristotle’s carelessness in rendering the rhetorical history sharpens the contrast with many readings of Aristotle’s carefulness in discussing philosophy. Nicholas Rescher states, for example, that Aristotle’s insistence on things in the Metaphysics is unmistakable essentialism that privileges permanence and

32 Aristotle and rhetorical invention commensurability of things (4). This review, therefore, presupposes that Aristotle sees little connection between philosophy and rhetoric, emphasizing a side of Aristotle that reflects Plato’s view of dialectic. In contrast, other critics emphasize “another Aristotle” (Maly 16b). Arguing that this other Aristotle fundamentally destabilizes his view of the realm of permanence, they argue that Aristotle’s reference to permanence is an empty matter of convenience. For instance, Christoph Delius and Matthias Gatzemeier argue that Aristotle postulates first principles just to settle a methodological impasse, since the infinite regress in the human search for origin has to start or stop somewhere. They emphasize that, while Aristotle calls the unmoved mover God, the mover “did not create the world, nor does it guide the world now or take any part in it” (15). Similarly, Mark Stone maintains that many issues raised in Aristotle’s Metaphysics simply “remain undecided” and “never resolved” (65). Some issues that Stone points out include the following: what metaphysics really studies, how this universal science of being unifies all the particular sciences such as biology (66); what the nature of the form is, the form that both inheres in the flesh and bones of individual persons and is also the same in all persons (67); and what the divine, pure, thinking, and unchanging substance really is the substance that thinks of nothing but itself (67). According to Stone, instead of the all-encompassing or transcendental One or Form, the meaning of being to Aristotle can only be equivocal: There is no one common meaning of the word being that applies to all these things. … One cannot intelligibly say, as Plato wants to, that justice is; one can only say that this man is just. (67) According to this interpretation, the very concept of being and its implication for dialectic in Aristotle differ from those in Plato. Consequently, being partly like this kind of dialectic, rhetoric could still be quite Sophistical. This glimpse into the literature on Aristotle’s conception of dialectic focuses mostly on philosophical studies. I did so to prepare for the discussion of the similar tension within rhetorical studies that parallels that in philosophy. Moreover, I would like to emphasize that students of Aristotle’s view of rhetoric, in examining the relations among different categories that Aristotle indeed respects and among different interpretations that are rooted in his own texts, are not taking on any challenge that is unique to them; students of Aristotle need to work with each other. At the same time, Aristotelian rhetoricians embrace the interdisciplinary approach more readily than those in some other fields because Aristotle’s view of rhetoric more directly and readily confronts uncertainty and probability, given that Aristotle sees rhetoric as operating most of the time in the realm between the contingent human reality and the stable ideal, between language-use and thought, and between techne and episteme. Robert Wardy describes Aristotle’s contribution to rhetorical studies as “decisive” (482), and I see at least part of the decisive contribution as this: however the tension in Aristotle’s teachings will work out, the very tension or dilemma, as vexing as it can be, provides the dynamic, explorative, and pluralistic purpose and efficacy of rhetorical inquiries.

Aristotle and rhetorical invention 33

Both sophistical and dialectical reasoning The tension within Aristotle’s views of dialectic and sophistical reasoning provides the perfect context where rhetoric becomes the very tension itself between dialectic and sophistical reasoning. According to Pierre Pellegrin, this context or space is very real to Aristotle and therefore should be engaged if we want to understand Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric. Pellegrin explains that to Aristotle the domain of the physical has some meaningful independence from that of the metaphysical: “Weak as they are, for instance, the terrestrial substances … are not simply shadows cast by the ideal world, and thus they deserve to be considered in themselves” (569). What rhetoricians study in the ordinary realities are connected to but also independent of the extraordinary realities. Aristotle himself characterizes this “peculiar place” of rhetoric as “the antistrophe of dialectic” (Rhetoric 1354a1). Antistrophe has been interpreted either as “offshoot to indicate rhetoric’s subordinate relationship to dialectics within probable reasoning or as counterpart to indicate an equal relation to dialectics” (Lauer “Issues” 133). More specifically, the antistrophic rhetoric has also been understood as “the knowledge of objects commonly accessible to everyone,” in contrast to dialectic that is “the knowledge of definite objects accessible through special sciences” (Brunschwig 44). Once again, it is the indeterminacies of this place for rhetoric according to Aristotle that provide his discussions of it with “the vocabulary for their own correction” (McKeon “Person” 7) and for being inclusive. It is thus not enough to take Aristotle’s view of rhetoric as either merely Sophistic or merely Platonic. Being an Aristotelian rhetorician means engaging the dynamic and complex relationality of the different parts of rhetoric. Modern rhetorical studies have pursued this pluralistic characteristic of Aristotle’s thinking in the larger contexts of the never-ending process of human understanding. Janet Atwill sees the tension between Platonic and sophistical sides within Aristotle as being productive: “When Aristotle defined rhetoric as the art of observing the available means of persuasion, he placed the art in a peculiar place between theory and practice, subjectivism and empiricism, the aesthetic and the utilitarian” (xii). Atwill connects Aristotle’s view of rhetorical invention to the “early Greek conceptions of invention [that] depicted the art as a process and act of ‘making a path.’ To make a path is to enable new perspectives, new points of contact—even new destinations” (xx). Atwill, in other words, contextualizes the function of rhetoric by emphasizing its creative lineage and, in doing so, she both continues and complements Richard McKeon and Karl Wallace’s interpretation of Aristotle’s view of rhetorical invention as emphasizing discovery. McKeon and Wallace argue that the Aristotelian emphasis on the four causes of change (material, efficient, formal, and completing)—instead of only the Sophistic (efficient) or Platonic (formal) cause—revises the Platonic immutable essence of form with a renewed emphasis on the fundamentally dynamic nature of things (Introduction 252; “Introduction” xx–xxi). In the Physics, Aristotle explains the four courses: the material cause is “that out of which a thing comes to be and which persists,” such as “the bronze of the statue”; the formal cause is “the definition of

34 Aristotle and rhetorical invention the essence,” such as “of the octave the relation of 2:1”; the efficient cause is “the primary cause or source of the change or rest,” such as “the man who deliberated”; and the final cause is that “for the sake of which a thing is done,” such as “health [being] the cause of walking about” (194b23–195a2). Richard Stichler characterizes this four-cause view as follows: “the material and formal causes thus explain what exists statically, while the initiating [efficient] and the completing causes explain what exists dynamically” (245). Stichler further explains the four causes in larger historical and conceptual contexts: Democritus’ emphasis on the material causes leaves the combination of the material elements difficult to explain; Protagoras’ preference for the initiating causes abandons completion and ultimately meaning; Plato’s focus on the form could not explain “the dynamic dimension of experience” adequately; and therefore Aristotle shifts his view towards a completing cause that combines all three while leaving them as distinct causes at the same time (245–46). In other words, supplementing the dynamics between form and matter with the dynamics among multiple causes, Aristotle’s understanding of the form in the end differs from Plato’s in that Aristotle sees the completing cause as prior to the formal cause and as responsive to all other causes. As put by McKeon, the four-cause view shifts the focus of the rhetorical debate from arbitrating between two causes—the dichotomized Form versus matter, Reality versus language-use, or episteme versus techne—to understanding how all four causes work together for things to actualize gradually or probabilistically (“Introduction” xx). The formal and final causes safeguard human reasoning from the chaotic relativism where right is always wrong, while the material and efficient causes protect human reasoning from the otherworldly impracticality where right is always right. In the words of Robert Wardy, It is not that Aristotle simply returns to Gorgias: his dialectic achieves a truly novel synthesis. Rhetoric hardly suggests that there is nothing to choose from between a philosophical argument and a rhetorical plea. But Aristotle does not merely maintain, as does the Plato of the Phaedrus, that rhetoric is, after all, acceptable in its (unavoidable) place (483). In other words, Aristotle emphasizes the connection between thought and expression as an ongoing process. To the criticism that Aristotle’s view of the four causes privileges fabrication by the human over imitation of the divine since “it is only because man first grasps himself as architect, as initiator of fabrication, that nature can in turn appear to him as moved by the mechanisms of cause and effect” (Reiner Schurmann qtd. in Long “Duplicity” 148), Christopher Long points out that the four causes account for not only changes in humans making artifacts but also, in Aristotle’s own words, “every kind of natural change” (Physics 194b23). In other words, the four-cause approach emphasizes the importance to understand the relation between human beings and multiple factors in their natural environment. This view of multiple causes reflects an important characteristic of Aristotelianism, a way of thinking that emphasizes relationality even between Plato and the Sophists, that illustrates the complex relations within as well as among categories like

Aristotle and rhetorical invention 35 episteme and techne, and that provides a means by which differences and change can be studied and understood in the context of similarity and continuity. It is only consistent with this view of multiple causes when we read Aristotle as seeing rhetoric as inseparable from inventing as well as discovering probable knowledge. Aristotle’s attention to the complex relation between episteme and techne, thought and language-use can only be dismissed as insignificant by the narrowest understanding of his view of rhetoric. Drawing upon both Platonic ideas and Sophistic reasoning, Aristotle’s Rhetoric exemplifies rhetorical invention as inquiries into probable knowledge that help to induce cooperation among human beings through language-use (Burke, Rhetoric 43).

Classical rhetoric The tension between episteme and techne in Aristotle’s conceptualization of rhetoric received scholarly attention in ancient Greece, through the Roman and Medieval times, and then during the Renaissance. In Two Greek Aristotelian Commentators on the Intellect, Frederic Schroeder and Robert Todd note two opposing interpretations by ancient Greek commentators regarding how, according to Aristotle, the human intellect within the human body comprehends truth that, ultimately, exists independently from the human perception of it. Schroeder and Todd discuss how Alexander of Aphrodisias (2nd century AD) and Themistius (317–390 AD) interpreted differently Aristotle’s On the Soul (De Anima). Alexander’s view is described as follows: In the Alexandrain theory of light, the source of light is supremely luminous and is also thereby cause of illumination. On the other hand, illumination is not merely an effect of the source. It is a joint effect when both illuminans and illuminatum are juxtaposed. The illuminatum makes its own contribution to the effect produced within this pattern of causation (De Anima 42.19–43.11). By analogy, the productive intellect as supreme object of thought is the cause for enmattered forms of their becoming objects of thought. Yet when the enmattered forms are juxtaposed with the productive intellect, they make their own contribution to the effect produced (88.26–89.6). That juxtaposition takes place when the human intellect has evolved to the point of being able to abstract the enmattered forms from their substrate. Truth is embedded or enmattered in the phenomenal world, and the productive human intellect recognizes truth and draws it out of the mixture of the immutable and the mutable. I discuss in Chapter Three this “joint effect” through which truth is known to the human productive intellect, but it is clear here that Alexander argues against the Platonic interpretation that sees the guiding form, essence, or truth as a referential vision separable from the human intellect. When Aristotle states that “The word substance has three meanings—form, matter, and the complex of both” (Aristotle On the Soul, 414a15), Alexander interprets it as that form, essence, or truth is enmattered within a living human being and it guides the human intellect

36 Aristotle and rhetorical invention from within when it experiences the phenomenal world. This means, of course, that the human intellect does not operate in a vacuum; at the same time, this “joint effect” also suggests that the reverse is the case, that human productive or inventive processes of understanding, which move from opinions to probable truth and to truth, are not devoid of form, essence, and truth. Human understandings of truth happen not just as epiphanies but also as processes including rhetorical processes. This is hylomorphism in Aristotle’s thinking, the thinking that substance is mixed, enmattered, or hylomorphic with both matter and form, essence, or truth within it. Teachings of Roman rhetorician Cicero (106–43 BCE) shaped Medieval, Renaissance, as well as Roman rhetoric, and all continued to pursue the relational characteristic of Aristotle’s view of rhetorical invention. Cicero adapted Aristotle’s four-cause view for discovering and establishing both facts and causes in specific subject matters in order to overcome “the problem of Roman culture, the separation of wisdom and eloquence, of philosophy and rhetoric” (McKeon, “Uses” 47). In doing so, Cicero made rhetoric “a part of political science” (Murphy 8) and highlighted the sophistical component of Aristotle’s view of rhetorical invention. Take, for example, how Cicero rendered the four causes for rhetorical activities. Taking the material, formal, efficient, and final causes, Cicero in effect translated them into four human activities: conjecturing the fact, defining the name, qualifying or evaluating the judgment, and translating the choice of competent judge. As a result, while Aristotelian rhetoric differentiates among theoretical, practical, and productive knowledge and divides rhetoric into forensic, political, and epideictic on the basis of audience, speaker, and subject, Ciceronian rhetoric, according to McKeon, combines the four activities of conjecturing, defining, evaluating, and completing and interprets Aristotle’s view of the three kinds of rhetoric as judicial, deliberative, and demonstrative to unite wisdom and eloquence in human action (“Uses” 48). In this act of renaming, McKeon maintains, Cicero replaces metaphysics with rhetoric as an architectonic art (57), replacing, in a way, episteme with techne, knowledge of certainty with that of probability as the leading force of the two. McKeon explains that when “Aristotle’s four scientific questions concerning objective causes were transformed by Cicero into four rhetorical questions concerning verbal issues” (“Uses” 54), “the certainties and necessities of proof were merged with the estimations and necessities of action” (58). Nola Heidlebaugh characterizes this development by Cicero as broadening the scope of rhetorical invention characterized by Aristotle: The four issues and four types of controversy were to constitute a universal way of generating probable knowledge. However, it was only by applying the questions in debate that the nature of the controversy could be discovered, the subject matter determined, and the most probable claims on both sides ascertained. … Instead of asking “is there a cause and what is it?” Cicero asked, “Is there a stasis (point of dispute) and what is it?” (118) Contrasting Aristotle’s and Cicero’s visions of rhetoric, Heidlebaugh comments, “Arguably, Aristotle’s scientific method, with its emphasis on proof, does not generate new ideas” because “knowledge is determined a priori” (118). Perhaps this

Aristotle and rhetorical invention 37 last argument by Heidlebaugh can take more into consideration the complex relation between probable and scientific knowledge according to Aristotle and also what Cicero was able to develop out of Aristotle’s rhetorical thinking. Without negating the political and sophistical aspect of Ciceronian rhetoric, for instance, Donovan Ochs points out that Cicero’s orator believes in the “universal law” and is “a cultured mixture of philosopher, lawyer, and politician” (166), a view that balances Heidlebaugh’s. As Michael Carter points out also, the pre-Socratic “doctrine of opposite and harmony” (102), “conflict and resolution” (105) underscores the generative principle of stases and the concept of kairos in Sophistic, Aristotelian, as well as Ciceronian rhetoric, and rhetorical adaptations overall are probably “more evolutionary than revolutionary” (109). I will discuss stases in Chapter Five, but together all these studies show clearly that the “universal ways” engaging the matter, episteme and techne relating to each other, remain a focal point of discussion in Ciceronian rhetoric. Medieval rhetoricians also operate with Aristotle’s relational conception of rhetorical invention. It is true that Aristotle’s works were virtually unknown to the Latin West until the mid-12th century and that, as James Murphy points out, even after Aristotle’s works were rediscovered, “it is more probable that Aristotle’s Rhetoric came to be known … as a valuable adjunct to the studies of ethics and political science” (97) rather than an art that rhetorically invented ideas. It is certainly true also that, as William Purcell points out, even though Medieval rhetoric responds to rhetorical exigencies, logos is understood as the Word of God and rhetoricians, interpreters of the Word. Still, Medieval rhetoric, influenced by Roman rhetoricians like Cicero, shows that the Aristotelian relational view of rhetorical invention is quietly playing an important role. For example, views like Augustine’s “conventional signs” and others show insights into the role of human language-use in thinking. Indeed, natural signs are viewed as things that “God intends an individual to understand,” as James Murphy explains, and languages are viewed as conventional signs with which “living creatures show to one another for the purpose of conveying, in so far as they are able, the motion of their spirits or something which they have sensed or understood” (qtd. in Murphy 288). At the same time, Murphy emphasizes two ideas important in Augustine’s metarhetoric of signs. The first is that Augustine’s idea of “interior truth” resonates with that of the soul by Plato, but there is also a second idea: A second and even more profound concept, also from Augustine’s Concerning the Teacher, is the proposition that “man is only ‘prompted’ by words in order that he may learn, and it is apparent that only a very small measure of what a speaker thinks is expressed in his words.” This statement occurs in the last chapter (14) of the book, clearly in conclusion. The idea that words are mere “prompters,” coupled with the earlier idea of an “interior truth,” would seem to indicate a clear reliance upon an individual’s powers as private learner—as opposed to an exterior person’s ability either to instruct the hearer or to persuade him merely by the force of conventional signs he uses in communicating with him. (288)

38 Aristotle and rhetorical invention Murphy concludes that, to Augustine, rhetorical device is “an evocative trigger, not a cause of action in the hearer” and this idea helps to explain why Medieval rhetoric deals with tropes and figures more than invention and even arrangement: the process already exists in the mind and soul of the person (289). Note, however, that Murphy describes only the first idea as Platonic, not the second. What is the nature of the second idea? In “The End of the Ancient World,” Murphy states, “Augustine’s unique combination of secular experience and Christian enthusiasm made him particularly well suited to analyze the debate about Christian use of ‘pagan’ literature and rhetoric” (235). The tension here in Augustine is apparently between Christianity and paganism, but it is also similar to the tension I have been tracing in Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric, the tension between episteme and techne, between truth and words, and between Logos and logos. The fact that Augustine spends time wrestling with conventional signs at all, even just as a trigger, in the search for truth brings to mind Aristotelian rhetorical art that is partly like dialectic and partly like sophistical reasoning. Augustine and Aristotle may view the end of the signing process differently, but they agree on the need for the process, as impure as that process may be. As Murphy states, people know the universe “through the grace of God” but are also, he adds, “aided by signs both natural and conventional” (289–90 emphasis mine); the Scripture, as the basic source for the preacher, “provides him with both valid and probable proofs” (323 emphasis mine); and finally, God controls the message and the rhetorician chooses the medium. When the medium fails, Augustine would say, it cannot be the fault of the message, but only the weakness of two imperfect humans groping through a universe of multitudinous signs toward the signs that will for them reveal that message. (291 emphasis mine) Whether or not this searching process is called invention, Augustine is wrestling with conventional signs in relation to truth, techne in relation to episteme—on his way to truth. In Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, Murphy goes beyond Augustine’s De doctrina christiana, “the first truly Medieval treatment on the communicative arts” (107), and provides valuable details on many works by other Medieval writers. These works, too, show Medieval writers’ struggle with the tension between episteme and techne. For example, Murphy points out the discussions by Guibert (1053– 1124) on the Gospel writers’ use of sententiae—moral sayings such as proverbs, adages, aphorisms—from the Old Testament and on the four ways to interpret the Scriptures: historical, allegorical, tropological, and moral (302). All of this illustrates probable, not absolute, proofs. Furthermore, Murphy comments: Of course Guibert had not invented the concept of multiple interpretations, which has roots at least as far back as Judaic exegesis long before Christ. Gregory, Jerome, and Augustine had all commented on the practice; Origen and other preachers had made it popular in the early church. But Guibert’s

Aristotle and rhetorical invention 39 ready acceptance, coupled with what seems to be a necessary defense of his method, argues that at least in the late eleventh century the idea was well understood but still needed support. (303) The debate continued in the discussion on “the narrow path of reason” (Murphy 307, 309) by the Cistercian monk Alain de Lille in his On the Preacher’s Art (1199) and the four types of significations by Thomas of Salisbury in his Summa de arte praedicandi in the early 13th century: In the first part of the Summa Thomas argues that just as physics provides the rationale of bodily things, so ethics and logic deal with the spiritual things. Ethics and logic are parts of philosophy. Theology, like philosophy, uses “significations” drawn from words. But of the four types of significations, the literal or historical sense belongs particularly to philosophy and theology; the other three—tropological, allegorical, and anagogical—belong to the study of sacred Scripture. The literal sense derives signification from a thing (res), whereas the other three derive them from a locution (vocum). Locutions involve verbal accounts of things in fables, argument, or true accounts of events. Analogy and metaphor are two modes useful in educing significations through words; analogy is subsumed under grammar and dialect, while metaphor falls under rhetoric. (320) The ultimate purpose here is to understand and live the Word of God, but for humans, sayings, fables, and rhetoric become part of the process. These documented somber considerations of the human factor in the search for the divine are consistent with Stephen Toulmin’s observation of Medieval logicians: Medieval logicians did not insist on replacing statements by propositions before admitting our utterances into their systems of logic: the expressions of the logical theory should be themselves timeless, without demanding that the units between which logical relations held must also be eternal and unchanging. (181) Similarly, Medieval rhetoric, with its aim to understand and live the most immutable of the immutables, recognizes the dynamic utterance as an unavoidable part of the process. Richard Lee and Christopher Long also show that “Thomas Aquinas recognizes the crucial role logos (ratio) plays in noetic apprehension” (352). All of this is reminiscent of Aristotle’s finesse in dealing with rhetorical invention as a boundary-crossing techne, a techne for the thought in process that values the probable but does not deny the presence of and the need for the certain. Renaissance rhetoricians, as George Kennedy states, indeed read the Rhetoric, produced important commentaries on it, but did not show a “real appreciation” of it overall. This curious phenomenon has drawn some scholarly attention; for instance, Atwill speculates that it has to do with their lack of interest in politics and the public realm (39). Nevertheless, to the extent they pursued rhetorical inquiry,

40 Aristotle and rhetorical invention they did so with a clear awareness of the dynamic relationship between thought and expression in the process of language-use. “It would be nice,” says Renaissance scholar Lawrence Green, “to think that no one will ever again make the mistake of thinking that Aristotle’s enthymeme is a rigidly deductive form of inferential reasoning. But this error has been corrected before, and the correction has been ignored before” (19). This comment shows how much Renaissance rhetoricians were aware of the different worlds that meet in Aristotle’s enthymematic or probable thinking. Thomas Sloane describes Renaissance rhetoric as follows: “In its engagement with specificity, rhetoric necessarily acknowledges that meaning is context-driven, and the outcome of the dispute is often provisional and local, with a lingering modesty and dubiousness” (202). Sloane describes the rhetorical spirit during the Renaissance as “disputation refined through personality and social context into a multiplex argument, aimed at judgment predicated less on the immutability of truth than on the possibility of human concord” (203–04). The immutability of truth was emphasized less, but the humanist rhetoricians during the Renaissance, with their “lingering modesty and dubiousness,” manage to have rhetoric “suspended between form and content” (Barilli 12), between episteme and techne, with flexible boundaries between the immutable and the changing. Perhaps rhetorical invention during the Renaissance acted as a corrective for the human impatience that arises with the inability to transcend one’s own human imperfection.

Rhetorical invention today The study of rhetorical invention, the relation between meaning and expression, between episteme and techne in the process of language-use, is vibrant today and manifests a familiar pattern: critics argue from both sides and from the middle. The view that thinking and expression are separate activities has its advocates. Thomas Cole carries on the rhetorical tradition that takes Aristotle’s words about rhetoric’s subject matter being artificial or artistic in the “narrowest and the most conventional sense” (Cole ix). This interpretation of Aristotle’s view of rhetoric separates philosophy and rhetoric, episteme and techne, meaning and expression, leaving not much room for rhetorical invention. As Eugene Garver argues, the process of language-use, to Aristotle, produces new speeches on given subjects. In his commentary on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Garver compares rhetorical lines of argument, mainly common topics, with “principles of the sciences,” but while scientific principles produce “scientific conclusions,” rhetorical lines of argument produce “persuasive speeches.” Garver concludes, Such topics constitute common rhetorical knowledge, ‘what everybody knows,’ which is why Aristotle says that using them ‘will not increase our understanding of any particular class of things.’ The speaker will use topics as an organized way of finding things to say on a given subject. (116) In short, the process of language-use in producing speeches does not participate in the shaping of the knowledge, the content of the speeches. Cole’s and Garver’s

Aristotle and rhetorical invention 41 views of Aristotle’s Rhetoric must use the rather narrow sense of dialectic and sophistical reasoning to explain Aristotle’s characterization of rhetoric as being partly like each. Deconstructive theory tips the balance between techne and episteme the other way. Connecting rhetoric to postmodern philosophy, James Aune summarizes three characteristics of deconstruction in relation to language-use as follows: (1) the nature of language prevents meaning from being fully communicated; (2) texts exist on binary terms and privilege one of the terms; and (3) in actuality, the opposition of the polarized concepts is a myth (259). These views resonate with the Sophistic/Gorgian trilemma in reversed order: (3) if people know things, they cannot express the things they know; (2) if things do exist, people cannot know what they are; and (1) nothing exists. Deconstruction, therefore, sides with the fundamentally relativistic view of Sophistic rhetoric that interprets reality and meaning as exclusively discursive. Other current thinkers argue that the enthymematic or rhetorical thinking is fundamental to philosophical and scientific methods of reasoning; thus, probability becomes a foundation for scientific, philosophical, as well as rhetorical judgments (McKeon, “Methods”). For instance, Chaim Perelman argues that “axioms in the mathematical sciences, considered at first self-evident, were subsequently shown to be conventions of language” (Realm 158). Philosophical inquiries are thus fundamentally rhetorical in nature; as Perelman states, “in morals, for example, reasoning is neither deductive nor inductive, but justificative” (“New” 1100). In his Permanence and Change, Kenneth Burke also argues that all cultural concepts are manipulated and can only be interpretations of realities. The social construction theory argues that knowledge is a social artifact, “generated, established, and maintained” (Bruffee 91) through conversations, as expressed below: We ordinarily assume that thought is some sort of given, an “essential attribute” of the human mind. The view that conversation and thought are causally related assumes not that thought is an essential attribute of the human mind but that it is instead an artifact created by social interaction. (87) This view sides with the relativistic interpretation of the Sophists in that it deems social conversation, production, and fabrication the single originator of knowledge. Other contemporary approaches to rhetorical invention engage the tension between techne and episteme and see the primary function of rhetorical inquiry as inducing cooperation and fostering connections among differences. For example, M. M. Bakhtin argues that the meaning of expression does not reside within linguistic utterances but is possible only at the interactive boundaries of those utterances, boundaries that are marked by the change of speaking subjects; that is, meaning “presuppose[s] the other” (“Problem” 72). Bakhtin’s emphasis on the meaning of the self as suspended between the self and the other, for example, is analogous to the relationship between episteme and techne discussed by Aristotle and so many others throughout the history of Western rhetoric. In fact, according

42 Aristotle and rhetorical invention to Bakhtin, meaning is always at once linguistic unification and ideological heteroglossia (Dialogic 272). Linguistic norms, or centralizing forces, attempt to unify the differences by paradoxically marking “unofficial language and unofficial thought” (Dialogic 20). Language users, therefore, must engage the interaction between the official and the unofficial, the stable and the contingent because probable meaning, which rhetorical activities help to invent, is the transitory balance between continuity and change, thought and expression, episteme and techne.

Conclusions Aristotle’s view of rhetorical invention as an art of thinking that takes place at the boundaries of episteme and techne has a long history and is therefore a rich resource for cross-cultural rhetorical and discursive studies in the globalized 21st century. It has the modest goal of helping human communities use language to develop probable judgment in the realm of the contingent. Communication Studies, Rhetoric and Composition, and many other fields are carrying on this indispensable and humble tradition, helping human communities invent the possibility of the new, move from dissonance to probable knowledge and action (Wallace Understanding 34), and actualize the potential of rhetorical situations (McKeon “Creativity” 36). In the words of Thomas Farrell, “It can only be the advocacy of ethos, pathos, and logos which provides the initiative and hence the opportunity for ordinary people to transform themselves through choice, action, and proper judgment” (98). Defining rhetoric as “the collaborative art of addressing and guiding decision and judgment” (1) and “forming public convictions and doctrines and presenting them” (8), Farrell states that through the interpretative lenses of interested common opinions (endoxa), rhetorical inquiry approaches reality as signs, probabilities, examples—as the material of public argument (32). Through rhetorical invention, provisional configurations of “coherence and form,” both of which contain within them “tension, disturbance, struggles, and conflict” (29), are elicited from the seemingly “random, partisan, unintelligible” (30) reality. In so doing, rhetoric directs individual cognitivity to a “consciousness of others” (48) and guides language users to achieve cooperation with each other. This view has episteme and techne, form and matter, integrated in the realm of the probable, the realm of the human. Scholars in Communication Studies like Barbara Warnick, Nola Heidlebaugh, Thomas Farrell, and many others whose works have been and will continue to inform this current study are not the only ones who have carried on the cross-disciplinary discussions of Aristotle’s view of rhetorical invention in literacy education. In Rhetoric and Composition Studies, Richard Young and Alton Becker describe the enthymeme as the interaction between new knowledge and “knowledge which already existed” (81) through both education and intuition. James Kinneavy draws upon the classical concept of right timing to emphasize the connection between temporality and “divine revelation” (215) as fundamental to rhetorical inquiry. Janice Lauer inquires into the debate about rhetorical invention, rhetoric as epistemic, and the history of the relationship

Aristotle and rhetorical invention 43 between philosophy and rhetoric (Invention). Rhetorical invention in Composition Studies focuses on the relation between episteme and techne and helps the learner connect the self and the other in inventing new meanings together and through the process of writing. Comparative rhetorical studies in general and comparative Chinese Confucian studies in particular can be enriched by such a dynamic, interdisciplinary, and rhetorical approach of bridging. Once we see that the teaching of Confucius has ideas that are similar to techne and episteme already connected as well as differentiated, we will be empowered by important insights into ways that cultures both similar and different can understand and coexist with each other.

Notes 1 Kennedy’s translation is similar in spirit but apparently corrects a syntactical error in Roberts’ translation. Instead of describing probability as not being “anything whatever,” Kennedy’s translation reads, “a probability [eikos] is what happens for the most part, not in a simple sense, as some define it, but whatever … is so related to that in regard to which it is probable as a universal is related to a particular” (1.2.15 emphasis mine). 2 Again, Kennedy’s translation differs in phrasing but not so in meaning: “A probability [eikos] is what happens for the most part” (1.2.15). 3 Kennedy’s translation is “what is for the most part true” (2.25.10). 4 Kennedy’s translation is “mostly true [only] for the most part” (1.2.14). 5 Kennedy’s translation of Roberts’ “probable” is “true” (1.2.11). 6 Kennedy’s translation: “by nature always more productive of good syllogism” (1.1.12). 7 Kennedy’s translation is not “better”; he uses “more” (1.7.31). 8 Kennedy’s translation of “the ethical branch of politics” is “knowledge of characters” (1.4.5).

Works Cited Aristotle. The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation. Ed. Jonathan Barnes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984. ———. On Rhetoric. Trans. George A. Kennedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. ———. Rhetoric. Trans. W. Rhys Roberts. New York: The Modern Library, 1954. Atwill, Janet M. Rhetoric Reclaimed: Aristotle and the Liberal Arts Tradition. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998. Aune, James Arnt. “Rhetoric after Deconstruction.” Rhetoric and Philosophy. Ed. Richard A. Cherwitz. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1990. 253–73. Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1981. ———. “The Problem of Speech Genres.” Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Trans. Vern W. McGee. Eds. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986. 60–102. Barilli, Renato. Rhetoric. Trans. Giuliana Menozzi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. Barnes, Jonathan. “XXI: The Sophists.” The Presocratic Philosophers. New York: Routledge, 1996. 448–471. Briggs, Ward W., ed. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 176: Ancient Greek Authors. Detroit: A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book Gale Research, 1997.

44 Aristotle and rhetorical invention Bruffee, Kenneth A. “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind.’” Composition in Four Keys: Inquiring into the Field. Eds. Mark Wiley, Barbara Gleason, and Louise Wetherbee Phelps. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Company Publishing, 1996. 84–97. Brunschwig, Jacques. “Aristotle’s Rhetoric as a ‘Counterpart’ to Dialectic.” Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Ed. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. 34–55. Brunschwig, Jacques and Geoffrey E. R. Lloyd, eds. Greek Thought: A Guide to Classical Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000. Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. ———. Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1965. Carter, Michael. “Stasis and Kairos: Principles of Social Construction in Classical Rhetoric.” Rhetoric Review. 9 (1988): 97–112. Cole, Thomas. The Origins of Rhetoric in Ancient Greece. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. Delius, Christoph and Matthias Gatzemeier. The Story of Philosophy: From Antiquity to the Present. English Edition. Trans. David Jenkinson and Michael Scuffil. Cologne, Germany: Konemann, 2000. Donovan, Brian R. Saying and Knowing: A Study in Early Greek Concept of Rhetoric (Epistemology). PhD Dissertation. State University of New York at Albany, 1988. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1988. Engberg-Pedersen, Troels. “Is There an Ethical Dimension of Aristotelian Rhetoric?” Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Ed. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. 116–41. Farrell, Thomas B. Norms of Rhetorical Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993. Garver, Eugene. “The Modesty of Aristotle’s Rhetoric.” Inventing a Discipline: Rhetoric Scholarship in Honor of Richard E. Young. Ed. Maureen Daly Goggin. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2000. 123–45. Graff, Richard J. Practical Oratory and the Art of Prose: Aristotle’s Theory of Rhetorical Style and Its Antecedents. PhD Dissertation. Northwestern University, 2000. Green, Lawrence D. “Aristotelian Rhetoric, Dialectic, and the Traditions of Antistrophe.” Rhetorica. 8.1 (1990): 5–27. Heidlebaugh, Nola J. Judgment, Rhetoric, and the Problem of Incommensurability: Recalling Practical Wisdom. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2001. Hussey, Edward. “The Age of the Sophists.” The Prescoratics. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972. 107–26. Kennedy, George. Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Kinneavy, James L. “Kairos: A Neglected Concept in Classical Rhetoric.” Composition in Four Keys: Inquiring into the Field. Eds. Mark Wiley, Barbara Gleason, and Louise Wetherbee Phelps. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1996. 211–24. Lauer, Janice M. Invention in Rhetoric and Composition. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Parlor Press, 2004. ———. “Issues in Rhetorical Invention.” Essays on Classical Rhetoric and Modern Discourse. Eds. Robert J. Connors, Lisa S. Ede, and Andrea A. Lunsford. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984. 127–39. Lee, Richard A. and Christopher P. Long. “Nous and Logos in Aristotle.” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie. 54.3 (2007): 348–67. Long, Christopher P. “Attempting the Political Art: Socrates, Plato and the Politics of Truth.” Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy. 38 (2012): 153–74. Eds. Gary M. Gurtler, S. J. and William Wians. Boston: Brill, 2012.

Aristotle and rhetorical invention 45 ———. “The Duplicity of Beginning: Schürmann, Aristotle and the Origins of Metaphysics.” The Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal. 29.2 (2008): 145–59. ———. “Introduction.” The Basic Works of Aristotle. New York: Random House, 1941. vii–xxxix. ———. Introduction to Aristotle. New York: The Modern Library, 1992. ———. “The Methods of Rhetoric and Philosophy: Invention and Judgment.” Rhetoric: Essays in Invention and Discovery. Ed. Mark Backman. Woodbridge, CT: Ox Bow Press, 1987. 56–65. ———. “Person and Community, Individual and Society, Reformation and Revolution.” Person and Society. Eds. George F. McLean and Hugo Meynell. New York: University Press of America, 1988. 3–16. ———. “The Uses of Rhetoric in a Technological Age: Architectonic Productive Arts.” The Prospect of Rhetoric: Report of the National Developmental Project. Ed. Lloyd F. Bitzer and Edwin Black. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1971. 44–63. Maly, Kenneth. “Through Substance Metaphysics and Objectifying Subjectivity to Another European Beginning.” Call to Earth. 1.2 (Sept., 2000): 16–18. McComiskey, Bruce. Gorgias and the New Sophistic Rhetoric. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002. McKeon, Richard. “Creativity and the Commonplace.” Rhetoric: Essays in Invention and Discovery. Ed. Mark Backman. Woodbridge, CT: Ox Bow Press, 1987. 25–36. Murphy, James J. Rhetoric in the Middle Ages. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1974. Ochs, Donovan J. “Cicero’s Rhetorical Theory: With Synopses of Cicero’s Seven Rhetorical Works.” A Synoptic History of Classical Rhetoric. 3rd ed. Eds. James J. Murphy and Richard A. Katula. Mahwah, NJ: Hermagoras Press, 2003. 151–99. Parry, Richard. “Episteme and Techne.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition). Ed. Edward N. Zalta. n.d. Web (accessed Jan. 30, 2014). Pellegrin, Pierre. “Aristotle.” Greek Thought: A Guide to Classical Knowledge. Ed. Jacques Brunschwig and Geoffrey E. R. Lloyd. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000. 554–75. Perelman, Chaim. “The New Rhetoric: A Theory of Practical Reasoning.” The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present. Eds. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. New York: Bedford, 2000. 1077–103. ———. The Realm of Rhetoric. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982. Plato. The Selected Dialogues of Plato. Eds. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963. Rescher, Nicholas. Process Philosophy: A Survey of Basic Issues. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000. Rorty, Amelie Oksenberg, ed. Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Schiappa, Edward. The Beginnings of Rhetorical Theory in Classical Greece. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. Schroeder, Frederic M. and Robert B. Todd, trans. Two Greek Aristotelian Commentators on the Intellect. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990. Seaton, William. “Gorgias of Leontini.” Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 176: Angient Greek Authors. Ed. Ward W. Briggs. Detroit: A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book Gale Research, 1997. 171–75. Sloane, Thomas O. “Never-Ending Dispute: A Proposal of Marriage.” The Rhetoric Canon. Ed. Brenda Deen Schildgen. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1997. 199–226. Sprague, Rosamond Kent, ed. The Older Sophists. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1990. Stichler, Richard N. “Interpreting the Zhongyong: Was Confucius a Sophist or an Aristotelian?” Dao: A Journal of Chinese Philosophy. June (2004): 235–52.

46 Aristotle and rhetorical invention Stone, Mark A. “Aristotle.” Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 176: Ancient Greek Authors. Ed. Ward W. Briggs. Detroit: A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book Gale Research, 1997. 55–76. Toulmin, Stephen. The Uses of Argument. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1958. Untersteiner, Mario. The Sophists. Trans. Kathleen Freeman. New York: Philosophical Library, 1954. Wallace, Karl R. Understanding Discourse: The Speech Act and Rhetorical Action. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970. ———. “The Substance of Rhetoric: Good Reasons.” Contemporary Theories of Rhetoric: Selected Readings. Ed. Richard L. Johannesen. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1971. 357–70. Wardy, Robert. “Rhetoric.” Greek Thought: A Guide to Classical Knowledge. Ed. Jacques Brunschwig and Geoffrey E. R. Lloyd. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000. 465–85. Warnick, Barbara. “Judgment, Probability, and Aristotle’s Rhetoric.” Quarterly Journal of Speech. 9 (1989): 299–311. Waterfield, Robin. The First Philosophers: The Presocratics and the Sophists. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Wiley, Mark, Barbara Gleason, and Louise Wetherbee Phelps, eds. Composition in Four Keys: Inquiring into the Field. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1996.

2

Interpreting the Analects Need to address rhetorical invention

So far, I have argued that rhetoric in the Aristotelian tradition has an inventive dimension, a dynamic dimension that makes rhetorical activities part of the human process to inquire into the truths of things. What I will discuss in the final three chapters is how Confucius’ thinking and teaching are similarly and rhetorically inventive and how this basic similarity compels us to clarify our understanding of the differences between Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking and teaching. As mentioned in the Introduction, however, rhetorical invention is not some obscure part of Western rhetoric that contradicts everything we ordinarily know about rhetoric, in particular the quickness of thought and word. Therefore, before I compare and contrast the two kinds of rhetorical thinking regarding invention, I would like to address in this chapter how according to the common as well as the inventive view of rhetoric, Confucius’ thinking is in fact rhetorical. It is important to demystify Confucius’ teaching in relation to rhetoric because, of course, passages from the Analects should always be read in the context of its writing and in the larger context of history. More importantly, however, I would like to show in the second part of this chapter how many in Confucian studies may have dismissed too quickly the rhetorical dimension of Confucius’ thinking and teaching and yet how comparative Confucian studies may in fact be advanced by our deeper understanding of the rhetorical dimension of Confucius’ teaching.

Confucius and rhetoric Let me first discuss in more detail some passages to show that mere rhetoric or ning (佞1) is not the same as rhetoric but an inevitable risk of it, the kind of risk that is associated with “things that are most useful” (Rhetoric 1355b4). Speaking against mere rhetoric, in other words, is not speaking against all rhetorical activities. In fact, it can be argued that Confucius repeatedly denounces mere rhetoric in the Analects because he understands that rhetorical activities are actually indispensable; otherwise, he would have done away with rhetoric altogether without trying so hard to speak against its abuse. Initially, passages 2.9 and 11.17 below may give the impression that Confucius is against rhetorical encounters because slow and thick seem to be used to describe

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two of Confucius’ very best students; however, a careful reading of them problematizes such impressions. Indeed, slow and thick describe the opposite of readiness of mind and of speech, yet passage 2.9, for example, ends with Confucius concluding that Yan Hui is not really slow: 子曰：「吾與回言終日，不違，如愚。退兒省其私，亦足以發，回也 不愚。」The Master says, “I talk with Hui all day, and he never objects to or questions what I say, like a simpleton. But afterwards I can see clearly that he has reflected on what I say, can relate it to what he does, and can also develop it with what needs to be adjusted—Hui is no simpleton.” (2.9) The message of 11.17 is similarly clear, as shown below: 柴也愚，參也魯，師也辟，由也喭。 Gao Chai is simple; Zeng Shen is slow; Zhuan Sun is extreme; and Zi Lu is rough. (11.17) In the context of the comments on this group of students, Master Zeng is clearly not being praised for being slow. In other words, just because Master Zeng is a very good student does not mean that, to Confucius, Zeng’s not being a good rhetorician is praiseworthy. Another passage, 3.7, is more complex but in the end it, too, illustrates the same point. Initially, the passage seems to give the impression that to Confucius exemplary persons do not compete or zheng 「 ( 無所爭」), do not have any “zest for rhetorical encounter.” But then Confucius says in the same passage that exemplary persons do zheng (爭) or compete in archery, although they do so in exemplary ways. Do exemplary persons compete or do they not compete? A key is in the translation of the word zheng (爭). Here is Ames and Rosemont’s interpretation: 子曰：「君子無所爭 。必也射乎！揖讓而升， 下而飲。其爭也君 子。」The Master said: “Exemplary persons ( junzi 君子) are not competitive, except where they have to be in the archery ceremony. Greeting and making way for each other, the archers ascend the hall, and returning they drink a salute. Even in contesting, they are exemplary persons.” (3.7 emphasis mine) The same word「爭」has to be translated differently in order for it to make sense in English, and Ames and Rosemont meet this challenge directly by observing the difference between competitiveness and contest: exemplary persons participate in contests but do not do so competitively.2 Their rendering is supported in the second half of the same passage by a more extended description of how exemplary persons compete in archery. However, a sense of contradiction seems to linger on: What does it mean to compete but not to do so competitively? The question arises from the fact that competitiveness is ambiguous, having both positive and negative connotations, yet Ames and Rosemont’s use counts on the readers to resort to the latter. Given this, the word contentious, that has a more clearly negative

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connotation, may be a better alternative to use, and in fact this is the word Ames and Rosemont use in translating 「爭」 in 15.21: 子曰：「君子矜而不爭，群而不黨。」The Master said, “Exemplary persons (junzi 君子) are self-possessed but not contentious; they gather together with others, but do not form cliques.” (Ames and Rosemont 15.21 emphasis mine) This translation by Ames and Rosemont resonates with how other translators render 爭 in 15.21. James Legg translates 爭 as wrangling; Qian Mu, disagreeable (無乖戾之心); Arthur Waley, quarrelsome; and Yang Bojun, intolerant. All characterizes mere rhetoric, but not rhetoric, and therefore they show Confucius’ view clearly: one does zheng, compete, or discourse but does so appropriately. In 12.13, similarly, Confucius seems to speak against any kind of forensic rhetoric, but when the context is taken into consideration, the passage speaks differently: 子曰：「聽訟，吾猶人也。必也，使無訟乎！」 The Master says, “When it comes to hearing cases, I am the same as others. What we must try to do, however, is to have no lawsuits!” (12.13) The fact is that not only is Confucius good at trying cases but, according to Yang Bojun, it is likely that Confucius said this sometime during the years of Duke Ding (509–495 BCE) when Confucius was the Sikou (大司寇) of the state of Lu (128–29), a position similar to Head of the Justice Department. Taking on this position, Confucius could not be against judicial discourse. In the passage, therefore, he is simply warning against resorting solely to it, a view regarding litigations not unfamiliar to many of us, historically or contemporaneously. Waley simply translates the passage with the subjunctive: “better still to bring it about that there were no civil suits.” As a wish, Confucius’s call to minimize lawsuits reveals his assumption that they are unavoidable and necessary for human communities. Indeed, Confucius wishes not to proliferate forensic rhetoric needlessly, but it takes much deliberative and ceremonial rhetoric “to cause the people to have no litigations,” which is Legge’s translation of 12.13. Therefore, the passage cannot support the conclusion that Confucius expresses hostility to rhetoric in general and judicial discourse in particular. Rather, it shows that Confucius sees the necessity for both. What is rhetoric to Confucius if it is not mere rhetoric or mere wrangling? Rhetorical activities to Confucius stand for a relational sort of thinking, the kind that features the dynamic and manifold characteristics seen in rhetorical activities characterized by Aristotle. Just as it is helpful to problematize the stereotype of Aristotle as someone who has little more than rigid and disconnected categories to offer, rhetorically or otherwise, it is also helpful to examine critically the overgeneralization of Confucius as someone who emphasizes harmony over rhetorical engagement. I hope to show that harmony and rhetorical engagement are not

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mutually exclusive to Confucius, who is both ready and skilled when it comes to engaging appropriately and effectively in the complex, dynamic, and powerful relation between thoughts of harmony and expressions of discord in everyday situations. Confucius as a rhetorician A quick look at two more passages from the Analects shows how Confucius both engages in rhetorical activities and is proficient at doing so. Passage 11.24 records an exchange between Confucius and his student Zi Lu who has just assigned Zi Gao to be a prefect, and Confucius is critical of Zi Lu’s decision. In a second passage, 16.1, Confucius speaks with Ran You, another student of his, while Zi Lu is also present. At the time, Zi Lu and Ran You are serving as the stewards to the Ji Clan in the State of Lu. Confucius is, once again, critical of the two students’ lack of success as well as effort in persuading the head of Ji to abandon the idea of military actions against a vassal district within the State of Lu. In both passages, the students dispute with Confucius and are then refuted by him, as described below: 子路使子羔為費宰。子曰：「賊夫人之子！」子路曰：「有民人焉！有 社稷焉，何必讀書，然後為學？」 子曰：「是故惡夫佞者。」Zi Lu has just sent Zi Gao to be the prefect of Bi. The Master says, “This is harming another man’s son.” Zi Lu replies, “In a prefecture, there are people and also altars to spirit of soil and grain. Why is it that only by reading books can one be considered learned?” The Master says, “It is for this reason that I abhor the glib tongued.” (11.24) It can be inferred from Zi Lu’s reply that Confucius criticizes Zi Lu for putting Zi Gao in harm’s way because Zi Gao is not yet adequately prepared in the schoolroom for him to assume the responsibilities of a public office. The brevity of the passage, however, makes the last sentence a challenge to interpret when, in response to Zi Lu’s lengthier defense of his decision about Zi Gao, Confucius ends the conversation rather abruptly. Initially, it seems that this passage supports the stereotypical view that the irenic Confucius is not fond of rhetorical disputation, but the context of the Analects as well as the passage itself suggests a different reading: Confucius does not encourage Zi Lu when he abuses this rhetorical engagement. How so? Most interpretations of the passage struggle because they either render it too literally or too vaguely. Contextualized interpretations suggest that Confucius embraces rhetorical engagement and is skilled at doing so appropriately. I now turn to some interpretations of 11.24. Waley suggests that Confucius is irritated by Zi Lu’s attitude: “the pertness of Zi Lu’s remark consists of the fact that he throws in the Master’s teeth a favorite Confucian maxim” (159, n4). The speculation could be based on the fact that Zi Lu is known for his brashness, but the same fact makes it difficult to explain why elsewhere in the Analects Confucius is seen engaging often in dialogues with

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Zi Lu where he is just as brazen if not more so. Edward Slingerland tries to expand on Waley’s interpretation, but the problem persists. Slingerland explains, Probably the point here is that Zi Lu is doing something that he knows at some level is wrong—pulling an inexperienced young man away from his studies and throwing him into a situation that is over his head, which will surely harm both the young man and the people under his rule—but trying to defend his behavior by citing a Confucian maxim out of context. Though clever, such behavior is morally despicable in Confucius’ eyes. (122) Slingerland’s conclusion, that using words out of context is immoral, leaves room for further inquiry. By definition, maxims are general and have implications for a variety of contexts; in what sense is it immoral when Zi Lu applies the maxim in this case? Some incidents recorded in the Analects also invite us to continue Waley’s and Slingerland’s inquiry regarding this passage. In 17.73, for example, Confucius considers answering the summons by a steward of Zhongmou, a city in the state of Ji (Slingerland 202). Zi Lu urges Confucius not to go, saying that he has heard Confucius speaking against being associated with people who behave badly and that this steward has proved himself to be a person of this kind. Yet, here in 17.7, Confucius does not seem to be irritated that Zi Lu is questioning him by quoting what he has said in the past. Rather, Confucius counter-argues with Zi Lu: 佛肸召，子欲往。子路曰：「昔者由也聞諸夫子曰：『親於其身為 不善者，君子不入也』。佛肸以中牟畔，子之往也如之何？」子曰： 「然，有是言也。不曰『堅』乎？磨而不磷；不曰『白』乎？涅而不 緇。吾豈匏瓜也哉？焉能繫而不食！」 Bi Xi summons Confucius, and Confucius is considering going. Zi Lu says, “In the past I have heard the Master say that ‘Exemplary persons do not enter the state of those who themselves are committing wrong doings.’ Now Bi Xi uses his control in Zhongmou to plot rebellion. How do you explain your considering to meet with him?” “You are right,” says the Master, “and I have indeed said this in the past. However, have you not heard that the strongest cannot wear thin and the whitest cannot be dyed black? Am I the kind of gourd that can be fastened to people’s waist [to keep them afloat] but cannot keep their stomach full?” (17.7) In this passage, Confucius juxtaposes what he himself has said at a different time and on a different issue with yet another saying that he is applying this time and on this issue. If we interpret what Zi Lu does in 11.24 as immoral, that is, quoting the Master’s saying in the past to suggest a contradiction to the Master’s thinking in the present, we must interpret as immoral not only what Zi Lu does but also what Confucius does in 17.7 for indulging, through engagement, Zi Lu’s so-called immoral behavior. Contextualizing Zi Lu and Confucius’ exchange regarding the case of Zi Gao in 11.24, therefore, actually seems to create more difficulties, but they are good ones because they urge us to explore further. In the next

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passage, 16.1, Confucius is seen engaging in a debate even more fully and taking on issues as they emerge during the debate even more willingly than he does in 17.7. Together, passages like 17.7 above and 16.1 below illustrate what an adept debater Confucius is and how readily he is able to implement his skills effectively. 季氏將伐顓臾。冉有季路見於孔子曰：「季氏將有事於顓臾。」孔子 曰：「求，無乃爾是過與？夫顓臾，昔者先王以為東蒙主，且在邦域 之中矣；是社稷之臣也，何以伐為？」冉有曰：「夫子欲之；吾二臣 者，皆不欲也。」孔子曰：「求！周任有言曰：『陳力就列，不能者 止。』危而不持，顛而不扶，則將焉用彼相矣？且爾言過矣！虎兕出 於柙，龜玉毀於櫝中，是誰之過與？」冉有曰：「今夫顓臾，固而近 於費；今不取，後世必為子孫憂。」孔子曰：「求！君子疾夫舍曰 『欲之』而必為之辭。丘也，聞有國有家者，不患寡而患不均，不 患貧而患不安；蓋均無貧，和無寡，安無傾。夫如是，故遠人不服， 則修文德以來之。既來之，則安之。今由與求也，相夫子，遠人不服 而不能來也，邦分崩離析，而不能守也，而謀動干戈於邦內，吾恐季 孫之憂，不在顓臾，而在蕭牆之內也！」 The Ji Clan is about to attack Zhuanyu. Ran You and Zi Lu come to see Confucius and say to him, “The Ji Clan is about to take action against Zhuanyu.” Confucius replies, “Ran Qiu4, don’t you think you’re to blame for this? Zhuanyu was named long ago by our former king to be the presider over the sacrifice to the spirit of Mount Dongmeng, and Zhuanyu is also within the boundaries of the state of Lu and thus a vassal member of the State—what would be the reason for attacking it?” Ran You replies, “It is our Master who wants to attack Zhuanyu. Both of us are against it.” Confucius responds, “Ran Qiu! Zhou Ren5 said once, ‘Match the ability with the post, and those incapable should retire.’ Of what use is an assistant who is unable to provide assistance when the sightless is tottering on the brink of disaster? What you have just said is therefore wrong. When a tiger or rhinoceros wanders out of its cage, or a tortoise shell or piece of jade is ruined in its case, whose fault is it?” Ran You says, “Well, Zhuanyu is well-fortified and is close to Bi, Ji Clan’s stronghold. If it is not annexed now, it will certainly be a source of worry for the Ji Clan in later generations.” Confucius says, “Ran You! An exemplary person despises those who make up something just to hide their real motive. I have heard that the ruler of a state or the head of a household should not worry that his people are poor but worry when the wealth is not equitably distributed, not worry that his people are small in number but worry when they cannot live together peacefully. Equitably distributed wealth removes poverty; harmony makes up for smallness in number; and peace keeps disasters at bay. Under these circumstances, if distant populations are still not won over, attract them by further refining oneself and achieving more excellence, and once they come, make them feel at ease. Now, you and Zi Lu are supposed to assist the head of Ji, yet you are unable to win over distant populations or prevent the state from being divided and from crumbling down

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around you. But instead of doing your duty, you now want to resort to the use of arms within the state itself. I am afraid that the real worry of the head of Ji Clan is not Zhuanyu, but rather the sovereign of the State of Lu.” (16.1) The eloquence here both exemplifies Confucius’ skill as a rhetorician and illustrates his passion for rhetorical activities. Confucius addresses three issues in this case: whether the Ji Clan should attempt an attack on Zhuanyu, to what extent it is the stewards’ duty to remonstrate successfully with their master, and what right and wrong ways are in coping with inter-regional disputes. He first presents two reasons against resorting to war and then invites Ran You and Zi Lu to give their arguments. Initially, Ran You avoids Confucius’ question and blames the decision on the head of Ji. In return, Confucius quotes an authority and argues that stewards should resign if their best effort cannot prevent their masters from making serious mistakes. Ran You then admits that it is difficult for him to persuade the head of Ji because he himself can see how Zhuanyu is a threat to Ji. Although displeased with the game Ran You is playing, Confucius reprimands Ran You only briefly and stays focused on the issue. In his concluding argument, Confucius points out to Ran You and Zi Lu that something very serious could be at stake within the State of Lu. Qian provides historical information and offers two readings of Confucius’ final statement: either Ji is too ambitious for its own good or the Duke of Lu will be very displeased with Ji. Duke Ai of Lu (494–468 BCE) has enfeoffed the chiefs of three main clans with the four geopolitical regions of the state. The Ji (季) Clan is given two of these regions, while the other two are given to the Meng (孟) and Shu (叔) Clans. Zhuanyu, however, is a special region of autonomy over which Duke Ai of Lu, rather than the head of any of the clans, has direct jurisdiction (Qian 588). Therefore, Ji’s desire to seize Zhuanyu creates problems not just for Zhuanyu but actually for Duke Ai, the sovereign of the state. Duke Ai, however, has the legitimate power over any clan within the State of Lu, has connections with other states, and is thus more powerful than the head of Ji. Qian points out that the first reading about Ji’s ambition is acceptable because Zi Lu and Ran You as Confucius’ students only need for Ji’s real motive to be pointed out to know what to do. The second reading is also acceptable because Duke Ai later tries to annex Ji on the occasion when Yue (越) tries to attack Lu, an event that testifies to Confucius’ farsighted warning (Qian 497). Finally, in addition to the clear reasoning, Confucius is showing Zi Lu and Ran You that they can appeal to the head of Ji by expressing concerns for Ji’s well-being: remember the power of the sovereign. There is no record of Ji’s attack of Zhuanyu in the Spring and Autumn Annals 《 ( 春秋》)6 conceivably as a result of the exchange that is recorded in 16.1. Clearly, Confucius is a skilled rhetorician, but his brief reprimand of Ran You for deliberately avoiding the real issue may also provide a clue for the problem in reading 11.24. As seen in 16.1, Confucius is very good at focusing on the real issue while negotiating the contingencies arising with each rhetorical situation; he is willing and ready to use that ability and help bring the rhetorical investigation to a probable course of action. In contrast, therefore, when Confucius chooses not to pursue

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the argument with Zi Lu in 11.24, it cannot be because he is against argumentation or against citing his own words before; rather, it is because he does not see continuing the conversation at that moment as useful and meaningful. To see this, we need to put 11.24 in an even larger context, and Slingerland provides some information on this context: Most commentators argue that book learning is crucial to someone aspiring to take up an important official position, a view supported by a passage from the Exoteric Commentary: “Duke Ai asked Zi Xia, ‘Is it necessary to first learn before it is possible to bring peace to the state and protect the people?’ Zi Xia replied, ‘There has never been one who, without first learning, was able to bring peace to the state and protect the people.’” (122) This information is useful because it shows that Zi Lu is trying, by design or by habit, to direct the debate to a well-worn path at a general and abstract level, rather than stay with the particular and concrete case at hand. Qian Mu explains 11.24 in explicitly rhetorical terms: Confucius refuses to continue the debate because he has recognized that Zi Lu is resorting to mere rhetoric or the red herring fallacy. Focusing his discussion on the fact that Confucius calls Zi Lu a person with a glib tongue (佞者), Qian speculates that Zi Lu probably does not initially intend for Zi Gao to continue his learning as a prefect through managing affairs but, on sensing Confucius’ concern for Zi Gao’s educational preparedness, blurts out his preference for real life experience over formal education so as to create the impression that he is very concerned about Zi Gao’s education and has been all along (Qian 410). Obviously, it is difficult to verify Qian’s speculation, but his effort to explain mere rhetoric (ning 佞) is based on an important rhetorical insight: Zi Lu’s reasoning is fallacious, attempting to confuse the point of the issue. Recognizing the fallacy could have very well caused Confucius not to pursue the debate further—a rhetorical decision. Bombarding opponents with a variety of important issues is a common tactic to derail a discussion so as not to move the debate towards solutions or new insights. In passage 11.24, the education that Confucius is discussing with Zi Lu pertains to Zi Gao, the particular person who is easily duped 「 ( 柴也愚」11.17), a characteristic of those who are fond of ren-the-equitable7 「 ( 仁」) without equal regard for learning 「 ( 好仁不 好學，其蔽也愚」17.8). It is not difficult to see how changing the topic of the discussion from the education of Zi Gao, with his particular strengths and limitations, to the education of all people at all times would lead to a lengthy, complex, but less meaningful exchange for the matter in hand. Confucius intends to make a point about the particular case of Zi Lu’s decision regarding Zi Gao, and the issue is whether Zi Gao has had sufficient preparation for serving in a public office. If Zi Lu is not yet ready to reconsider his decision or talk about this particular issue, Confucius is willing to postpone the discussion, but he refuses to enter another debate about such a general issue that is only being used as a red herring to thwart the discussion of the original issue of importance. As Qian puts it, Confucius sees through Zi Lu’s mere rhetoric, his rhetorical sleight of hand.

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If this reading is plausible, and I think it is, passage 11.24 demonstrates Confucius’ rhetorical sophistication because he is seen as quick at recognizing a fallacy and good at staying with the issue. But just as important, Confucius’ use of sayings or maxims, including different and opposing ones, also makes him an accomplished practitioner of rhetorical engagement. Discussing Aristotle’s theory of tragedy, the art that Aristotle repeatedly describes as mimicking the action of both necessity and probability (Poetics 1451a14, 39; 1451b9), Martha Nussbaum reflects on the conflicts that the tragic characters encounter. She states, “There appears to be something peculiar about the way they agonize about contingency, lamenting an insoluble practical conflict and the regret it brings in its wake, pondering the risks of love and friendship, weighing the value of passion against its destructive excesses” (5). In other words, a good life according to Aristotle necessarily involves weighing conflicting values one holds, the task that makes life at once fragile and good: If an agent ascribes intrinsic value to, and cares about, more than one activity, there is always a risk that some circumstances will arise in which incompatible courses of action are both required; deficiency therefore becomes a natural necessity. The richer my scheme of value, the more I open myself to such a possibility; and yet a life designed to ward off this possibility may prove to be impoverished. (7) In the passages from the Analects discussed so far, and many others to come, Confucius does not come across as someone who avoids weighing such conflicts and risks or prefers such a humanly and rhetorically “impoverished” life. Even though Nussbaum here focuses on a philosophical perspective, Aristotle describes rhetoric in very similar terms. That is, the scope of rhetoric is where certainty is unavailable, opinions are divided, and yet decisions are needed (Rhetoric 1356a8). Different and incompatible sayings, with their various levels of probability and truth, make rich resources for rhetorical activities. Constantly weighing different and conflicting values, Confucius the rhetorician engages in precisely the kinds of activities that are risky but also useful and good, activities that are rhetorical. In short, he shows sophistication in pursuing meaningful rhetorical inquiries productively. Passages like 11.24 (decision regarding Zi Gao) and 16.1 (responsibility of ministers) illustrate that Confucius is a thoughtful and eloquent rhetorician himself. A few other passages also show that Confucius understands well the significant role of eloquence in public life, another characteristic of rhetoricians. The three passages below record specific occasions when Confucius comments on governing through meaningful language-use. 子路曰：「衛君待子而為政，子將奚先？」子曰：「必也正名乎！」 子路曰：「有是哉？子之迂也！奚其正？」子曰：「野哉，由也！君 子於其所不知，蓋闕如也。名不正，則言不順；言不順，則事不成； 事不成，則禮樂不興；禮樂不興，則刑罰不中；刑罰不中，則民無所

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Interpreting the Analects 措手足。故君子名之必可言也，言之必可行也。君子於其言，無所茍 而已矣！」 Zi Lu asks, “Were the Duke of Wei to turn the administration of his state over to you now, how would you prioritize your responsibilities?” The Master replies, “A first priority would have to be ensuring that names are used properly.” Zi Lu responds, “Have you really gone that far over to the impracticable side? What is there to rectify in names?” “How could you miss such basics!” replies the Master. “Remember that exemplary persons defer on matters they do not understand. When names are not used properly, what one says is muddled; when what one says is muddled, work does not get done; when work does not get done, ritual observation and music playing will not flourish; when ritual observation and music playing do not flourish, laws and punishments will not be applied properly; when laws and punishments are not applied properly, people will not know how to behave properly. Thus, when exemplary persons name something, the name must be fitting to be spoken; fitting to be spoken, the words are feasible to be put into action. Exemplary persons constantly guard against unfittingness in what they say.” (13.3) 齊景公問政於孔子。孔子對曰：「君，君；臣，臣；父，父；子， 子。」公曰：「善哉！信如君不君，臣不臣，父不父，子不子，雖 有粟，吾得而食諸？」Duke Jing of Qi asks Confucius about governing effectively. Confucius replies, “Rulers live up to their name and rule according to dao-the-way; ministers live up to their name and minister according to dao-the-way; fathers live up to their name and father according to daothe-way, and sons live up to their name and son according to dao-the-way.” “Excellent!” exclaims the Duke. “If the rulers do not rule so, the ministers do not minister so, the fathers do not father so, and the sons do not son so, even though there is grain, will I get to eat it?” (12.11) 子曰：「道之以政，齊之以刑，民免而無恥；道之以德，齊之以禮， 有恥且格。」The Master says: “If you govern through administrative injunctions and keep people orderly with penal laws, they will seek merely to avoid punishments but will have no sense of shame in affronting your leadership. But if you guide them through excellence and keep them orderly through observing ritual propriety, they will have a sense of shame, respect your leadership, and order themselves.” (2.3)

The first two passages (13.3 and 12.11) show that Confucius sees language-use as both shaping and reflecting thinking. This view is seen in the use of anthimeria (use of the noun son as a verb) in 12.11 where the static and the dynamic are intertwined. Similarly, the view is seen in 13.3 where proper naming is seen as governing. This third passage also shows Confucius’ emphasis on ethos: make laws known to people but do so with credibility, a theme that is implied in the first two passages as well. Together, the three passages reflect Confucius’ awareness of how language-use is an indispensable part of civic communities.

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Confucius and rhetorical invention Even though rhetoric is not an independent area of study in the teaching reflected in the Analects, there is no question that Confucius engages and teaches discursively, inventing probable judgment, decisions, and knowledge in the midst of dynamic and complex rhetorical situations. As seen in the following passages of the Analects, Confucius is keenly aware of the importance of the audience and the critical role of timing. The first three passages reveal a clear emphasis on the importance of the audience to rhetorical invention, and the three that follow demonstrate Confucius’ understanding of the importance of timing to such inventive activities. 子曰：「事父母幾諫，見志不從，又敬不違，勞而不怨。」The Mater says, “In serving your parents, remonstrate with them gently and tactfully. On seeing that they do not accept your suggestions, remain respectful and do not become defiant. Though distressed, bear no resentment.” (4.18) 子游曰：「事君數，斯辱矣；朋友數，斯疏矣。」 Zi You says, “Nagging your lord leads to disgrace; nagging your friends leads to estrangement.” (4.26) 子夏曰：「君子信而後勞其民；未信，則以為厲己也。信而後諫；未 信，則以為謗己也。」 Zi Xia says, “Only when exemplary persons have won the confidence of the common people do they work them hard; otherwise, the people would deem them cruel. Only when they have won the confidence of their lord do they remonstrate; otherwise, their lord would deem them defamatory.” (19.10) These three passages reveal that Confucius and his students Zi You and Zi Xia understand the constitutive role of the audience in inventing probable knowledge and therefore in accomplishing effective communication. To communicate effectively is to effect symbolic and physical actions successfully, actions that require the audience’s participation. To do so, rhetoricians count on the audience’s intelligence, goodwill, and sensitivity in creating and implementing the most expedient, just, and honorable judgment, knowledge, and courses of action. This means that not being bitter, unrelenting, or untimely is both the cause and the effect of such a mutually respectful and trusting relationship between the interlocutor and the audience. This is important because rhetoricians must co-invent probable knowledge with their audience. 子曰：「邦有道，危言危行；邦無道，危行言孫。」The Master says, “When dao-the-way prevails, speak and act candidly; when it does not, act candidly but speak guardedly.” (14.4) 孔子曰：「侍於君子有三愆：言未及之而言謂之『躁』；言及之而不 言謂之『隱』；未見顏色而言謂之『瞽』。」 The Master says, “When accompanying exemplary persons, one is likely to err in three ways: To speak before one’s turn is being thoughtless; not to speak when it is one’s turn is

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Interpreting the Analects being dubious; to speak up without heeding the countenance of the other is being blind.” (16.6) 子曰：「可與言而不與之言，失人；不可與言而與之言，失言。知者 不失人，亦不失言。」 The Master says, “To fail to speak with someone when the person can be engaged is to miss the person; to speak with someone when the person cannot be engaged is to miss one’s words. Those who know do not miss people or words.” (15.7)

Those who know the audience can be rhetorically savvy, but what does it mean to miss a person or to miss one’s words? Note that in 16.6 above, thoughtless, dubious, and aimless do not only describe the ways things are said but also the very things themselves. Confucius understands, therefore, that the right moment or timing does not only shape the presentation in everyday discourse but also shapes the very content of the discourse itself. The following passage reinforces Confucius’ awareness of the relation between timing and language-use, in content as well as in style: 微生畝謂孔子曰：「丘何為是栖栖者與？無乃為佞乎？」孔子曰：「非 敢為佞也，疾固也。」Weisheng Mu says to Confucius, “Qiu8, why do you flit from perch to perch? Are you aspiring to become a glib-tongued person (ning 佞)?” Confucius replies, “It is not so but rather I have an aversion to inflexibility.” (14.34) In the passage, it is Confucius who is accused of being glib-tongued. Recall Aristotle’s description of rhetoric as “partly like dialectic, partly like sophistical reasoning” (1359b9–10). Rhetoric being partly like sophistical discourse means that rhetoricians’ work necessarily entails a certain characteristic of sophistic reasoning. The image of the bird moving from perch to perch clearly shows Confucius’ awareness of the need for rhetoricians to take on risks and walk the line between the random and the permanent in the realm of the contingent. Finally, the following seemingly straightforward account of the composing process also reveals Confucius’ deep understanding of rhetorical invention: 子曰：「為命：裨諶草創之，世叔討論之，行人子羽修飾之，東里子 產潤色之。」The Master says, “In drawing up a diplomatic treaty, Pi Chen makes a first draft; Shi Shu comments on it; the diplomat Zi Yu revises and edits it, and Zi Chan of Dongli then polishes the writing.” (14.9) All the writers—Pi Chen, Shi Shu, Zi Yu, and Zi Chan—are dafu (大夫), senior officials or literati statesmen in the state of Zheng (806–375 BCE) during Confucius’ time (Qian 497). Those who consider rhetoric a mere conduit of expression would take Zi Chan, who “would then polish the writing,” to be the only rhetorician in this group of writers. Apparently, however, Confucius sees all of them as co-authors of the treaties for the State of Zheng. In fact, Zi Chan is the Prime

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Minister of Zheng (Slingerland 156) who coordinates this collaborative composing process (Qian 497). The inseparableness of scholar and official in the status of these rhetorician-statesmen is reminiscent of Needham and Harbsmeier’s linguistic study of the analytical nature of classical Chinese. Just as ancient Chinese did have systematic grammar in places like dictionaries, ancient Chinese rhetorical perceptions are preserved in works like the Analects, where rhetorical activities like writing and speech-making are an integral part of civic affairs and of public discourses, an integral part of inventing and styling the state of affairs and of discourses alike. Confucius takes for granted that a rhetorician is not simply a stylist of discourse but also a partial inventor of what is styled. In the case of Zi Chan, Confucius characterizes him, in the Chronicle of Zuo 《 ( 左傳》), first and foremost as “compassionate.” When Confucius hears the news of the passing of Zi Chan, he is very much saddened, saying that Zi Chan embodied “the ancient legacy of compassion” (qtd. in Qian 498). The composing process depicted in passage 14.9 leaves little doubt that Confucius takes it for granted that content and style are entwined in rhetorical activities, and he has an unmistakable awareness of rhetorical invention.

Studies of Confucius’ Analects I have sampled only a limited portion of the Analects, and already they show Confucius as having a deep understanding of the role that audience, timing, and language-use play in shaping probable knowledge through civic discourse. In this section, I would like to discuss how studies of Confucius’ Analects could benefit from further explorations of his rhetorical thinking and teaching. Chinese Confucian scholar Tu Weiming observed once that Confucian Studies display a tendency of “narrow specializations” (Ren Wen 151). As I discussed in the Introduction and would like to discuss further in the following, I see this observation as still relevant to a great degree of importance today in comparative studies of Confucius’ and Aristotle’s rhetorical thinking, both of which, as discussed so far, emphasize relationality. If rhetorical invention by definition is relational according to Aristotle and Confucius, comparative Aristotelian and Confucian rhetoricians should draw from various disciplines so as to delve more readily into the dynamic and complex relations among things, ideas, and language-use. Clearly, this characteristic of relationality has many implications for rhetorical inquiry. One of them, for example, is the valuing of the discursive and the believing in the teachable (Young 180). As Aristotle states, “It is possible to inquire the reason why some speakers succeed through practice and others spontaneously; and every one will at once agree that such an inquiry is the function of an art” (Rhetoric 1354a9–11). In other words, the teachability of the rhetorical art or any art is based on the belief that certain aspects of the natural or social activities are reasonable to most people most of the time and can be understood and shared among them. The art of rhetoric can be taught because certain reasons or causes behind meaningful rhetorical activities can be discursively analyzed, understood, and then practiced. Causes and reasons can be treated this way because they are universals in the sense that they have certain generic and provisional tenets.

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Studies of the Analects can benefit from examining characteristics like these of rhetorical invention, so as to make more concrete some generalizations and contribute more insights into the elusive relations between China and the West. In the critical survey below, I will show how some philosophical, literary, and rhetorical studies of Confucius’ teaching have helped to advance a Platonic or a Sophistical understanding of Confucius’ rhetoric, but these studies are still to be complemented by Aristotle’s relational view of rhetorical invention that connects the two. I will first examine how philosophical and literary approaches to Confucian Studies have treated Confucius’ teaching as either only experiential or only intuitive, rather than as being both. I will then discuss how rhetorical studies are yet to examine similarities between Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking in relation to differences. Religious and philosophical interpretations Until quite recently, the Analects of Confucius has been studied in the West as primarily a philosophical or religious text. James Legge (1815–1897) and Ernst Faber (1839–1899), two of the earliest translators of the Analects into Western languages, were both Christian missionaries, and indeed their legacy is still very valuable today. In Confucius’ pithy and wise sayings, Western readers can recognize a Chinese sage who has concerns quite similar to theirs. The Confucian “Heaven” can be understood as similar to God; the Confucian “Tao,” to Truth or Beauty; and the two Confucian views of human nature, to good and evil. At the same time, focusing on this view alone can limit the scholarship on the Analects to spiritual and mystical interpretations. Valuing the realm of the immutable and the transcendent over the realm of the mutable and the probable, studies of the Analects can leave unexplored the possibility that, to Confucius, knowledge can be also probable—provisional yet forceful, cross-disciplinary, and teachable. In significant ways, philosopher Herbert Fingarette’s insight into the teachings of Confucius, as seen in his Confucius: The Secular as Sacred, is invaluable because it tries to avoid reading the Analects as simply another traditional Western philosophical treatise. Fingarette tries to balance the psychological approach to understanding Confucius’ teaching with a more social and ethical one, challenging the dualism of doing and knowing. For example, he treats speech as dynamic or “performative”: “The ritual word is itself the critical act rather than a report of, or stimulus to, action” (11). At the same time and quite subtly, however, Fingarette’s main arguments here presuppose a fundamental divide, rather than a connection as well, between words as constitutive acts of thinking and words as mere reports of thought, between the lofty and the prosaic, and between the means and the end (Ruskola 294). This divide precludes from the outset a rhetorical or relational interpretation of the Analects. In other words, Fingarette differentiates Confucianism and moral relativism (Ruskola 291), pushing the point to its extreme rather than treating it relationally. In doing so, he removes Confucianism from this world morally, although not physically, compromising the potential for his view to explain the teachings of the Analects more completely.

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Here is an example. A major argument in Fingarette’s rendering of Confucius’ teaching is that Confucius’ dao is “a way without a crossroads.” Indeed the image of the crossroads is so natural and even insistently available as an element of any richly elaborated path-imagery that only the most profound commitment to the idea of the cosmos as basically unambiguous, as a single, definite order, could make it possible to ignore in the metaphor the image of the crossroads as a challenge to the traveler on the Way. This Confucian commitment to a single, definite order is also evident when we note what Confucius sees as the alternative to rightly treading the true Path: it is to walk crookedly, to get lost or to abandon the Path. That is, the only “alternative” to the one Order is disorder, chaos. (20) Fingarette argues, Confucius does not choose “by virtue of the agent’s powers … one out of several equally real options” (21), because there is to Confucius one true Path or a single unambiguous Order. Fingarette explains two options, “either using one’s powers to walk the Way or being too weak, without power … going crookedly nowhere, falling or weaving about pointlessly in quest of the mirages of profit, advantage and personal comfort” (21). In other words, there are no other options but right or wrong. This interpretation, as Fingarette describes it in the introduction of the book, is philosophical (x), but it is philosophical in a particular vein: the Platonic. Explicitly Holy Rite is thus a luminous point of concentration in the greater and ideally all-inclusive ceremonial harmony of the perfectly humane civilization of the Tao, or ideal Way. Human life in its entirety finally appears as one vast, spontaneous and holy Rite: the community of man. This, for Confucius, was indeed an “ultimate concern.” (17) This Platonic philosophical approach is helpful but also limiting to the interpretation of the Analects because, as I would like to show in later chapters, Confucius focuses on the end in relation to the means, things known by nature in relation to things known to human beings, and the sacred in relation to the secular. Fingarette does try to collapse the duality between the means and the end but in the end he actually dichotomizes them. The value of an impure means is dismissed as not a constitutive part of the process; such a means plays no real role unless it is the Path or the Order itself. Therefore, instead of connecting the means and the end truly, Fingarette’s approach fundamentally severs them. In doing so, it severs the connection between rhetoric and philosophy, between “report” and “act,” assigning them mutually exclusive values. This view differs from Aristotle’s ambiguous but unmistakable characterization of rhetoric as the offshoot and “the counterpart” of dialectic (1354a1). In a way, the philosophical tradition Fingarette observes emphasizes the end at the cost of the means, valuing the performative sacred words in a way that devalues the secular words.

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Privileging this single and unambiguous Way is the primary focus of the Platonic philosophical tradition, and it is also partly that of Aristotle’s dialectical philosophy, which T. H. Irwin describes in Aristotle’s First Principles as the strong, as opposed to pure, dialectical philosophy (14). However, while this is indeed the part of Aristotle’s thinking that is most Platonic, strong and pure dialectics in Aristotle, as Irwin explains, are not separable in the way means and end are in Fingarette’s discussion. Irwin’s entire study is rooted in the relation, which is problematic but nonetheless a relation, between the subjective means and the objective end in Aristotle’s view of dialectical philosophy. On the one hand, “dialectic is a process of criticism wherein lies the path to the principles of all inquiries” (Topics 101b3–4); it is “the queen of the sciences” (Irwin 14). On the other hand, the dialectical method inferentially processes common belief or probable knowledge, which is necessarily subjective, discursive, but also contemplative. The solution, Irwin proposes, lies in differentiating the two kinds of dialectics in Aristotle: strong and pure. Pure dialecticians believe that “the foundation of beliefs is non-inferentially justified and self-evident” (8) in each field of inquiry. Since dialectic is the basic method of philosophy, pure dialecticians inquiring into their own fields do not study philosophy as the queen of all sciences. Strong dialecticians, however, do so because they see the “‘synoptic’ outlook of dialecticians as allowing them to justify the special principles of different sciences” in various fields through the method of Socratic inquiry, as shown below: This synoptic outlook requires us to appeal to coherence; for it will make us aware of the relation between different principles, and the effects of accepting or rejecting one putative principle on our other principles. If dialectic uses these synoptic methods to justify the principles of the special sciences, then Plato must assume that the coherence displayed by dialectical argument is a source of justification. (138) This synoptic outlook, the source of adjudication of what is ultimately true, is indeed agreed-upon only by philosophers through the method of strong dialectics; however, to “transcend these beliefs,” to tell “how things really are” (Irwin 139), and to arrive at “one correct account of substance,” Aristotelian strong dialecticians’ inquiry is unmistakably rooted in the discourse “from the interlocutor’s beliefs” (203). In Chapter One, I review how scholars interpret Aristotle’s view of the dialectical method differently and how the dynamic interpretations lead to Aristotle’s dynamic view of the truths of things. This view of the truths, essences, or the substances of things is summarized most clearly by Richard Stichler: “A thing’s substance or ousia, as Aristotle understands it, is not some fixed and permanent essence that exists apart from things themselves, nor is it a kind of transcendent reality that grounds the phenomenal appearances of things” (243). Truth itself, what dialectical method leads to, is dynamic and relational to Aristotle. Rhetoric and truth being the focus of this study, I will discuss these studies further in Chapter Three, but the point here is that Aristotle’s view of

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dialectic, while similar to Plato’s, also importantly differs from it and differs, that is, from Fingarette’s one Way without a crossroads. Irwin does not explicitly address the role of the discursive in Aristotle’s First Principles, but Fingarette does and he negates it completely. Indeed, Fingarette describes Confucius’ li (禮 ritual propriety) as the “learned tradition and convention,” as the “humanizing form of the dynamic relation of man-to-man” that can make one “truly human” by civilizing one’s “raw impulse” (7), and as “not inborn” (10). While this description does reflect certain teachings of the Analects, Fingarette dismisses the value of anything “mechanical” (8) in the teachings of the Analects. That is, Fingarette establishes both the need to learn and the impossibility to teach in Confucius who is known as an educator. To Fingarette, learning is incompatible with the kind of teaching seen in Book Ten of the Analects: There are indescribably many subtleties in the distinctions, nuances and minute but meaningful variations in gesture. If we do try to describe these subtle variations and their rules, we immediately sound like Book 10 of the Analects, whose ceremonial recipes initially seem to the modern American reader to be the quintessence of quaint and extreme traditionalism. (10) Quantity does present a challenge, but the way to cope with this reality of life is not and cannot be merely to avoid or dismiss it. This is why, in the end, despite Fingarette’s intention to ground li in the dynamic conventions and traditions, only the nondiscursive and the otherworldly within those conventions and traditions truly matter. The discursive and this-worldly strategies, devices, and any means of teaching are to be avoided because, apparently, they are all merely “formulaconforming” (53) and coercive, as expressed below: The user of magic does not work by strategies and devices as a means toward an end; he does not use coercion or physical forces. There are no pragmatically developed and tested strategies or tactics. He simply wills the end in the proper ritual setting and with the proper ritual gesture and word; without further effort on his part, the deed is accomplished. (3) If the practitioners or the experiencers of li are all somehow completely “fused with learned ceremonial skill” and “are ‘self-disciplined, ever turning to li’, then all that is needed—quite literally—is an initial ritual gesture in the proper ceremonial context; from there onward everything ‘happens’” (8). Even though Fingarette’s practitioners of li, who fulfill worldly commitments and responsibilities in appropriate ways, seem to differ from Plato’s lovers with inner truth, they are nevertheless in a dichotomized world of irreconcilable opposites in negating the value of the discursive. In the end, Fingarette keeps Confucius tied more to Plato than to Aristotle, a dominant interpretation among Confucian scholars until quite recent times. Leading philosophers like Alasdair MacIntyre and G. E. R. Lloyd argue, respectively, that Confucian and Aristotelian thoughts are incommensurate and that the

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ancient Chinese do not emphasize the logical and discursive base of persuasion. Leading philosophers of Chinese thinking like Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont do not interpret the Analects as in any way showing Aristotelian characteristics. The issue here is not whether Plato’s view has a place in interpreting Confucius; it does. Rather, the issue is whether the non-Aristotelian kind of philosophical approach alone can achieve as complete as possible an interpretation of Confucius. In his sweeping rejection of the world as but “the mirages of profit, advantage and personal comfort,” Fingarette renders the means still not, “in the most concrete sense, as the end as well” (Ruskola 294). The means is so disconnected from the real that it is but the mirage of the real. Acknowledging that the dichotomy of “the inner psyche” and the public good “never entered [Confucius’s] head” (45), Fingarette nevertheless maintains the fundamental dichotomy between the sacred and the secular—between the “absolute value” (20) of the Way and the mirages of it—in his explanations of Confucius’ teaching in the Analects. The immutable, the unequivocal, the absolute, and the nonnegotiable are, in the end, fundamentally disconnected from the changing, the equivocal, the probable, and the negotiable, in short, the discursive and the rhetorical. But categorical contempt for the “profit, advantage and personal comfort” does not resonate with readings such as that “Confucius never preached asceticism” (Tu Humanity 10). Difficulties like this show the need for more integrated interpretive approaches, so that questions such as whether Confucian li can be taught is not answered simply by a yes or a no but rather by close analyses of which aspects can and how. If we focus only on efforts like Fingarette’s philosophical reading of the Analects as offering a way without a crossroads, we would be compromising the richness of Confucius’ teaching. All Western philosophical approaches, however, are not this way. Other studies of Aristotle’s philosophical views, as seen in Chapter One, do not interpret his view of the world as filled only with “raw impulses” and “unreal opinion[s]” and they thus can complement Fingarette’s Platonically philosophical studies of Confucius. Nussbaum contends: Aristotle makes it very clear that it is not compatible with practical wisdom to seek to minimize the appetites or unduly to dissociate oneself from their claim. “For this sort of being-without-feeling is not human …” (Nicomachean Ethics 1119a6). Aristotle here goes even beyond the Phaedrus in insisting— not just for an isolated case, but quite generally—that the appetitive elements in our nature, which both take us to a world of unstable objects and are in themselves difficult to control, must be accorded intrinsic value in the plan of the best human life. … A being without hunger, thirst, and sexual need would not be received into our society, would not be counted as one of us at all. (309) Recall that other philosophers, too, speak about another Aristotle who sees similarly the appetitive, the contingent, and the worldly or the routine as participating in the making of meaningful lives. This other Aristotle makes his teaching more dynamic, like the teaching by Confucius is dynamic. Interestingly, for example,

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Jiyuan Yu in The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue, repeatedly turns to the Rhetoric for Aristotle’s definition of virtue and of philia (29, 189, 207). Even though Yu does not discuss rhetorical thinking, his effort to cross disciplines and not to limit Aristotle’s ethical discussions merely to his ethical works yields insights that have considerable potential for comparative rhetorical studies of Confucius and Aristotle. For instance, he discusses the “many meanings of individuality” (210) and focuses on two different kinds of it: particular (kath hekaston) and universal (katholon) (211). Technically, according to Yu, neither Aristotle’s nor Confucius’ conception of the self is an individual in the sense of the particular. He states, The relation between the self and the good of others in Confucianism is therefore similar to that in Aristotle’s practical self. Neither of them embraces a clear-cut contrast between self and others, and neither of them believes that the development of one’s character necessitates a denial of one’s sociality. (214) The difference is rather in whether the self and the other, the orator and the audience, relate instrumentally or intrinsically (218). Yu’s insight can help further the rhetorical discussion of the self, the interlocutor’s and the listener’s, and go beyond stereotypical notions of the Aristotelian individual as egotistical and a Confucian person as identity-less (210). When the philosophical studies by Yu and many others are combined with rhetorical inquiry, we should be able to understand better Confucian teachings such as “the mutuality of Heaven and man” (Tu Centrality 8) or the relationality of reality and mirage. Literary interpretations More than a decade after the publication of Fingarette’s Confucius: The Secular as Sacred in 1972, Benjamin Schwartz offered one of the more in-depth interpretations of the Analects in The World of Thought in Ancient China. The study was intended to extend interpretations of the Analects like Fingarette’s beyond the philosophical realm. Drawing upon important works such as Clifford Geertz’s Interpretation of Cultures, Max Weber’s Religion of China, and Claude Levi-Strauss’ Cultural Anthropology, Schwartz strived to undertake an interpretation that is aesthetically sociopolitical and ethico-ritual. In notable ways, Schwartz resituates the Analects in a disciplinarily more open and interactive context than does Fingarette. Repeatedly, he cautions readers that the antithetical tendencies, seen for example in Fingarette’s dichotomy between the Way and the mirage, are not habits shared by the ancient Chinese. For example, Schwartz states that the notion of a radical breach and even antagonism between a human world centered on the human subject as the sole source of meaning and an indifferent ‘valueless’ or even hostile universe does not seem to be suggested anywhere in the Analects. (120)

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Successfully, too, Schwartz problematizes the over-simplistic translations of modern terms such as feudalism and bureaucracy (42–43) and explains the important role of more cultural factors such as politics, religion, and psychology (72–75) in his interpretation of the Analects. Clearly, Schwartz strives to resist cultural reductionism. In identifying Confucius’ aesthetic emphasis with the Kantian aesthetic tradition based on “moral autonomy” (113), however, Schwartz’s inquiry is both enabled by broadening the interpretative boundary to include the literary and limited by its bias for the literary or the aesthetic. For example, in Schwartz’s discussion of the historical background of Confucius and the Analects, the Book of Poetry plays a more formative role than the other four Confucian classics9. The Book of Poetry is more often translated as the Book of Songs, and Schwartz’s aesthetic choice of poetry is also indicative of his overall approach that resonates with a philosophical view of the moral autonomy of those individuals who know reality only through faith (Schwartz 113), through an aesthetic experience of the sublime. Interpreting the teaching of Confucius as committed to the Kantian belief that certain judgments are “singular, and yet as such profess to be universally valid in respect of every Subject” (Kant 90), Schwartz differs from Fingarette only in overlooking Confucius’ teaching about the community. This omission is unfortunate because that is the most Confucian element in Fingarette’s interpretation. The issue once again is not Kant’s thinking itself; rather, it is how much of Confucius’ teaching this view can introduce. Schwartz’s interpretation cannot explain, for example, why meaning is often treated as particular, contextual, and probable by Confucius in the Analects. For instance, Confucius is seen to answer identical questions differently (11.2110) and a key Confucian concept ren (仁) is referred to 108 times in the Analects and is explained in a number of different ways in different contexts. In other words, Schwartz replaces the austere philosopher with the mystical and authoritative poet, keeping his interpretation of the Analects still only in the Platonic tradition and leaving unexplained Confucius’ explicit and repeated effort to de-emphasize such geniuses and to emphasize teaching and learning (7.9, 7.2711). Writing more than a decade after Fingarette, Schwartz intends to broaden the interpretive scope of the Analects of Confucius to include the rhetorical by using more current and more rhetorical concepts such as subjectivity (74) and the mediating role of language (40). However, some important rhetorical connotations of these concepts are to be further explored. Subjectivity, as Schwartz uses it, creates difficulties because it fails to differentiate subjectivity from the traditional use of the word subject, as in the expression “individual subjects.” Either in rhetorical or in postmodern contexts, the use of subjectivity deliberately and emphatically problematizes the unified, coherent, and autonomous connotation of the concept individual subject, emphasizing that the human subject is shaped by “uses of language and cultural codes of a given historical moment” (Berlin 62)—a very rhetorical concept in the Sophistical tradition. In other words, the word subjectivity in the wake of postmodern development implies viewing the human subject as multiple and incoherent. That is, the efficacy of the concept lies precisely in

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demystifying—in the extreme sophistical tradition, if you will—the immutable and arhetorical meta- or master-narrative as something waiting for each individual subject to discover. A related implication of referring to individual subjects as subjectivity is that hope is no longer placed on autonomous agents but rather social, cultural, and political agencies, a concept characteristically contextual, dynamic, social, and rhetorical. As a result, to render subjectivity arhetorically, disregarding its historical context and taking it merely as individual subjects, is puzzling when trying to be rhetorical as well as difficult when explaining Confucius. The problem is that subjectivity—the discursively fabricated, mediated, and dynamic conception of the self—differs considerably from the Kantian self that possesses “a spiritual self-sufficiency which renders [the self] independent of ‘popularity’ or dependence on the powerful” (Schwartz 113). With no real mediation, Schwartz’s so-called subjectivity does not engage the productive tension between the aesthetic and the rhetorical, the tension that is alive in the Analects and the tension that Schwartz’s choice of terms ostensibly intends to explore. Not surprisingly, therefore, despite his warning against dichotomizing concepts in Confucius’ teaching, Schwartz limits the interpretive possibility of the Analects only to the philosophical tradition that draws upon the mystical, the individual, and the aesthetic. Ultimately, the tension between language-use and thought in Schwartz’s interpretation is negative, not productive. Schwartz does not view human language-use in the world, between the absolutely true and the absolutely random, as integral to the thinking activities that continuously help to effect, maintain, and improve human knowledge. In the quotation below, Schwartz confirms the dichotomy between “ideal reality” and “corrupt actuality,” foreshadowing his argument for the individual hero or genius-poet within the individual. Confucius does not rise from the chaos of the world of particulars to a realm of eternal forms since, in his view, the tao remains indissolubly linked to the empirical world. He does, however, suggest an ascent to an ultimate unity which is beyond all words. And yet, for him too, empirical knowledge can also turn into the mere accumulation of senseless particulars. While Confucius may thus provide no explicit “metaphysical” explanation for the gap between the ideal reality and the corrupt actuality and no notion of an apodictic “rational method” for bridging the gap, the gap exists for him as much as for Socrates and Plato. (94–95) The insistence on the gap, in the end, is emphasized at the expense of the link between “the world of particulars” and “the realm of eternal forms”; the antithetical is clearly fundamental to Schwartz’s interpretation of the Analects. It is said that dao-the-way is connected to the world, where metaphysical ideals and senseless particulars coexist; yet, this connection is in fact a real and unbridgeable abyss in between. The ultimate unity that is “beyond all words” (95) and “beyond definition” (90) is actually disconnected from the world and is the same as the vision of the celestial and philosophical/aesthetical charioteers who, as described by Plato,

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aspire only to the mysterious and otherworldly realm of the eternally unchanging, the realm that is not reached through words but only the faith of each individual. Indeed, Schwartz counts exclusively on the disinterested “higher finality” or purposes (Kant 92) and privileges the aesthetic experience of “the sublime one merely in ourselves” (Kant 93). Such individual experiences, “beyond all words” and “beyond definition,” can unite us only by taking us to the “absolutely great” due to “reason’s law,” or destiny, for us to strive after certain ideas (Kant 106). Anything else on our way is not really of value. In Schwartz, as it is in Kant, rhetoric that studies words in action becomes one of human beings’ gravest misfortunes because it is fundamentally only a hindrance to the human effort to discover truth (Schwartz 93). Thus, it is a distraction to resist and a burden to bear in the human attempt to intuit the divine mind amidst “senseless particulars.” Confucius indeed points out that tian-the-cosmic does not speak and nevertheless can enable different seasons and growths to take place in nature (17.1912). But interpretations that focus exclusively on such passages for Confucius’ view of language-use and infer that to Confucius “ideal reality” is simply beyond words leave many passages in the Analects difficult to explain. For example, the unexamined tension between 17.19 on the silent heaven and most other passages leaves us with important questions for Schwartz’s aestheticized interpretation of the Analects. In what sense is Confucius’ dao-the-way, which “remains indissolubly linked to the empirical world,” transcendent? How does the Confucian person differ from the autonomous self? While shedding interpretative light on the Analects, Schwartz’s literary interpretation also points to the need for a more integrated or rhetorical approach to the interpretation of Confucius13. Rhetorical interpretations Rhetorical interpretations of the Analects form a rather recent subfield in the study of comparative rhetoric, which is itself also a younger field. In 1962, Robert Oliver’s Culture and Communication: The Problem of Penetrating National and Cultural Boundaries rekindled in the U.S. an interest in comparative rhetorical studies.14 In 1998, Xing Lu and George Kennedy each published a book-length study on comparative rhetoric, both of which remain by far the most comprehensive and systematic endeavors in comparative rhetorical studies. Lu’s focus is Chinese rhetoric, while Kennedy’s focus is broader. In the first decade of this century, several collections of essays were published: two by Wenshan Jia, Xing Lu, and Ray Heisey on Chinese Communication Studies and two by Carol Lipson and Roberta A. Binkley on non-Greek rhetorics, all sharing the same broader scope as that of Kennedy’s study but all also including studies of Chinese rhetoric. In addition, Jan Swearingen and LuMing Mao edited publications of collected essays on Chinese rhetoric. These books and collections bring scholars together, make comparative rhetorical studies more visible, and reflect another period of growth in comparative rhetorical studies in recent history. As mentioned in the Introduction, there have also always been articles like the one in the Sage Handbook of Rhetorical Studies. My focus being Confucius’ and Aristotle’s rhetorical thinking,

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I will draw upon those comparative studies—from the sources referred to so far but also beyond them—that share a similar focus as mine. In doing so, I would like to show what has been accomplished but also how a broader, deeper understanding of rhetorical invention can help the field continue to move forward. Oliver acknowledges that the Chinese have a concept of rhetoric as the West knows it, as do Lu and Kennedy, although Kennedy concludes that “argument from probability” and “deductive argument in the form of enthymemes” are, respectively, yet to be found and seemingly undeveloped in ancient Chinese rhetoric (Kennedy 151). As I have discussed and shall continue to discuss in the ensuing chapters, I see argument from probability a key dimension to both Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking, but here I would like to focus first on the two different approaches to comparative rhetorical studies and discuss why similarities should be explored together with differences. Two approaches Oliver, Lu, and Kennedy explore similarities as well as differences. In contrast, the collections published in the first decade of this century, as mentioned earlier, shift the attention to differences. Jan Swearingen and Arabella Lyon state, for example, that the “singularity” (“Double”) and “uniqueness” (Lyon “Confucian” 133) of the Chinese and Western rhetorics should be the focus in studying Chinese rhetoric. Swearingen and Mao stress each rhetoric’s “own lens,” “own terms,” emphasizing “our lens or theirs” (“Introduction” W43). Consistent with Robert Kaplan’s linguistic study in 1966, Weiguo Qu states simply that Chinese rhetoric “operates … not according to logical inference … [but rather] works for a holistic arousal” (W76). Reinforcing the stereotypes of the “agonistic Greek and irenic Chinese” (Lloyd Adversaries 21, 121), Lyon characterizes Confucius’ rhetoric as emphasizing “a valuing of amicable relationships and kinship” (Deliberative 42) as opposed to valuing argumentation or persuasion. Findings from the scholarship outside of the collections, however, problematize these conclusions of differences. Xiaoye You and Yichun Liu, for example, find that Confucians actually are fond of arguing, taking arguing in the sense the West understands it. Interestingly, they maintain that it is not seeing this fondness or similarity that results from looking at Chinese rhetoric through Western lenses (“Confucians” 425). Furthermore, Xuan Peng argues that rhetoric is “a universal art” and that, despite the obviously different cultures, “China experienced times when rhetorical theory was developed in similar manner[s] as it was in the West” (67). He uses as an example the cultural phenomenon of the ancient Chinese traveling orators (zong-heng jia 縱橫家) during the Warring States Period. Lu Liu argues that Chinese writing moves linearly in general (“Rhetorical” 1), and Kennedy has found evidence of “logical reasoning” “especially in China” (206). Bih-Hsia Huang, too, in A Comparison of Greek and Chinese Rhetoric and Their Influence on Later Rhetoric discusses the importance of kairos (136–38), or of timing, to the rhetorical invention of new knowledge (138). Carolyn Matalene has observed, based on her examination of an essay by a Chinese writer in 1818, that the writer “merely announces the principles

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of a world view which all agree upon” because “he knows that his assumptions are shared by his readers, so there is no need to convince them” (798) of those assumptions or principles. In other words, the writer relies on enthymemes and topoi: the shared content and form of reasoning in those assumptions. Sharon Bracci Blinn and Mary Garrett have discovered and discussed the use of common topics in Chinese classical texts in “Aristotelian Topoi as a Cross-Cultural Analytical Tool.” In addition to the passages from the Analects that I cite in this chapter that show Confucius’ rhetorical thinking in action, Stephen W. Durrant’s careful analysis of classical texts such as The Book of Songs and The Record of History concludes that “Chinese writers did not hesitate to voice sometimes harsh criticism of earlier historians” (284). They engage in argumentation, persuasion, rhetorical activities that are familiar to the West. Difficulties with focusing exclusively on differences Indeed, one of the challenges of comparative studies is the danger of misreading the other as the self—presupposing that human beings are identical no matter where and when they are in the world and in history and therefore assuming that we have all the insights that others must want. I realize that it is the respect for the other and the good intention to preempt these risks potentially fatal to any comparative efforts that inspire the shift towards a focus on differences exclusively. At the same time, the alternative to seeing us as identical does not have to be seeing our identities as not overlapping in any way; the alternative to thinking that we ourselves have all the insight to share does not have to be that we have none of it to share. Focusing exclusively on differences is not our only choice; in fact, focusing on both similarities and differences can make comparative studies, at least Chinese rhetorical studies, more productive, practical, and thorough. Exclusive focus on differences is not the most productive way to engage comparative studies. For example, to Xing Lu’s call for attention to “a language of ambiguous similarity” (Rhetoric 93), a question is raised: “in bringing the concepts of rhetoric and rhetorical theory to Confucian texts, are we colonizing China?” (Lyon “Confucian Silence” 133). The criticism of colonialism has been alluded to repeatedly in recent literature, such as The Sage Handbook, and is excessive when it is leveled against an appeal to understand similarities. This criticism, in comparative literary Chinese studies, has been caricatured as the “will to differentiation” (Zhang 109) and counter-criticized as “cultural essentialism” and “sinocentrism” (Chow R 6). Where this essentialized sinocentrism is insensitive to the diversity within the Chinese culture, it has also been labeled as “secondorder racism” (Chow R 7). Abstract and sweeping names of colonists or racists are unhelpful because they polarize and therefore inadvertently encourage intimidation more than negotiation. Similarly, even though the approach to divide rhetoric as theirs and ours is useful, when used exclusively, it is infeasible methodologically. In “Confucian Silence and Remonstration: A Basis for Deliberation,” Lyon argues against bringing “the concepts of rhetoric and rhetorical theory to Confucian texts” (134). In

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discussing the “strategies of deliberation” in Confucius’ Analects and the differences between persuasion and remonstration, however, she bases her discussion on Gilbert Ryle’s differentiation of “verbs of terminus and process verbs,” the differentiation that is in turn based on Aristotle’s Metaphysics (139). The very use of these concepts suggests important similarities between the two rhetorics under discussion, creating difficulties for Lyon’s argument to emphasize only differences. Lyon justifies bringing the “Western” concept of deliberation to the discussion by stating, “because Confucianism is often held up as a source of democratic possibility in China and because democracy is based on deliberative processes, it makes some sense to focus on this legislative term despite its Aristotelian origins” (134). But if Lyon needs to make exceptions, so do others. Lyon makes several more exceptions than just one or two. Her arguments for democracy, use of the concept of legislative rhetoric, and reliance ultimately on Aristotle’s Metaphysics—her overall and fundamental argument—depend on these concepts familiar to Western readers. In another effort to develop a vocabulary that is the “alternative” to “tropes or enthymemes” in “Why Do the Rulers Listen to the Wild Theories of SpeechMakers?,” Lyon relies on the concept of “ethos or kairos” (177). Similar phenomena have happened before. As Yameng Liu points out, while Oliver cautioned “against the danger of distorting non-Western oratories by seeking to depict them in Western terms,” his study, too, “looks more like a description of Asian rhetorics in Western rather than in ‘their own’ terms” (320–21). To study the other, it seems, the self needs to start with what the self knows. Similarity can be used, perhaps unavoidably, as a point of departure in comparative and contrastive study of rhetorical invention. Lyon is right to caution us not to “import” Western views of rhetoric and “force” it on Confucius (“Confucian” 133), but an alternative to the exclusive focus on differences can be the twofold effort to search for similarities and differences at the same time. Importantly, doing so requires that we examine differences within cultures as well as among them, examining certain aspects of one’s own culture in comparison to and in contrast with certain aspects of others’ cultures. For example, there is not one homogeneous understanding of rhetoric in the West or one standard interpretation of Aristotle’s view. Examining the diverse views may reveal that some of them are more responsive to Confucius’ rhetorical thinking. The effort to focus exclusively on difference so far is yet to produce this kind of nuanced analysis. For instance, when we say Chinese rhetoric is uniquely different from Western rhetoric, what do we mean by Chinese and Western? Lyon states, True, definitions of rhetoric [in the West] can vary dramatically, but they all involve a metalinguistic awareness of language, awareness of language as a system or complex to be manipulated in the service of identity, communication, persuasion, or artifice. Rhetorical theory describes how metaphors, repetition, questions, and so on affect an audience with an assumption that the rhetor can put this theoretical information into practice and achieve some end. (“Confucian Silence” 132)

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This summary acknowledges the diversity within Western rhetoric and captures some characteristics of rhetoric known to some Western readers. To further our understanding in comparative study, however, we need to examine the notion that the Chinese have no “metalinguistic awareness.” Does this mean that, as pointed out by Kennedy in Comparative Rhetoric, “Confucius had little interest in metaphysics” (153) or does it mean that Confucius has no “desire to conceptualize or analyze” rhetoric (218)? Either way, does that not remind us of some Western rhetorical traditions and therefore suggest some connection between Confucius and the West? Recall also that one of the conclusions of Habsmeier’s study is that the ancient Chinese had no systematic study of grammar yet they also did have it because they analyzed grammar in a different venue, dictionaries. Similarly, therefore, did Confucius have no desire to conceptualize metaphysics and rhetoric or did he conceptualize them differently or in a different way? If Confucius indeed has some metaphysical or rhetorical views to offer, are they more similar to Plato’s views or to Aristotle’s? For Plato and Aristotle differ, though both Westerners. While Plato conceptualized rhetoric mainly through works like the Gorgias and the Phaedrus, Aristotle developed his understanding through philosophical treatises but also in The Art of Rhetoric. If Confucius contrasts with one Greek thinker in some way, could it be possible that he compares to the other in some way? Issues like these may lead to more thorough research in comparative rhetorical studies, research that is based on a sensitivity to the intricate differences within both Greek and Chinese rhetorical cultures and research that complements “the battle between McWorld and Jihad” with diplomacy and probable thinking. Not only is rhetorical thinking complex in the West, but it is so in the East as well. Lyon summarizes Confucius’ rhetorical thinking as follows: In contrast to democratic Athens, the individual act of persuasion here [“the Confucian tradition”] is difficult to imagine, especially to imagine as an ethical undertaking. … These cultural differences also create a significant problem for writing about rhetorical theory in China. … There is no reason to believe that rhetorical theory was part of their [Confucians’] concern. (“Confucian” 132–33) Confucius did not discuss the individual, he did not recognize all as created equal, nor did he see the people as a subjective force in society. On the other hand, he believed that even elites could and must learn from commoners, the best of men could not be deprived of their will, and that government must demonstrate virtue to win its population and bring order to society. (“Confucian” 142) Once again, the summary captures some features of Chinese rhetorical thinking but is in need of discussions of specifics. For example, what does it mean for a person not to be a subjective force but to have will? And how uniquely Chinese is this idea and what are its conceptual underpinnings? Kennedy argues that using

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terms unfamiliar to Western readers “as a basis of analysis of discourse in other cultures would be confusing” (5). It is an issue of both clarity and feasibility. A clearer understanding of the other develops hand in hand with a clearer understanding of the self; confronting the diversity within the self both encourages and is encouraged by efforts to understand the complexity of the other. It seems, therefore, that at least in comparative rhetorical studies, while this process may not end with a preliminary understanding of the self, it unavoidably starts with it. Examining similarities and differences at the same time will help make our understanding more nuanced and complete. Take, for example, the call to go “beyond cause and effect” thinking in the Western tradition (Mao “Returning” W51) and to turn to informal logic that “in recent years, Western rhetoricians and philosophers have … proposed” (Liu, L “Luoji” W104). It is indeed helpful to point out that causality and logic are not the only components of rhetorical thinking, but it is also important to note, as does Stephen Toulmin in the Uses of Arguments, there is a long Western history of quasi-syllogism or practical argument, including Aristotle’s understanding of rhetoric as having the enthymeme as its substance. It has been observed also that some Western rhetoricians may find the approach of making recommendations through exploring the disadvantages of their opposites, used in some non-Western practices, “too weak to be persuasive” (Mao “Returning” W50). All this certainly can be the case with some Western rhetoricians, but many Western rhetoricians have always embraced this so-called “non-Western practice,” including Aristotle. In the Rhetoric, Aristotle has many examples of this kind. One example shows how Aesop tried to persuade the assembly not to remove a popular leader at Samos, comparing the removal of the leader to the removal of the fleas that have feasted on the blood of a fox that had been stuck in a hole in the water. When a hedgehog offers to help remove the fleas, Aesop’s fable goes, the fox says, “These fleas are by this time full of me and not sucking much blood; if you take them away, others will come with fresh appetites and drink up all the blood I have left” (1393b23–35). In other words, do not remove the fleas or the leader, because doing so, i.e. doing the opposite of what is recommended, can cause more misery. It has been proposed as well that the Chinese understanding of originality is “the rearrangement of existing ideas and sayings,” while the Western concept is “the creation of entirely new ideas and expressions” (Swearingen “Ren” W109). This line of inquiry is very interesting, and I will pursue it further in Chapter Five. At the same time, the divide between Westerners and Chinese needs to be carefully qualified. Western rhetoricians invent through the rearrangement of existing ideas all the time as seen in studies by Michael Halloran on public discourse, James Porter on intertextuality, not to mention Aristotle himself on the entire rhetorical project. Similarly, Chinese daoist hermits and recluses (yimin 逸民) break away from the social norms—as seen in the Zhuangzi—but they are respected and are integrated into the thinking of many Chinese thinkers, including the thinking of Confucius (Analects 5.22, 7.14, 16.1215). Other views include that Confucian rhetoric is based on xin (信) or keeping one’s promises (You “The Way” 438, Mao “Studying” 230) and on shu (恕) or tolerant, forgiving, “accepting, and

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negotiating, with differences”; this last one is said to be a “direct response to [the] ‘either-or’ discourse” (Mao “Studying” 234) in the West. These interpretations are indeed based on passages in the Analects; now we must include in the consideration other passages also in the Analects where Confucius comments on xin differently: “It’s a sign of a petty person to stand by one’s words rigidly and to be resolute regardless of the circumstances” 「 ( 言必信，行必果，硜硜然小 人哉！」13.20). Many passages in the Analects also require that we inquire into the complexity of the tolerating, forgiving, and un-dichotomizing ways to discourse. In short, these interpretations are valuable but also need to consider the diversity within each culture, Western and Chinese, Confucian and Aristotelian, in order to achieve a more complete and nuanced understanding of the self, the other, and the comparison. Importance of studying differences within cultures I would like to turn to another aspect of comparative Chinese rhetorical studies that has helped to advance our understanding but needs further clarification: the tendency to take Platonic rhetoric as the only respectable Western rhetoric, especially when it comes to rhetorical invention. This tendency is inconspicuous, and perhaps unintentional, but real. At first sight, Aristotle seems to be the name associated with rhetoric in the West; in reality, it is often only the Platonic side of that rhetoric being referred to. Clarifications of this aspect of comparative rhetorical studies are important to the current study that focuses on comparing and contrasting Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking. In this section, I focus on Xing Lu’s discussion of Confucius’ view of rhetoric and Kennedy’s discussion of Aristotle’s because they are influential and also because they exhibit this tendency somewhat explicitly. In Rhetoric in Ancient China, Fifth to Third Century B.C.E.: A Comparison with Classical Greek Rhetoric, Lu discusses Confucius’ rhetoric briefly and describes it as observing handbooks or as a technical tradition. Lu describes Confucius’ rhetoric as comprising the principle of Quintilian’s “good man speaking well” and figures or tropes. A rhetorician is a good or virtuous man (164) who can use stylistic devices such as rhythm and metaphors and is mindful of pitfalls that lead to “unskilled and unclear communication” (160). Rhetorical inquiry in this rather technical tradition uses tropes and figures to convey what Confucius approves or disapproves of. Lu also criticizes Confucius’ call for normative measures as atavistic and regrettable, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, describes Confucius’ rhetoric as finding ways to present, not to form, the ideas of the good or virtuous person. Missing in this interpretation is the Aristotelian inventive tradition that validates the role norms and commonalities play in negotiating continuity, inventing probable ideas, and initiating new paradigms. It is helpful that Lu has always made it clear in all her studies that concepts like tianming, commonly translated as the Mandate of Heaven, is crucial to Confucius’ rhetorical thinking, but she has also always described these concepts all too briefly (e.g. “The Influence” 5), leaving unexplored the specifics of the

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inventive role language-use plays in the human understanding of concepts like tianming the Mandate of Heaven. In discussing the Confucian Xun Zi’s idea, Lu does point out that to Xun Zi language is no reality (189) and she raises a crucial question: Why did the ancient Chinese “not make their theories and conceptualizations [of language-use] as explicit and systematic as the Greek rhetoricians did?” But her answer is characteristically fleeting and also somewhat circular, bypassing rhetorical invention: “One of the reasons for this implicit feature of Chinese rhetorical tradition may be that there is no single identifiable term clearly and specifically referring to persuasive discourse and language arts as in the case of Greek rhetorike” (90). In the end, Quintilian’s good man speaking well is imported to, rather than develops in relation to, rhetorical activities, and this is Plato’s concept that rhetoric only conveys truth. This way of treating Confucian rhetoric is representative of a Platonic emphasis that I try to supplement in the current study because thinking in Confucian rhetoric has been treated, in my view, too overwhelmingly as “virtue centered” (Ding) in the sense that it is merely the conduit for the same truth that, for instance, Augustinian rhetoric “defends” (Lu “Comparative” 111) and merely the conduit for the “truth” in general (Swearingen and Mao “Introduction” W35). This view treats Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric almost exclusively in the same spirit as “Plato’s truth seeking dialectic” (Swearingen and Mao “Afterword” W115), thus as simply the channel to convey Confucian “core values” (Xu 117). In fact, Lu proposes explicitly that one of the meaningful projects for understanding Confucian rhetoric would be a comparison of the Analects with the Phaedrus (“Comparative” 112), rather than with Aristotle’s Rhetoric. However, the more one emphasizes a Platonic conception of rhetoric alone, the less rhetorical invention or probability is left because it is displaced by philosophical thinking—reducing the diversity and dynamics of rhetorical traditions in East and West alike. As Yameng Liu observes, some studies end up denying Confucius’ rhetoric its “role in creating social and cultural meanings” (“Nothing” 153), the social and cultural meanings that, in both Aristotelian and Confucian traditions, have significance for but also beyond rhetorical inquiries. This partiality for a Platonic interpretation of Confucius’ rhetoric is also reflected in George Kennedy’s Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction. Kennedy explores the complex concept of rhetoric as “a structured system of teaching public speaking and written composition” (2) and, more broadly, as “a form of mental and emotional energy” (3). In Aristotle’s own words, it is energeia or a kind of activity (Rhetoric 1411b27–32). To Kennedy, the function of rhetorical activities is primarily the “preservation of the genetic line, the family” and subsequently the initiation of “offensive actions and efforts” (216). In very plain language, Kennedy’s brief analysis reflects an astute insight into the connection between Aristotle’s rhetorical and metaphysical views, an insight that is crucial to understanding Aristotle’s view of rhetoric. I will discuss this insight in more detail in Chapter Three but focus here on the concept of energeia: what is it and what does it mean in rhetoric? One way to address these questions is through understanding Aristotle’s views of human perceiving and conceptualizing

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processes, and in Aristotle: The Desire to Understand, Jonathan Lear helps shed light on just these processes. According to Aristotle, the soul, before it has interacted with the natural and social world, has only the potential to understand. Lear explains, “A tree causes me to see a tree” (105 emphasis mine) or to perceive it. To Aristotle, in so perceiving or learning “a body of knowledge,” be it of a tree or of geometry, the learner’s “state [of the soul] of ignorance is being replaced by a state of knowledge” (105). Lear describes this process as a more or less straightforward change. But the change that happens next to this perceived or “learned” knowledge is “of a very special sort”: When one already has knowledge, the active exercise of this knowledge is not a change of state of the soul. Indeed, Aristotle says that the active use of knowledge helps to preserve the knowledge which one already has. If this is to be thought of as a change at all, it is a change of a very special sort. What is so special about this change is that the outcome, active contemplating, is itself an activity. An activity (energeia) differs from a change (kinēsis) in that it is not directed toward any external end, and thus may serve as an end in itself. (105) At first, it seems clear that Aristotle separates energeia and kinesis. Perception is a more straightforward change of the state of the soul from being a potentiality for perception to actual perceptions. This change is kinesis, and kinesis is learning and discovering something new; it is perceptual and can be mechanical. As mentioned in the Introduction, Aristotle sees “building” an argument as kinesis (Metaphysics 1048b23–33) and therefore it is not energeia. The process takes place in the following way. Learning happens when the object’s potential to be perceived and the perceiver’s potential to perceive engage; the perceiver learns about the tree, geometry, or rhetorical strategies. As Lear explains, the perceiver can achieve the end of learning and then stop at a particular point in time, but then contemplating on how to use that knowledge is an activity or energeia that differs from kinesis in two ways: it is not done for any end other than itself and it will never stop. However, this clear distinction is not absolute, because, as Lear adds, even though perception is more straightforward, it is actually also a change of that special sort because “seeing, Aristotle says, is completed every moment, and we engage in it for its own sake, not just for its usefulness” (105). In other words, seeing, perceiving, or learning is both energeia and kinesis, change of a special sort and change directed to a special end. I will discuss Lear’s analysis in more detail in Chapter Three, but Lear’s conclusion indicates that rhetorical kinesis is not devoid of activities that are for their own sake, an insight that provides a clue as to why Aristotle describes rhetorical and metaphorical thinking as energeia. Kennedy’s interpretation of Aristotle’s conceptualization of rhetoric as energeia is based on this deeply philosophical tension in the learning and building activities that are at once kinesis and energeia. In drawing our attention to the idea of energeia in the Rhetoric, Kennedy clearly emphasizes this importantly balanced view of Aristotle’s rhetorical thinking. At the same time, this move has its

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own challenges. For instance, to emphasize energeia perhaps, Kennedy translates one of Aristotle’s definitions of rhetoric as “an ability, in each case, to see [emphasis mine] the available means of persuasion,” displacing Roberts’ translation of to observe with to see. Here is where a challenge arises. In important ways, see is a more accurate choice than observe. Philosophically, as noted above, see is the word used to describe the Aristotelian view of activities of perceiving, learning, and argument building, activities that are kinesis and energeia at the same time. Corresponding to this philosophical insight, the choice of see is accurate in the sense that see commonly denotes the balance of two meanings of kinesis and energeia more than the word observe typically does. Two of the more common meanings of see are that our eyes physically see something visible and that our mind intuitively grasps something abstract. Precisely because of these common denotations of see, however, using see requires that we take special care not to underestimate the kinetic, the empirically cognitive, or the discursively mediated dimension of rhetorical activities of argument building. If we are not careful, see could lead to an interpretation of Aristotle’s rhetorical invention as waiting either for knowledge and truth to appear somehow or for them to be given to us in order for us rhetoricians to dress them up. Both are important parts of rhetorical invention, but neither accentuates Aristotle’s rhetorical invention of probable knowledge that is “partly like sophistical reasoning,” which entails invention in the sense of depending necessarily also on discursively mediated, human-invented, less-than-pure probable decisions, judgments, or knowledge. This dependency is justified by the fact that, as Aristotle points out, there are often times when “exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided” (Rhetoric 1356a8) in the realm of the contingent, the human, and the rhetorical. As a result, just as observe can potentially minimize the energeia aspect of kinetic activities like learning, experiencing, and argument building, see can potentially compromise the kinetic aspect of them. Both translations, in other words, have their limitations. Furthermore, neither is so exact that choosing see over observe necessarily leads to relegating rhetorical invention, as kinesis and energeia, to a mere conduit for conveying either what philosophers have seen or what scientists have ascertained; the potential for both meanings exists. One must therefore be as careful with this potential implication as one does with the incompleteness in the choice of observe over see. This is so because, once again, both philosophy and science try to separate absolute knowledge from impure knowledge, while rhetoric overtly validates the heuristic value of that impurity in the human process of knowing, validation that is the aspect of sophistical reasoning in Aristotle’s rhetorical thinking. Both observation and contemplation are indispensable to the soul of the Aristotelian artists. In a sense, observation arguably plays even more of a role than contemplation does in rhetoric, despite the inseparability of the two. Prior to the perceptive observation, as Lear puts it, the soul16 is only “potentially all intelligible things” (123), and it is this perceptive observation that jumpstarts the actualization of the intelligible things in the soul, making it possible for artists to build and contemplate what and how to argue and write about. As Lear puts it aptly, to Aristotle “it is by penetrating deeper into the world that we get beyond it” (269) because in the

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world of kinesis there already exists energeia. This concept captures the spirit of the rhetorical invention of probable knowledge: rhetoricians invent ideas through the necessary mediation of perception that differs from but is also joined with contemplation or energeia. In the context of Kennedy’s translation and annotation, one definitely senses the effort to keep the Aristotelian balance that resides in the choice of the word see over observe. For example, Kennedy comments explicitly: “Any argument has some strategy and some content” (On Rhetoric 45). At the same time, however, there is also a perceptible partiality for the contemplative, the philosophical, or the Platonic side of Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric. The art of rhetoric is said to focus on seeing the available means, “thus not necessarily using them” (13), to invent probable knowledge. Kennedy also has no direct comment on the sophistical side of rhetoric according to Aristotle, stating that to Aristotle art is “not the product of artistic skill, but the skill itself” (36). Not taking special care to emphasize the often necessarily intertwined relation between kinesis and energeia leads to overlooking the productive interaction between the two in rhetorical invention. Indeed, and again, Kennedy is right to draw our attention to Aristotle’s view of the rhetorical art as energeia or activity that sees, contemplates, and preserves what the soul actualizes. It is a view that is central to understanding Aristotle’s view of rhetoric and crucial to comparative and rhetorical studies. I take this view further in the next chapter and examine how, according to Aristotle, energeia and the soul as seen in rhetorical invention both resemble and differ from Plato’s view and how they are similar to Confucius’ view. Nevertheless, energeia is only the Platonic part of Aristotle’s view of rhetoric, which by nature, as seen in Lear’s discussion above, contains another part: seeing or perceiving that is both for its usefulness and for its own sake. The kinetic and useful aspect is an indispensable part of rhetorical invention because “our thinking … depends on interaction with the world” (Lear 301), the kinetically changing, perceived, and sometimes invented world. This Platonic partiality affects comparative rhetorical studies directly. Recall Kennedy’s comments that the “use of argument from probability in ancient Chinese rhetoric” is yet to be found and that “deductive argument in the form of enthymemes seems undeveloped” (Comparative 151). But Kennedy, in Comparative Rhetoric, explains argument-by-probability as “lying by both parties to a dispute in courts” (205) because he bases this explanation of probable argument only on certain ancient Greek literature and on Plato. As a result, Kennedy emphasizes that a reason for the ancient Greeks’ reliance on argument-by-probability is “the prevalence of bribery, perjury, and the forgery of documents” (205). This view of probability is a historical, contextual, and unavoidable part of understanding of the ancient Greeks’ concept of argument-by-probability. But to explain Aristotle’s view of probable thinking, Aristotle himself should also be quoted, especially since he has a more complex view of probable argument than Plato does. In the section titled “Logical Arguments” where Kennedy explains argument-by-probability, one finds the only quick and indirect comment that refers to Aristotle: “To this can be added the development of Greek philosophy, where theories of physics, metaphysics, and ethics, though sometimes authoritatively proclaimed, were

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necessarily of a probable nature” (205). Kennedy is accurate in his depiction of some ancient Greeks’—including Aristotle’s—tolerance for lying and for flattery. Kennedy explains, The Greeks delighted in contentious argument. They often put a relatively low priority on telling the truth if a lie would be more effective; slanderous invective was not out of order in a court of law. Perhaps because of this, they seem to have become more tolerant of blatant flattery than most egalitarian cultures. (203) Kennedy is also accurate in depicting some ancient Chinese as valuing “frankness and sincerity” (143) and as teaching that “the speaker is expected to be honest, sincere, and forthright, to preserve his own dignity, to avoid flattery, and at the same time to show respect for the ruler and keep from antagonizing him” (150). I also agree with Kennedy when he speculates, “the Chinese themselves would probably never have distinguished rhetoric as an art or discipline distinct from politics, ethics, or literary criticism” (144). But to suggest that this is due to the dichotomy between dishonest ancient Greek and honest ancient Chinese is as incomplete as it is well-intentioned, well-intentioned because it allows more benefit of the doubt to the less familiar Eastern heritages than to the more familiar Western legacies. In bringing up the issue of lying, Kennedy points to a critical issue regarding the nature of rhetoric, and I will discuss the issue in the next chapter in both ancient worlds and as both a similarity and a difference between them. As I have discussed, however, Aristotle does not exempt rhetoric and therefore probable knowledge from its obligation to what is true and what is ethical; furthermore, Kennedy must agree with this as seen in his drawing our attention to energeia, the concept that is mentioned only once in the three-volume text of the Rhetoric. The only explanation for the still dichotomized characterization of Greek and Chinese rhetorics is that Kennedy takes argument-from-probability as irredeemably harmful and acquiesces to the view that Aristotle’s incorporating sophistical thinking in his rhetoric is regrettable. It must be pointed out that Kennedy does acknowledge that the contentiousness and personal ambition of the Greeks and the skepticism and delight in argument of the sophists—even if this sometimes took the form of trivialities and argument purely for winning—have been fundamental factors in the advance of knowledge and understanding in the West. (207) Overall, however, he avoids commenting on the specifics of the sophistical side of Aristotle’s rhetorical teaching. Rather, his commentary consistently points to how Aristotle differs from the sophists. For example, Kennedy explains that truth for Aristotle is grounded in nature, a view that sets him apart from Plato to whom truth is divine and from the sophists to whom truth is conventional (34). Again, Kennedy is right but is also quiet on Aristotle’s own words that rhetoric is also partly like sophistical discourse and thus reliant on conventions. Having a more

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complete view of Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric has a direct bearing on comparing it with Confucius’ view of it and, consequently, on the advancement of comparative rhetorical studies. The Platonic side of Aristotle’s view of rhetoric may indeed show, for example, a contrast between Confucius’ view of the word and “the biblical view of the Word.” However, with a more complete understanding of Aristotle’s rhetorical teaching as well as that of Confucius’, the contrast may not be as “sharp” (154) as it seems to Kennedy, and Confucius’ view on language-use may also be less “ambivalent” and “inconsistent” (153) than it seems to Kennedy. It is in this sense that attention to the diversity within each culture, in this case the ancient Greek culture, can lead to more thorough research in comparative rhetorical studies.

Conclusions I hope I have shown that a relational approach—using a cross-disciplinary method, engaging similarity and difference in connection with each other, and being sensitive to diversity within cultures—can be an invaluable resource for comparative studies of Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking. This is so because, as observed by Edward H. Madden, the enthymeme, the substance of rhetoric according to Aristotle17 and a key to his view of rhetorical invention, is the crossroads of logicians, rhetoricians, metaphysicians, and many others (372). In concluding this chapter, I turn to David Schaberg’s helpful studies in historiography that were done cross-disciplinarily with rhetoric: A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography and “The Logic of Signs in Early Chinese Rhetoric.” Schaberg’s historiographical analysis focuses on two Confucian classics. The Chronicle of Zuo 《 ( 左轉》) is a narrative history of China from 722 to 468 BCE and was compiled during the Warring States Period (5th century BCE); the Discourses of the States 《國語》 ( ) is a collection of historical events and discourses among rulers and ministers from the Spring and Autumn Period (8th–5th centuries BCE) and was also compiled during the Warring States Period but before the Chronicle. Schaberg’s approach is fundamentally rhetorical. “Historiography,” explains Schaberg, “imagines the world as a well-lighted interpretative community” (“Logic” 158), and he characterizes early Confucian discursive practice manifested in the two works as “the rhetoric of good order” (Patterned 12). Importantly, Schaberg explains, Confucian historiographers do not simply represent the historical facts of Confucian ritual practices faithfully, nor do they create mere “fiction perpetrated for its rhetorical advantages”; rather, they let ritual practices and discourse that describes those practices “influence each other” (Patterned 64). Based on careful analyses of the two texts, Schaberg argues further that to these early Confucian historiographers, “heaven and earth are suppliers of signs” (14) and are “sources of regularity and significance” (104), while the “flexibility of terminology” (46) allows the writers to weave “together general knowledge and particular observation” (43). Schaberg’s historiographical studies are rhetorical in an Aristotelian sense—writer, language, readers, and reality shape each other—concretely illustrating Aristotle’s idea that rhetoric, or

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language-use in general, is partly like dialectic and partly like sophistical reasoning, suspended between the timeless and the temporal. Schaberg concludes that early Confucian texts display a sophisticated understanding of rhetoric (41). I would like to build on Schaberg’s insights from his historiographical studies and on so many others from all the studies reviewed so far to show that the Analects itself reveals this understanding of rhetoric in ways that are both similar to and different from those in Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric.

Notes 1 The word ning (佞) has two related but opposite meanings. One is fawning and sycophantic as in the denunciatory expression of jianning (奸佞) or “crafty and fawning.” The other meaning is able and wise, and one can modestly refer to oneself as buning (不佞) or “not being very eloquent.” In the Analects, however, Confucius mostly uses its first and denunciatory meaning. Jibin Zhao argues that it is Confucius who initiates this negative use of ning (147) and that Confucius uses the term almost exclusively in reference to the new ideas of the rising feudal class. The second part of this argument is over-generalized. For example, Confucius uses the word in 11.24 above, where he does not use it in reference to the new ideas of the rising feudal class. 2 Slingerland takes on the challenge indirectly but his translation could suggest the same reading of the original. Translating both 爭 as compete, he uses quotation marks for the second compete. 3 Similar acts of quoting and counter-quoting take place two more times in the Analects: 17.4 and 17.7. I use 17.4 in Chapter Five and focus only on 17.7 here because both 11.24 and 17.7 show Zi Lu’s quoting and counter-quoting. 4 Ran Qiu is Ran You’s personal name. Personal names are given and used by the parents and those of the older generation. In contrast, names like Ran You are chosen by oneself and used by one’s colleagues and friends of the similar generations. This practice of having two names is a common practice among the Chinese literati. 5 Zhou Ren was an ancient Chinese historian (Qian 593). 6 The Spring and Autumn Annals is the official chronicle of the state of Lu from 722 BCE to 481 BCE. Confucius has been said to be the author, or at least the compiler, of it. 7 I translate ren as a concept similar to equity or being equitable and take it as one of the most important kinds of premise and conclusion for Confucius’ enthymematic thinking; as such, ren also becomes an enthymematic process itself. I develop this argument mainly in Chapter Four. 8 Here Weisheng Mu addresses Confucius by his personal name, Qiu, and this has been taken as indicative of his being either very much Confucius’ elder or a daoist-like recluse, or both. Confucius’ views of and interactions with those who have withdrawn from public life are complex but also significant to an understanding of his rhetorical thinking. I refer to these interactions often as examples throughout this project. 9 There are five classics in the corpus that is commonly known as Confucian Classics. Besides the Book of Songs, dating from the Zhou Dynasty (1027–771 BCE) to the Spring and Autumn Period (770–476 BCE), there are the Book of Li, a book cataloging the many rituals that constitute ancient Chinese life; the Book of History, a set of documents including speeches and laws from the Xia (2205–1755 BCE) to the Zhou Dynasties (1122–256 BCE); the Book of Changes, a book of oracles or divination dating to approximately 3000 BCE; and the Spring and Autumn Annals, the chronicle of the state of Lu during the Spring and Autumn Period (770–476 BCE). 10 See Chapter Three for translation. 11 There are at least two passages that make this point clear (7.19, 7.27), and I discuss both of them in Chapter Three.

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12 See Chapter Three for translation of 17.19 (107). 13 Recent literary studies seem to have developed in parallel with rhetorical studies; my research has found little direct intersection of literary and rhetorical efforts like the one seen in Schwartz’s analysis. In addition, it is difficult to find extensive analysis of the Analects in recent literary studies. This difficulty is confirmed by A Scholarly Review of Chinese Studies in North America, a collection that came out in 2013 and includes studies in social sciences, history, literature, linguistics, and the arts. However, I did discover some comparative literary studies in which scholars wrestle with similar issues that comparative rhetoricians have been wrestling with, and I will refer to these studies in my discussion of recent rhetorical studies. 14 One source that explains earlier Western efforts to understand non-Western rhetoric is Kennedy’s Comparative Rhetoric. For Chinese rhetoric, for example, see Chapter Seven (140–170). 15 子曰：「伯夷、叔齊不念舊惡，怨是用希。」The Master says, “Bo Yi and Shu Qi did not hold grudges, and therefore they rarely had complaints” (5.22). For the translation of 7.14, see Chapter Four; 「齊景公有馬千駟，死之日，民無德而稱焉；伯 夷、叔齊餓於首陽之下，民到于今稱之。其斯之謂與？」Duke Jing of Qi had four thousand horses, but till the day he died, people did not praise him as excellent; Bo Yi and Shu Qi died of hunger at the foot of Mount Shouyang, but till today, people are still praising them. Isn’t this what it means? (16.12). For the translation of 18.8, see Chapter Three. 16 In the context from which this quote is taken, Lear is referring to nous, which he translates as mind. I will discuss the relation between nous and the soul in Chapter Three and therefore the concept of the form more explicitly. But here in this chapter, I have tried to discuss the basic ideas preliminarily without involving too directly Aristotle’s concept of the form. 17 That the enthymeme is the substance of rhetorical persuasion is Roberts’ translation. Kennedy uses body instead of substance. Explaining this translation in relation to the three proofs of logos, ethos, and pathos, Kennedy adds, “Though Aristotle does not say so, one might speculate that the soul, or life, of persuasion comes from ethical and emotional qualities” (On Rhetoric 30). I will discuss these two interpretations in Chapter Three.

Works Cited Aristotle. The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation. Ed. Jonathan Barnes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984. ———. On Rhetoric. Trans. George A. Kennedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. ———. Rhetoric. Trans. W. Rhys Roberts. New York: The Modern Library, 1954. Berlin, James A. Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring College English Studies. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2003. Blinn, Sharon Bracci and Mary Garrett. “Aristotelian Topoi as a Cross-Cultural Analytical Tool.” Philosophy and Rhetoric. 26.2 (1993): 93–112. Chow, Rey. “Introduction: On Chineseness as a Theoretical Problem.” Boundary 2. 25.3 (1998): 1–24. Confucius. The Analects of Confucius. Trans. and Anno. Arthur Waley. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Durrant, Stephen W. “Creating Tradition: Sima Qian Agonistes?” Early China/Ancient Greece: Thinking through Comparisons. Eds. Steven Shankman and Stephen W. Durrant. New York: State University of New York Press, 2002. 283–98. Fingarette, Herbert. Confucius—The Secular as Sacred. New York: Harper & Row, 1972.

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Huang, Bih-Hsia. A Comparison of Greek and Chinese Rhetoric and Their Influence on Later Rhetoric. PhD Dissertation. Texas Tech University, 2002. Irwin, T, H. Aristotle’s First Principles. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Jia, Wenshan, Xing Lu, and D. Ray Heisey, eds. Chinese Communication Theory and Research: Reflections, New Frontiers, and New Directions. Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing, 2002. Kant, Immanuel. The Critique of Judgment. Trans. James Creed Meredith. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957. Kennedy, George. Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. ———. Trans. On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Lear, Jonathan. Aristotle: The Desire to Understand. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Lipson, Carol S. and Roberta A. Binkley, eds. Ancient Non-Greek Rhetorics. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2009. ———. Rhetoric before and beyond the Greeks. Albany, NY: SUNY, 2004. Liu, Lu. “Luoji (Logic) in Contemporary Chinese Rhetoric and Composition: A Contextualized Glimpse.” “Symposium: Comparative Rhetorical Studies in the New Contact Zone: Chinese Rhetoric Reimagined.” Eds. C. Jan Swearingen and LuMing Mao. College Composition and Communication. 60.4 (2009): W98–W106. N.d. Web (accessed June 8, 2009). ———. “Rhetorical Education through Writing Instruction across Cultures: A Comparative Analysis of Select Online Instructional Materials on Argumentative Writing.” Journal of Second Language Writing. 14 (2005): 1–18. Liu, Yameng. “Nothing Can Be Accomplished If the Speech Does Not Sound Agreeable.” Rhetoric before and beyond the Greeks. Eds. Carol S. Lipson and Roberta A. Binkley. Albany, NY: SUNY, 2004. 147–64. ———. “To Capture the Essence of Chinese Rhetoric: An Anatomy of a Paradigm in in Comparative Chinese Rhetoric.” Rhetoric Review. 14.2 (1996): 318–35. Liu, Yichun. and Xiaoye You. “Reading the Heavenly Mandate: Dong Zhongshu’s Rhetoric of the Way (Dao).” Ancient Non-Greek Rhetorics. Eds. Carol S. Lipson and Roberta A. Binkley. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2009. 153–75. Lloyd, G. E. R. Adversaries and Authorities: Investigations into Ancient Greek and Chinese Science. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Lu, Xing. “Comparative Studies of Chinese and Western Rhetorics: Reflections and Challenges.” Chinese Communication Theory and Research Reflections, New Frontiers, and New Directions. Eds. Wenshan Jia, Xing Lu, and D. Ray Heisey. Westport, CT: Ablex publishing, 2002. 105–20. ———. “The Influence of Classical Chinese Rhetoric on Contemporary Chinese Political Communication and Social Relations.” Chinese Perspectives in Rhetoric and Communication. Ed. D. Ray Heisey. Stamford, CT: Ablex, 2000. 3–23. ———. Rhetoric in Ancient China, Fifth to Third Century B.C.E.: A Comparison with Classical Greek Rhetoric. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1998. Lyon, Arabella. “Confucian Silence and Remonstration: A Basis for Deliberation?” Rhetoric before and beyond the Greeks. Eds. Carol S. Lipson and Roberta A. Binkley. Albany, NY: SUNY, 2004. 131–45. ———. Deliberative Acts: Democracy, Rhetoric, and Rights. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013. ———. “‘Why Do the Rulers Listen to the Wild Theories of Speech-Makers?’ Or Wuwei, Shi and Methods of Comparative Rhetoric.” Lipson and Binkley 176–96. MacIntyre, Alasdair. “Incommensurability, Truth, and the Conversation between Confucians and Aristotelians about the Virtues.” Culture and Modernity: East-West Philosophic Perspectives. Ed. Eliot Deutsch. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991. 104–22.

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Madden, Edward H. “The Enthymeme: Crossroads of Logic, Rhetoric, and Metaphysics.” The Philosophical Review. 61.3 (1952): 368–76. Mao, LuMing. “Returning to Yin and Yang: From Terms of Opposites to Interdependence-in-Differences.” “Symposium: Comparative Rhetorical Studies in the New Contact Zone: Chinese Rhetoric Reimagined.” Eds. C. Jan Swearingen and LuMing Mao. College Composition and Communication. 60.4 (2009): W45–W56. n.d. Web (accessed June 8, 2009). ———. “Studying the Chinese Rhetorical Tradition in the Present: Re-presenting the Native’s Point of View.” College English. 69.3 (2007): 216–37. Matalene, Carolyn B. “Contrastive Rhetoric: An American Writing Teacher in China.” College English. 47.8 (1985): 789–808. Needham, Joseph and Christoph Harbsmeier. Science and Civilisation in China Vol. 7 Pt 1 Language and Logic. Cambridge: Cambridge Univesity Press, 1998. Nussbaum, Martha C. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Peng, Xuan. “Toward Chinese Classical Rhetoric: A Comparison with the West.” US-China Foreign Language. 4.3, 2006: 67–70. Qian, Mu.(錢穆) Lun yu xin jie. 《論語新解》Taipei Shi: Lian jing, 1994. Qu, Weiguo. “The Qi of Persuasion and Political Discourse.” “Symposium: Comparative Rhetorical Studies in the New Contact Zone: Chinese Rhetoric Reimagined.” Eds. C. Jan Swearingen and LuMing Mao. College Composition and Communication. 60.4 (2009): W76–W86. n. d. Web (accessed June 8, 2009). Ruskola, Teemu H. “Moral Choice in the Analects: A Way without a Crossroads?” Journal of Chinese Philosophy. 19 (1992): 285–96. Schaberg, David. “The Logic of Signs in Early Chinese Rhetoric.” Early China/Ancient Greece: Thinking through Comparisons. Eds. Steven Shankman and Stephen W. Durrant. New York: SUNY, 2002. 155–86. ———. A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Schwartz, Benjamin. The World of Thought in Ancient China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985. Stichler, Richard N. “Interpreting the Zhongyong: Was Confucius a Sophist or an Aristotelian?” Dao: A Journal of Chinese Philosophy. June (2004): 235–52. Swearingen, C. Jan. “This Year’s New Directions,” para. 3. This Year’s New Directions Is Proud to Welcome Dr. C. Jan Swearingen.” College of Social and Behavioral SciencesEnglish. University of Arizona. nd. Web (accessed June 8, 2009). Swearingen, C. Jan. “Ren, Wen, and Baguwen: The Eight-Legged Essay in Rhetorical Perspective.” “Symposium: Comparative Rhetorical Studies in the New Contact Zone: Chinese Rhetoric Reimagined.” Eds. C. Jan Swearingen and LuMing Mao. College Composition and Communication. 60.4 (2009): W106–W114. N.d. Web (June 8, 2009). Swearingen, C. Jan and LuMing Mao. “Introduction: Double Trouble: Seeing Chinese Rhetoric through Its Own Lens.” “Symposium: Comparative Rhetorical Studies in the New Contact Zone: Chinese Rhetoric Reimagined.” Eds. C. Jan Swearingen and LuMing Mao. College Composition and Communication. 60.4 (2009). W32–W44. n.d. Web (accessed June 8, 2009). ———. “Afterword: A Dialogue on Dialectic and Other Double Matters.” “Symposium: Comparative Rhetorical Studies in the New Contact Zone: Chinese Rhetoric Reimagined.” Eds. C. Jan Swearing and LuMing Mao. College Composition and Communication. 60.4 (2009): W114–W121. n.d. Web (accessed June 8, 2009). Swearingen, C. Jan and LuMing Mao. “Symposium: Comparative Rhetorical Studies in the New Contact Zone: Chinese Rhetoric Reimagined.” College Composition and Communication. 60.4 (2009): W32–W121. Web (accessed June 8, 2009). Toulmin, Stephen. The Uses of Argument. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1958.

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Tu, Weiming (杜維明). Centrality and Commonality: An Essay on Chung-Yung. Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press, 1976. ———. Humanity and Self-Cultivation: Essays in Confucian Thought. Boston: Cheng & Tsui, 1998. ———. Ren wen xin ling de zhen dang. 《人文心靈的震盪》 Taibei: Shi bao wen hua chu ban shi ye you xian gong si, 1976. Xu, George Q. “The Use of Eloquence: The Confucian Perspective.” Rhetoric before and beyond the Greeks. Eds. Carol S. Lipson and Roberta A. Binkley. Albany, NY: SUNY, 2004. 115–29. You, Xiaoye. “The Way, Multimodality of Ritual Symbols, and Social Change: Reading Confucius’s Analects as a Rhetoric.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly. 36.4 (2006): 425–48. Young, Richard E. “Concepts of Art and the Teaching of Writing.” Composition in Four Keys: Inquiring into the Field. Eds. Mark Wiley, Barbara Gleason, and Louise Wetherbee Phelps. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1996. 176–83. Yu, Jiyuan. The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2007.

3

Rhetorical probability Form, eikos, tianming, and rendao

In Chapter Two, I began to show that some Confucian comparative scholars in other fields such as history, literature, and philosophy have reached out to rhetoric, especially to rhetorical invention, to probe insights into cultural similarities and differences. David Schaberg examines the shaping impact acts of writing had on the content of ancient Chinese texts in A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography. Benjamin Schwartz investigates the relation between words and subjectivity in The World of Thought in Ancient China. In The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue, Jiyuan Yu turns to Aristotle’s Rhetoric for a more complete understanding of the Aristotelian virtue of philia. In Remastering Morals with Aristotle and Confucius, May Sim deems Confucius’ “strategies of validation rhetorical” in high regard (188). These efforts reinforce the relation between thinking and expression, episteme and techne, and is an invitation for comparative rhetoricians to consider and explore cross-disciplinary approaches. One of the challenges these studies present—and thus an invitation for interdisciplinary collaboration—can be seen in Sim’s study. Sim observes that, unlike Aristotle, Confucius explains his ideas not by offering metaphysical analysis of details so much as by asking rhetorical questions. This is a valuable insight that needs further exploration. As shall be seen below, it is true that Confucius is well known for resorting to rhetorical questions at times and refraining from directly addressing metaphysical queries regarding tian-the-cosmos, gui-the-ghost, shenthe-spirit. But employing rhetorical questions is a complex act. Rhetorically, arguing by using rhetorical questions can be fallacious: circularly begging the question by asserting or assuming a conclusion, not proving it. Metaphysically, however, such circular thinking can be valid, for example, tautologically speculating about a truism by virtue of necessity. Which kind thinking does Confucius use and does Aristotle not speculate circularly or tautologically? There are no simple answers to these questions. In explicitly involving rhetoric, in other words, philosophers explore the realm of ambiguity, contingency, and therefore occasional equivocation, a reason most philosophers throughout history have contributed to their field of inquiry without openly crossing disciplinary boundaries and taking up rhetoric, an activity precarious more for philosophical inquiries than for inquiries in many other fields. Why then did philosophers like Yu and Sim choose to involve rhetoric in their studies? An answer lies in the fact that they were examining, comparing,

Rhetorical probability 87 and contrasting Aristotle and Confucius closely and comprehensively. To be thorough and comprehensive, as I discuss in Chapters One and Two, comparative studies of Aristotle and Confucius need to be supplemented by rhetorical insights because there is a dimension in both Aristotle’s and Confucius’ thinking that is unmistakably rhetorical and relational. It is this rhetorical dimension that renders Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking helpful for meaningful understanding and thoughtful communication across cultures in the globalized 21st century: what their rhetoric deals with is dynamic and how it deals with it is relational. To play our part in fostering such cross-cultural understanding and communication, rhetoricians, too, need to meet others at the disciplinary boundaries. In this chapter, I try to do so by comparing and contrasting an important reason Aristotle and Confucius value rhetorical activities. This reason, as pointed out by Kennedy and mentioned in both the Introduction and Chapter One, is that rhetoric is energeia, activity that is valued both for its own sake and for its usefulness. Let us examine more closely energeia, the mental and emotional energy. Commenting on Aristotle’s view of metaphor as “expressions that represent things as in a state of activity” (Rhetoric 1411b27), Kennedy translates Aristotle’s view of metaphor-as-energeia as that which makes “the lifeless living through the metaphor” (3.11.2) and he suggests further that energeia “may be translated [as] ‘actualization’” (Kennedy 249). In terms of rhetorical invention, this means that metaphorical thinking helps to actualize in our minds or through our understanding the meanings of the seemingly random objects, events, or things. Actualization, in other words, is a process that is both dynamic and meaningful, and I focus on it in this chapter precisely because it simultaneously differentiates and connects, transforms and stabilizes things, inquiries, and cultures. For example, rhetoric as a discipline of study has its distinct characteristics such as its dealing mainly with contingent subject matters, inventing probable knowledge and probable truths, but it does not treat these dynamic human efforts as purely random; rather, it treats them as containing a certain kind of stability or constancy within. How does this process take place? Recall Aristotle’s dynamic and communal sense of truth. Aristotle describes what is actualized as the form or truth but also characterizes actualization as comprising different levels through human inquiry, for instance, the lower “level” of human experiences of things and the higher “level” of human understandings of the “essence or form” (Lear 131) or truths of those things. To Aristotle, the “highest level actuality simply is God” (Lear 295), the prime mover, but by focusing on the levels of actuality, truth, or form, Aristotle’s rhetoric as energeia, as actualizing activities, connects the realm of probability with that of stability—and vice versa. This connection, I would like to show in this chapter, is very real to both Aristotle and Confucius and is an important reason they both value rhetorical activities, especially rhetorical invention. In other words, Aristotle and Confucius differ not in their views of whether there is anything beyond this world, nor whether the connection between it and the world exists, nor whether human beings can know and put into words their knowledge of either; rather, they differ in the conceptual metaphors they use to describe realities as the form or the way, a difference that has important consequences.

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In the first part of this chapter, I discuss the formal aspect of Aristotle’s view of actuality, truth, nous in relation to logos and rhetoric. In the second part, I turn to daothe-way (道) in Confucius’ thinking and discuss Confucius’ concept of tianmingthe-cosmic-order (天命) in relation to his valuing of language-use. Clarifying important similarities compels us to search for differences that need to be examined more carefully, for while some argue that Aristotle’s view of rhetoric, as a conduit, is discretely differentiated from essence, form, nous, or truth, others hold the view that Confucius cannot possibly have rhetoric recognizable to the West because they take him as the exact opposite of Aristotle, as having no concept of anything beyond this world and explaining everything as social, cultural, and historical. After having established the important similarity in Aristotle’s and Confucius’ views on how realms of reality both differ and connect, I offer some thoughts on how their conceptual metaphors shape the differences between their rhetorical thinking.

Form and eikos in Aristotle As discussed earlier, a common interpretation of Aristotle’s view of rhetoric challenges the fundamental relation among different modes of inquiry, which Aristotle indeed differentiates. I would like to show here why this interpretation needs further contextualization. To do so, I focus on the relation between the invention of probable knowledge (eikos) and the search for truth (aletheia or ἀλήθεια) or a form of certainty in Aristotle’s rhetorical thinking. Barbara Warnick’s argument that to Aristotle rhetoric has definite starting and stopping borderlines because modes of thinking are categorized discretely as “intelligence (nous and dianoia), scientific knowledge (episteme), theoretical wisdom (sophia), art (techne), and practical wisdom (phronesis)” (299), raises the question of why it is so important to separate these modes. Warnick claims that obscuring these distinct boundaries is defying Aristotle’s characterization of them as having “unique function, uses, materials, forms, and purpose” (299) and causes confusion. Using Grimaldi’s study of Aristotle’s rhetoric as an example, Warnick criticizes Grimaldi for treating rhetoric’s function as relating to the “demonstration of the true” as well as the enthymemization of “social reality,” “political reasoning,” and “belief[s]” (300); rhetoric’s purpose as dealing with the “universal” and the “speculative” as well as the “contingent” and the “practical” (301); and rhetoric’s material as “conclusions reached through earlier arguments” as well as “accepted opinions” (305). To Warnick, Grimaldi misinterprets Aristotle by elevating his rhetoric out of its category and confusing truth and probability, confusing philosophy “by which we attain truth” (307) and art by which we “promote” (304) it. To support her argument, Warnick points to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics where the faculty of intuitive reasoning or nous alone is said to grasp the first principles (archai) while art (techne) is not even mentioned. Below I quote Aristotle at length to show, however, that Warnick’s evidence is problematized by the fuller context of the paragraph. Scientific knowledge is judgment about things that are universal and necessary, and the conclusions of demonstration, and all scientific knowledge,

Rhetorical probability 89 follow from first principles (for scientific knowledge involves apprehension of a rational ground). This being so, the first principle from which what is scientifically known follows cannot be an object of scientific knowledge, of art [emphasis mine], or of practical wisdom; for that which can be scientifically known can be demonstrated, and art and practical wisdom deal with things that are variable. Nor are these first principles the objects of philosophic wisdom, for it is a mark of the philosopher to have demonstration about some things. If, then, the states of mind by which we have truth and are never deceived about things invariable or even variable are scientific knowledge, practical wisdom, philosophic wisdom, and intuitive reason, and it cannot be any of the three (i.e. practical wisdom, scientific knowledge, or philosophic wisdom), the remaining alternative is that it is intuitive reason that grasps the first principles. (1140b31–1141a8 trans. Ross1) Even though it is true that nous alone is said to grasp the first principles and techne is not mentioned, as Warnick states, both take place at the end of a much longer passage. As my emphasis in the quotation above indicates, earlier in the same paragraph techne is put side by side with practical wisdom (phronesis) at one point and is excluded together with philosophical wisdom (sophia) at another. In other words, the final exclusion of techne is complicated by the early inclusion of it because the early inclusion in fact indicates the similarity and connection among sophia, phronesis, and techne. More importantly, of course, not grasping the first principles does not lead to the conclusion of not attaining truths; otherwise, sophia and phronesis would be excluded from searching for truth as well. The paragraph, therefore, reveals Aristotle’s view of techne in relation to the multifaceted truth: the truths of things are not only just grasped, and different modes of attaining truths both differ and intersect. Similarly, Warnick’s use of Aristotle’s definition of techne also reveals the need for more contextualization. Aristotle is quoted as defining techne as “a certain habit of producing under the guidance of true reason” (Nicomachean Ethics 1140a21 qtd. in Warnick 304). Indeed, these words can be construed as saying that art is severed from truth-seeking: even though a guide does not have to be unconnected to the guided, it is conceivable that it is separable from it. But other translators render Aristotle’s techne differently. While techne is “under the guidance of true reason” in Martin Ostwald’s translation that Warnick chooses to use, it is “a state concerned with making, involving a true course of reasoning” in W. D. Ross’ translation and it stays the same in J. O. Urmson’s edited version of Ross’ translation. Is techne under the guidance of or does it involve a true course of reason to Aristotle? Does techne just follow and express truth or is it involved in attaining it? In the following, I would like to show why involving is closer than guidance to Aristotle’s notion of techne. Since others like Ross and Urmson have challenged the notion that to Aristotle truth is a guidance separated from art in general, I focus on Aristotle’s art of rhetoric, arguing that rhetorically invented probable knowledge contains an element of truth (aletheia) and therefore rhetorical activities are an integral part of human inquiries.

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Truth, form, and logos I will approach Aristotle’s multifaceted concept of truth (aletheia) by emphasizing its sense of form in relation to logos. My emphasis on form and logos is due to their obvious implications for discourse, but even more importantly it is due to the fact that to Aristotle form is hylomorphic—unlike Plato’s concept of Form. To Plato, the absolutely Good, the permanently Beautiful, and the truly True exist apart from as well as provide the good, the beautiful, and the true experienced in the natural and social context with the essential meaning or form. In contrast, while abstract Form, Essence, and Truth of things also exist for Aristotle as the ultimate goal, they are accessible to the human mind only through phenomenal things, which are substances with the form, essences, or truths enmattered in them. This Aristotelian hylomorphic form modifies Plato’s understanding of both the things and the truths of them with significant consequences for rhetoric. On the one hand, the truths of things are still formal and constant but are only experienced through changing, natural, and socio-cultural activities. On the other hand, these things also gain a sense of stability by having the formal truths or essences inherent within them. It is therefore Aristotle’s hylomorphic form that provides the foundation for the thinking that is at once pluralistic and unifying, bringing together change and continuity, creativity and stability, diversity and relationality, art and nature. As Christopher Long explains, to Aristotle our language is “a natural phenomenon that opens us to the truths of things” (Long “Duplicity” 151). Discursive activities like argument building can open language users to the truths of things because not only are discursive activities guided by truths that are apart from these activities, but they also involve or are formed by the very truths of things operating from within the activities themselves. Let us examine these ideas in more detail. To Aristotle, human understanding is a process of inquiry into the form, truths, or meanings enmattered in things; inquiry is a process of both differentiation and infiltration; and the process starts with the human sense perception. A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms [emphasis mine] of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of the signet-ring without the iron or gold; what produces the impression is a signet of bronze or gold, but not qua bronze or gold: in a similar way the sense is affected by what is coloured or flavoured or sounding not insofar as each is what it is, but insofar as it is of such and such a sort and according to its form [emphasis mine]. (On the Soul 424a17–24) The bronze of the signet-ring and the wax with the impress are two different things, just as the perceptible tree and its color, smell, and sound we perceive are two separate things. Yet impress is meaningful and perception happens. How come? Aristotle infers, “The sense faculties must be either the things themselves or their forms. The former alternative is of course impossible: it is not the stone

Rhetorical probability 91 which is present in the soul but its form” (431b27–432a1), just as it is not the tree itself that is in our eyes or noses but its form. What then is form? To Aristotle, the form is the enmattered meanings or truths that both the bronze and the wax, both the trees and the perceivers contain within each as the potentiality of their own actual meanings or truths. It is these formal meanings or truths that ultimately connect the pairs. Clearly, the formal connection is crucial to Aristotle’s view of the process of perception, but even more fundamentally it is key to his view of the connection among things, perceivers, and the truths of them. Note, however, connection is only part of what is facilitated by the enmattered form or truths of things; differentiation is another part. That is, the hylomorphic form actuates both connection and differentiation. To Aristotle, the perceptible appearance or the material form of an object like a tree embodies both its practical usefulness and the meanings deeper and more universal than its utility. For trees, this deeper or universal meaning is the treehood (what makes a tree a tree rather than a person), just as the deeper or more universal meaning of human beings is humanhood or humanity (what makes a person a person rather than a tree). In other words, the universals or truths of trees are simply what trees have in common, and the universals or truths of humans are simply what humans have in common. Therefore, Aristotle’s hylomorphically universal or common form of things like bronze, wax, trees, and perceivers gives rise to both how they differ and how they are deeply similar and connected, similar and connected as in how the meaning and perception take place between apparently distinct things like bronze and wax, trees and perceivers. This is how Aristotle’s conceptions of the hylomorphic form, universals, and truths both connect and differentiate. With similar characteristics, perceptions are conceptualized gradually. The ultimate goal of understanding is indeed the deeper meanings or truths of things like trees or humans, but to Aristotle the perceptible, the material, or the superficial appearance is not merely an appearance but is also the potentiality for the deeper meanings or truths. How so? Since Aristotle not only inherits Plato’s Form but also enmatters it, form to Aristotle is both abstract and concrete, both constant and dynamic, both spiritual and corporeal, and both Formal and formal. This is why the tree’s appearance or physical form literally embodies the deeper and formal meanings or truths of it. As seen above, the form at once differentiates and connects the perceiver to the perceived. To Aristotle, this process through which the tree and the perceiver come together is the process through which the tree and the perceiver each and yet jointly actualize the forms or truths of what they themselves are. Or, the process of perceiving and being perceived is the process of actualization of the formal truths in both the perceiver and the tree. When the tree starts to be perceived, the potentiality of the tree starts to actualize. In other words, the understanding of the tree starts with its appearance and is shaped according to its formal meanings. Indeed, this actualization or understanding process comprises different stages or levels. As Jonathan Lear explains, the physical form or the appearance of the tree is something the tree actually has and is therefore the tree’s actuality, its meanings, or its truths at the first level. At this level of actuality, even though the physical form of the tree seems clear to the eye, its true form in

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the sense of its deeper meanings and truths are perceived and understood only at a physical and material level; its potentiality to be understood is actualized only minimally. One may say that at this stage the thing makes some sense to us, but we also detect there is more to know. The next level of actuality is the perceptual awareness of the tree in the perceiver. At this level of actuality, our understanding is formed or actualized at a deeper level. Factual learning of the truths of the tree takes place at this level, but so do artistic inventions using the factual learning, inventions such as building houses or building arguments. In other words, rhetorical activities take place mostly at this level. Beyond the physical form or appearance, the meanings and truths of the tree perceived, formed, or actualized at this level are deeper or more universal in the sense that they contain less accidental differences a particular tree has in contrast with other trees. As perception and conception move towards the more general and universal levels, the understanding moves more towards the treehood-characteristics that all trees have and away from the particular characteristics that willow, maple, or oak has. However and just as importantly, even though the lower-level actualities, meanings, or truths are not the deepest, they nonetheless contain the actuality or truth of trees, which connects all clearly different levels. Again in the words of Christopher Long, the truths of the tree express themselves and are involved in shaping our understanding all the way. These expressions and involvements lie at the root of Aristotle’s view that human understanding and communicating the truths of things are connected. In Long’s words, “appearance participates in the eternal and independent ειδος (form), a truth rooted in the attempt to articulate things according to the way they express themselves” (Aristotle 182). The truths of things and the truths of the way we discourse about things are fundamentally and inseparably connected from the very beginning: the truth or “the nature of things is revealed in part in and through the things said about them” (Long “My Responses”). Similarly, Lear points out that while in the Oxford translation, which I quote in the previous paragraph, the word form appears twice as my emphases in the passage indicate, the second form in the original text is logos and is kept untranslated in Lear’s own version of the passage (Lear 101). He does so because logos means both word and “an order [of things] which is intelligible” (98). This “sensible form of things without the matter” is the deeper meaning or higher truth but it also resides in the physical and material matter; it is logos in the sense both of the formal truths or meanings and of expressions and appearances. To return to Aristotle’s examples cited earlier, we can say that the difference between the physical signet-ring and the impress of it, between the physical appearance of the tree and the awareness of or discoursing about it, between lower levels and higher levels of actuality, is not of whether but rather to what extent the formal truths, meanings, or logos are being actualized. Rhetoric—different human ways of discoursing—is at the heart of this process to understand. Despite the obvious differences languages have in forms or structures, to Aristotle all of us also similarly “articulate λογος [logos] peculiar to human” in groups, communities, and poleis (Long Aristotle 78). In other words, as important as differences among languages or logoi are, we are also

Rhetorical probability 93 connected by the deep form, truths, or characteristics of our languages: they are all human. We can learn to coexist with diversity because different languages also function in importantly similar ways, through which the formal meanings, truths, and logoi enmattered in our phenomenal world express themselves to us. Discoursing about meanings and truths meaningfully and truthfully in all languages entails understanding “truths as an ability to respond attentively to the logos of things” (Long “My Responses”), truths that have always and already been hylomorphically existing in the appearance, the shape and form, or the lower-level actuality of things. While Lear explains from the perspective of individual perceivers, Long also introduces the perspective of individual perceivers discoursing in the phenomenal world. Both emphasize differences and connections. A few key concepts should have become clearer now in preparation for further discussion of their role in Aristotle’s rhetorical thinking. Aristotle’s concept of universals is that formal properties connect particular substances of the same kind—for example, people—and differentiate them from other kinds—for example, trees. At the same time, as different as people and trees are, they also share inherently deep connections. Aristotle’s concept of hylomorphism is that the truths of different things manifest themselves in and only in the complex, dynamic, and particular processes of interaction—both differentiation and connection. The truths, meanings, or “form of man is always found in flesh and bones” (Lear 283). These views do not emphasize only differences or only similarities; they necessitate both. All levels of actuality in human perception and conception involve the formal truths and meanings, yet each has its distinct characteristics. Similarly, therefore, the modes of thinking are different and yet still share important characteristics. It is in this philosophical context that we understand logos as formal in Aristotle’s rhetoric. Form, logos, and nous Form and logos as meaning and truth relate to discourse, but so does nous, the intuitive grasping of truths. It is important to clarify this point because while form and logos explain the orderly and systematic aspect of discourse, rhetorical activities are also extemporaneous and instinctive. We turn now to the very moment of encounter the perceiver and the perceived experience. At that moment, and unlike logos that deepens through levels of actuality, nous intuits, grasps, or “lifts the form right out of its material instantiation” (Lear 121). At the same time, nous is also similar to logos in that it lifts truths from awareness in a way that is analogous to the way sense perception lifts awareness from physical things. Lear illustrates this idea in the following manner: For any logos which in a rose makes it such as to look red, that very logos is instantiated in the eye when the person sees the red rose. For the organ not to take on the matter is just that: when seeing the rose the eye does not absorb any rosy matter. (116)

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Nous is not an organ like the eye, but the redness is a universal, that is a rosebushy, formal property instantiated in the physical red rose that nous lifts. This is so because the truths or the meanings of rose bushes lifted by nous are both in the awareness of the thing and in the things themselves. This is how, as Lear states, “intelligibility and truth are intimately bound in Aristotle’s world” (117) at all levels. In other words, the form, truths, or logoi lifted, grasped, or intuited by nous are the same form, truths, or logoi that can be intuited or extemporized by rhetoricians in building arguments about things or cases. Once again, the difference lies only in the levels or purity of the truth of the matter and of the state of affairs, while the goal and the function of the search for truth are the same and the approaches are analogous. But if rhetoricians and philosophers both seek the truths of things, how do they differ? In Aristotle’s First Principles, Terence Irwin inquires into this very question: how is rhetoric the counterpart of dialectic, as said by Aristotle (Rhetoric 1354a1)? Irwin begins with Aristotle’s description of dialectic as a philosophical method—“dialectic is a process of criticism wherein lies the path to the principles of all inquiries” (Topics 101b3–4)—and traces how dialect moves from common beliefs, to puzzlements, to new starts, to “something more than shared beliefs” (50), and finally to the principles of all inquiries or what exists for its own sake: “what necessarily is the case because of itself” (Posterior Analytics 76b23–24). At first, in other words, philosophy is like rhetoric, and neither puzzles over questions like “whether one ought to honor the gods and love one’s parents” and “whether snow is white” (Topics 105a2–8), because answers to these questions do not lend themselves to debate. Irwin explains this process. Like dialectic, rhetoric also begins with common beliefs, “encourages us to reflect further on the beliefs we already hold” and “show[s] us where the revision is needed” (Irwin 42). But dialectic and rhetoric part their ways when ordinary or pure dialectic heightens into strong dialectic in which philosophers focus more on the “special principles” or “the ‘synoptic’ outlook of dialecticians” (138). Using Aristotle’s own inquiry as an example, Irwin states that in order to “argue scientifically about how things really are” (226), Aristotle “turns away from a merely dialectical solution, by refusing to exclude views simply because they offend common sense” (203). This uncommon outlook, Irwin explains, is what Aristotle names in the Metaphysics “a completely universal science” (153), which “is not one that common sense recognizes at once” (275). In an article Irwin published later, he illustrates this synoptic outlook concretely in relation to Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean, a point I will return to in Chapter Four. It is clear here that to Irwin rhetorical and dialectical inquiries relate in that rhetoric is at the early stage of inquiry with philosophy. This very point is further investigated in “Nous and Logos in Aristotle” by Richard Lee Jr. and Christopher Long, who emphasize that this early stage is both discursive and noetic. Lee and Long contend that logos and nous are not “mutually exclusive, independently operating capacities” (348). Nous is logical and logos is able to be noetic (349). In fact, they argue that logos “is always already noetic” (350). Their argument for the logical is one for the rhetorical or the discursive, its role in the nous’ grasping or lifting of the truths of things. To explain the process,

Rhetorical probability 95 Lee and Long start their discussion with Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, maintaining that for nous to grasp universals, the organizing power of “logos is required”: When many such [sense impressions] have come into being, a certain difference now becomes with the result that for some [animals] a λóγος comes to be from the retention of these sorts [of sense impressions], but for others it does not. For from a perception memory comes into being, as has been said, but from many memories of the same thing experience comes into being; for memories that are many in number is a single experience. (Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 1–6 trans. Lee and Long2 351) Understanding an experience is organizing sense perceptions and memories, and to Aristotle only animals that have the λóγος or logos can do this. This kind of organizing “ultimately grounds the noetic grasp of a universal” in the discursive; that is, the noetic grasp “must be mediated by logos” (Lee and Long 352). Here Lee and Long introduce the idea of epagoge or induction and thus the relation between the universal and the individual. For example, the universal is the treehood, and the individual can be the maple tree. Lee and Long explain, the universal [treehood] that makes a stand in the soul [of a maple tree] requires an activity of perceiving that has as its perceived correlate a concrete perceptible individual. The name for this process through which the universal comes to make a stand is epagōgē. (353) The inductive understanding goes from one tree, to multiple trees, and to the treehood. Even more explicitly than Lear as well as Irwin then, Lee and Long explain, perception, memory, experience and epagōgē are the conditions that give rise to nous. Logos is operative in all of these such that nous cannot simply be seen as the alogical ground for apodictic logos, but logos must be recognized as already functioning at the heart of the hexis [active condition] of nous. (354) It is logos that “gather[s] many appearing individuals together under some common term” (354). Lee and Long reach the same conclusion as Lear, the conclusion that thinking comprises experiencing, perceiving, learning, and contemplating and is the process that actualizes the truths of things gradually through different levels. At the same time, Lee and Long advance the case for logos and its connection with nous. They state, Aristotle’s “bi-directionality of nous itself [is] predicated on a logos that is Janus faced” (365). “Being and articulation” (361), nous and logos are intertwined, a concept they illustrate with the “unique characteristic of touch” according to Aristotle: But there remains this difference between what can be touched and what can be seen or can sound; in the latter two cases we perceive because the medium produces a certain effect on us, whereas in the perception of objects of touch

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Analogous to touching, logos and nous work together like the shield and the shock. The mediating shield holds the perceived object spear at bay while accounting for the singularity of the individual spear, preventing it from spearing through to nous, and making “possible a noetic relation to the singular that gives rise to an apprehension of the individual” or making the individual intelligible (365). As Lee and Long put it, logos provides rational understanding, which is the perceptive level of actuality, while nous provides intelligibility, actuality of the individual spear at the highest level, or its ultimate truth. Lee and Long conclude, therefore, the noetic “insight is beyond logos, yet is only possible through logos” (364). The highest level of actuality or form cannot be articulated in logos, but nor is nous’ grasping of spearhood from individual spears possible without logos. Therefore, nous and logos start at the same time or level, although they do not end at the same depth or level. The difference between the ordinary and the common, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the extraordinary and uncommon is indeed the difference between logical and rational logos and alogical or beyond-rational nous; however, once again, the latter is impossible without the former and different logi seek and are entwined with, ultimately, the same truths of things. Lee and Long do not just clarify a difference; they articulate clearly the familiar insight that is significant to rhetorical studies, and the connection between the logical and the alogical, discursive and nondiscursive, techne and nous brings together many studies. Philosophers have always known that there is to Aristotle a connection, not just differentiation, between metaphysics and the physics, thought and expression, and nature and the art. “The domain of physics is … defined by metaphysics” (Pellegrin 569) and “the nature of beauty and justice must be unchangeable to be known” (Stone 67). “The ontological status of things brought about by art is in a serious sense that of ousia [substance, essence]” and “Aristotle is convinced of the naturalness of technē” (Anton 63). John P. Anton cites Aristotle’s discussion to elaborate this point: Now action is for the sake of an end; therefore the nature of things also is so. Thus if a house, e.g., had been a thing made by nature, it would have been made in the same way as it is now by art; and if things made by nature were made not only by nature but also by art, they would come to be in the same way as by nature. The one, then, is for the sake of the other; and generally art in some cases completes what nature cannot bring to a finish, and in others imitates nature. (Aristotle Physics 199a11–18) Techne both imitates and completes nature. Richard Stichler, too, states, “For Aristotle the whole of reality is contained within what is given in immediate

Rhetorical probability 97 experience and its causes are to be found within the phenomena of experience” (244). Regarding rhetoric, Engberg-Pedersen states, “What … give a clear ethical dimension to rhetoric are … certain facts about human seeing—the way human beings are related to truth” (139). However, it is Lee and Long who most closely examine the reason Aristotle’s techne is connected to the true by showing how nous and logos are intertwined as well as different, making their philosophical study most rhetorical and interdisciplinary. Returning now to Warnick, one can see that even though she is right in stating that “Whereas episteme deals with physical reality and sophia with the divine and eternal, techne is immersed in the realm of human affairs” (304), this does not lead to rhetoric’s role being confined to observing the means and considering “how best to use them to promote virtue” (304). As stated by Grimaldi, rhetoric to Aristotle also enables “the mind to apprehend the true” (16). Other studies have shown similarly that this is possible because logos and nous are not mutually exclusive faculties, that “Truth [can be studied] in the appearance” (Nussbaum 291), that substance can be studied broadly as “a composite [of] … both matter and form” (Lloyd Aristotelian 52), and that “form is [studied as] a disposition of matter” (Dunne 331). Even though the techne of rhetoric deals mainly with probable rather than absolute truths, it is still an immensely valuable and indispensable phase in the journey of human inquiry into the truths of things because it is both necessary and possible to attain the true in the midst of human circumstances. Dealing primarily with practical and public issues, the techne of rhetoric nevertheless helps to invent eikos, probable knowledge—the true but mainly the approximately true—with a wide range of audiences and by using credibility and emotional as well as logical proofs for substantive as well as presentational rhetorical activities. While dialecticians eventually leave behind commonplaces or common beliefs, rhetoricians mostly let “the beliefs we already hold … show us where the revision is needed” (Irwin 42) by exploring the tension among common beliefs discursively but also intuitively. Even though rhetoricians cannot count on their audience’s specialized knowledge as philosophers can, they count on what Aristotle calls the audience’s “sufficient natural instinct for what is true” and their ability to “arrive at the truth” (Rhetoric 1355a15). The audience has the “sufficient natural instinct for what is true” because logos, as Aristotle points out, is a human and discursive phenomenon that is noetic. It is in this sense that rhetorically engaging popular or ordinary ideas in order to invent probable knowledge or eikos is a way to engage and contribute to inquiries into the formal truth. Eikos intertwines the two. It does not separate “social reality,” “political reasoning,” from beliefs with the “demonstration of the true” (Warnick 300); it does not sever the “contingent” and the “practical” from the “universal” and the “speculative” (301); and it does not disconnect “accepted opinions” and “conclusions reached through earlier arguments” (305). This shows that it is Aristotle himself, rather than commentators like Grimaldi, who “elevates” the probable—the contingent, the social, the political, the practical, and the accepted—to something that contains within it elements of truths. It follows that even though Aristotle’s techne of rhetoric does operate “in the realm of the probable,” the probable realm “excludes [not] the impossible, the certain,

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and the inadmissible” (Warnick 307); it is itself noetic as well as formal, reasons Aristotelian rhetorical activities are committed to attaining the truths of things in the midst of human communities. Form, logos, and pathos A significant difference between rhetoric and philosophy is that rhetoric accepts pathos as a valid proof for rhetorical invention of probable knowledge. Does pathos as emotional proofs connect rhetorical activities to or separate them from the search for the formal truths of things? Characteristically, Aristotle’s discussion of pathos is not limited within the Rhetoric; in fact, as Kennedy points out, even though Aristotle announces that he will provide propositions to be used as premises for the enthymematic proof of pathos in chapters 2–11 Book II of the Rhetoric, “much of what Aristotle says [in the section] would not take enthymematic form in a speech” (123). Therefore, just as inquiries into logos can start in perception, form, or nous, inquiries into pathos can take us to Aristotle’s other works including the Poetics and On the Soul. I have discussed some important Aristotelian concepts in the context of how human beings interact with the world around them. Now I will discuss similar concepts but in the context of how human beings interact as both soulful and emotional beings. As I have cited above of Aristotle and of Lee and Long, the soul is at the heart of the Aristotelian perceiving and conceptualizing processes. The human soul has the purpose of understanding and is what actually perceives and conceptualizes. Recall that perception and conception are the actualization of the potentiality of the formal meanings or truths of things. Since the soul actually perceives and conceives, Aristotle sees the soul as the truths or meanings of human beings to be actualized and as “potentially all intelligible things” (Lear 123). Then, Aristotle explains actuality further as follows: “substance or form is actuality … prior in substance to potentiality; … one actuality always precedes another in time right back to the actuality of the eternal prime mover” (1050b2–5). It is not hard to see how Lear interprets this process of returning to the eternal prime mover as movement towards higher levels of truths, but what is the prime mover? At times, Aristotle sounds tentative: “Nor does eternal movement, if there be such, exist potentially; and if there is an eternal mover, it is not potentially in motion” (1050b18–21). What is to be made of hedges like “if there be such” and “if there is an eternal mover”? Some argue that they are due to the fact that Aristotle either believes or doubts the existence of the mover3, yet others argue that they reflect the fact that Aristotle’s view differs not only from Plato’s but also from the Christian beliefs. Let me start with these differences. Aristotle’s view of eternity is as self-moving and absolute as Plato’s, but it differs from Plato’s in a way similar to how it differs from Christian teaching. This is important because in the U.S. today, for example, the thought of eternity still evokes the thought of Christian teaching more readily than the teachings of others. This fact has contributed to the view that Confucius differs fundamentally from Aristotle, the view that presupposes that the West has but one conception of eternity, the Christian one.

Rhetorical probability 99 Confucius emphasizes the veneration of human ancestors; it seems, therefore, he will find this conception of eternity problematic. However, something similar to ancestor veneration can be found in Aristotle’s communal view of truths and his view of immortality. Ultimately, this perspective explains the hedge, but once again it also takes us back to Aristotle’s view of the hylomorphic form or substance (ousia). The concept of substance has been brought up since the Introduction, and in Chapter One I quote Aristotle as saying that substance has three meanings: “form, matter, and the complex of both” (Aristotle On the Soul 414a15). Here I focus on the familiar theme of the combination of both form and matter. We already know that Aristotle’s formal substance, truth, or actuality is dynamic; its connection with the ultimate truth notwithstanding, as Richard Stichler explains, substance “in the primary sense is a thing’s ‘to be what it was,’ its to ti en einai (Metaphysics 1030a28), that is, a thing’s essence or nature” (243). In Aristotle’s words, a thing’s nature “is the essence of things which have in themselves, as such, a source of movement” (Metaphysics 1015a13–19), and “The object of desire and the object of thought move in this way: they move without being moved” (Metaphysics 1072a24–26). Again, Lear’s explanation of different levels of actuality—form, substance, essence—can help to shed light on Aristotle’s sense of eternity. Level by level, the focus of the inquiry finds its way back to “what it was.” Truths— essences, nature, substances, and form—are processes through which human beings actualize or move towards understanding of what a thing ultimately was or what a thing tries to return to: a movement. However, different from Plato’s form or Christian God, Aristotle’s prime mover is energeia; it is not merely the formal cause that shapes or forms the essential life of things and actualizes the truths of them; it is also the final cause that connects to all different causes. As Lear explains, the soul is not “a special ingredient which breathes life into a lifeless body” (97) as seen in the Christian teaching or in Plato’s soul, which is entombed in the human body’s meaningless flesh and bones. Rather, the soul to Aristotle is the human potentiality to perceive what is to be actualized. To see “God [as] the final cause” is to see God not as “a directing General” but as form, order, or logos at its highest level of actuality that inspires the desire that is natural in every organism “to realize its form” and thus to be God-like, the desire that pushes organisms “to do those things necessary to realizing and maintaining [their] form” (295). All of this connects to rhetoric in that, first, for human beings to actualize themselves at as high a level as possible, that is to be as completely human as possible, “there is no substitute … for going out into the world—whether it be ponds where frogs live or societies where men live—and studying it” (Lear 319). There is no substitute, that is, for rhetoric that deliberates about human affairs and discovers possibilities in the midst of human communities. In addition, emphasizing the soul and its being in the human body and human environment means emphasizing the challenge of, among others, human emotions. Human activities are not only rational but also emotional, being punctuated with comic surprises but also tragic inevitabilities—comic because human beings are soulful and tragic because they

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are mortal and flawed. To Aristotle, human beings can achieve but limited immortality through reproduction to “partake in the eternal and the divine”: No living thing is able to partake in what is eternal and divine by uninterrupted continuance (for nothing perishable can forever remain one and the same), it tries to achieve that end in the only way possible to it and success is possible in varying degrees; so it remains not indeed as the self-same individual but continues its existence in something like itself—not numerically one, but one in form. (Aristotle On the Soul 415a26–b7) The human soul achieves at best imperfect immortality because “the soul is a place of forms,” states Aristotle, yet “it is not the whole soul but only the thinking part of it” (On the Soul 429a27–29), the rational part, that is the place of the form. The other two parts of the soul are vegetative and appetitive. “The function of man is an activity of soul in accordance with, or not without, rational principle,” a function “peculiar to man” as opposed to other animals and to plants (Nicomachean Ethics 1098a1–8). Of the irrational parts of the soul, the vegetative “has no share in human excellence” (Nicomachean Ethics 1102b11) or thinking, but the appetitive is complex. The complexity lies not in whether this appetitive part of the soul involves thinking or not but rather in the extent to which it does. Resisting and opposing the rational soul, Aristotle explains, the appetitive— that includes emotions—“seems to have a share in reason” in the sense that it obeys reason (Nicomachean Ethics 1102b30–1103a3). This complex perception of the soul, especially of the appetitive part of it, explains why human beings can achieve some immortality, why that immortality is limited, but also why the truths of things in relation to human beings are communal. To Aristotle, human beings are “never able to grasp the totality” (Long “Duplicity” 150–51), to understand everything, or to actualize their souls completely—thus, Aristotle’s hedges about the prime mover. Yet, “all things have by nature something divine in them” (Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1153b33) for the soul to actualize despite the fact that “there is some matter in everything which is not an essence” (Metaphyrsics 1037a1–2), matter that prevents the completion of actuality. The human soul can participate in the eternal and the divine because of its rational part but can do so and achieve immortality only incompletely because of its irrational and semirational parts. The reason rhetorical activities are indispensable is, therefore, that they pull together human communities by reproducing thinking and understanding, with both rationality and emotion, that go beyond their particular generations and communities, beyond their particular time and space. The imperfection of the human soul is also what necessitates the value of sophistical reasoning in Aristotle’s rhetoric, the value of individuality and creativity. Recall that Kennedy finds Confucius’ views at times inconsistent; his thoughts regarding speech, ambivalent; and his understanding of words, contrasting sharply “with biblical views of ‘the Word’” (Comparative 154). Confucius’ view of the word may indeed differ from this biblical one, but perhaps so does Aristotle’s—in

Rhetorical probability 101 a way that highlights some similarities between the thinking of Confucius and Aristotle. To both of them, rhetorical words may not be the Word but nonetheless participate in it, as seen in both Confucius’ and Aristotle’s encouragement for all language users to converse, learn, and participate in the only kind of immortality possible to human beings: discovering, learning, and passing on knowledge. The tragic dimension to human activities, in this view, is that human beings actualize their potential to experience, perceive, and study the truths of things not only through the imitation of nature but also through fabrication, discourse on untruths, despite the inevitable comic denial of much of the fabrication from time to time, despite that in retrospection human beings can see that they have mistaken untruths as truths. It is comical from the perspective of the divine comedy, which human beings can see in hindsight. Indeed, sometimes human beings fabricate out of contemptible purposes, but often they do so out of necessity. As Christopher Long explains, “being is disclosed in speech” (“Aristotle’s” 439), yet in seeking to designate being or actuality, speech often fails to capture it completely (441). That is, fabrication results not just from deliberate distortion but also from best conjectures and calibrations “when exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided” (Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1356a8). Examining Aristotle’s use of μορϕη [form] and ειδος [species], Long points out that Aristotle states explicitly in the Physics that the two concepts are “not separate other than in speech4“ (193b4 trans. Long “Aristotle’s” 440). In other words and as we have seen all along, logos is indispensable to nous but also differs from it, and the difference gives rise to the sophistical side of Aristotle’s rhetoric or the tragic dimension of being human. Interacting with its counterpart, however, this sophistical and tragic side of rhetoric plays an indispensable role. The interplay between the sophistical and dialectical sides of rhetoric is the play between fabrication and imitation, natality and mortality, singularity and commonality, individuality and universality in “the ravaged site of enrapture” (Long “Duplicity” 155) called human life. On the one hand, the eternal, divine, and rapturous dimension of human activities is very real. On the other hand, human beings will always take risks with fabrication, natality, singularity, individuality, and probability. This situation is so because when the existing knowledge proves insufficient to help us explain new phenomena or understand new challenges, we must “open a space for the emergence of new possibilities” (147), “reveal the truths of things” (150), and make justice possible (155). Therefore, individuality and creativity, fabrication and tragedy, play a necessary role in the human collective effort to find the truths of things, the reason the sophistical side of Aristotle’s rhetoric is an integral part of the invention of probable knowledge or probable truths of things. All this leads to pathos. For the same reason a tragic dimension is inevitable in human lives, pathos, the emotional proof in rhetorical invention, is indispensable to human inquiries. In Thomas Farrell’s Inventing Rhetorical Culture, he traces the very human effort to attain, realize, or actualize the form as seen in Greek tragedy. In a move characteristic of many Aristotelian scholars we have seen, Farrell pursues the Aristotelian focus on the tension or gap between “the imaginative realm of poetics” and “the more limited and perishable discourse of

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rhetoric,” between the discursive forms both as “fateful necessity” and as “comic renewal” (134), between knowledge of necessity and of probability. On the one hand, some high and pure “overarching form of action” exists for Aristotle as a shaping factor of human knowledge. Farrell describes the role of this overarching form of action as the “triumph of necessity” (114), the fateful necessity that can be “mute” (132) and “brute” (133). Farrell explains further, “the highest form of necessity could transpire as a sequence of events alone” and “the purest form of discourse would be a demonstration, with no need for affect whatsoever.” On the other hand, the human soul is not pure, and its appetitive part in particular participates in the understanding of the overarching form of necessity in an ambivalent manner. This is where discursive rhetoric with its logos, ethos, and pathos comes into play as an active techne of thought. Farrell focuses on pathos and argues that the magic of tragedy for Aristotle lies not in the painful realization and passive suffering of human vulnerabilities so much as in the tension and the interaction between the probable, the yielding, and the spoken, on the one hand, and, on the other, the necessary, the brute, and the mute: “between our precise, found condition (created or not) and its undeniably generalizable character” (111), between contingent judgment and judgment of necessity (115), between “the final interruption of the individual life” and “the continuity of public life” (134)—between, that is, Form or Logos and form or logos. The magic of tragedy, in short, is that it helps human beings collectively experience necessity through, among others, human emotions. When characters’ best judgments or decisions, made possible through the techne of rhetoric in human situations, are frustrated, the audience feels through pity and fear the tragic nature of the plot because they see the conflict between the formal unit of the entire plot, the necessity, and the characters’ partial vision, their probable knowledge of that necessity. The understanding of this conflict or the tragic lesson that is constructed, expressed, and understood through pathos helps to sustain the continuity of human inquiry as well as the change within human communities—from generation to generation. The audience’s insight is achieved through what is known as the narrative reversal, “a change by which the action veers round to its opposite” (Poetics 1452a22), results in the change of the audience’s perspectives from the individual to the collective, from the local to the global, or from the contingent to the necessary. Farrell explains: Rhetoric, as the art of thought, provides the meaning of this particularized stance as it invents speech on occasions of uncertainty. But it is this same particular, viewed in light of a sequence of particulars from the retrospective formal unity of the plot, which then becomes subject to necessity. Conversely, necessity comes about only as the accumulation of contingencies. (115) Each probable meaning, each particularized stance, “reversed” or constructed through rhetorical inquiry or with “the techne of thought,” is subject to necessity, the overarching form of the plot. While characters in particular contexts have only probable knowledge of the overarching form of necessity, tragedy provides the

Rhetorical probability 103 audience with opportunities to see the tragic consequences of more certain probable knowledge in light of the retrospective formal unity of the plot, the formal unity that the tragic characters could not have known in their particular circumstances. Wiser than the tragic character in retrospection, the audience nonetheless bonds ever more closely with the character and with each other through fear and pity because they know with more certainty than before that they themselves, too, could have acted as did the tragic character. Using Sophocles’ Oedipus, Farrell illustrates how Greek tragedy brings together communities through the recognition that “with the best evidence available and even with a limited sort of vision … [Oedipus’] contingent quest for truth, trapped as it is by unfolding necessity, is nonetheless triumphant” (Farrell 115), thus tragic. In other words, the audience feels sorrow and pity for Oedipus because he killed his father and married his mother unknowingly; he did wrong in spite of his best probable knowledge and due to “external circumstances over which [he had] no control” (Nussbaum qtd. in Farrell 114). Through the narrative reversal, the audience comes to see, as Oedipus did not, the fatal flaw in taking his own stances; and the audience learns, among other things, the benefit of the vision of “a sequence of particulars from the retrospective formal unity of the plot.” Even though Oedipus’ thought, constructed and articulated through rhetorical inquiry and based on the best resources available to him, is proven limited, indeed fatal, it is the particularized thought or knowledge (logos) and sympathy or fright (pathos) together that help to make possible the audience’s gradual and growing vision of accumulated particulars through which the overarching meaning of the plot becomes clearer, and therefore the audience’s broadened vision may foster a more plausible understanding of a good life. Richard Tinerney puts it best, “through experience of various particulars of the same type, the universal form definitive of the type comes to rest in the soul” (205). Tragedy sheds light on lessons of individual lives in order for the audience to continue living as a collective. Tragedy is powerful also due to another factor. While the overarching form of the plot is known by the end of the play, the overarching form of the action of life is only known partially because there is no end to the collective life as there is to the play. This is also where rhetoric, the sister-discipline of poetics, carries on the work in the everyday, where it continues to evoke emotions such as pity, sorrow, and fear to celebrate the triumphs of the flawed individuals whose blemished and at times fatal efforts fail to burst “the totalizing bonds of mortality” (Long “Duplicity” 150). We celebrate because we “refuse to sacrifice the play of the comic upon the altar of the tragic” (Long “Duplicity”155); we believe in spite of the tragedy and pursue truths in spite of our dependence on the probable. In short, we celebrate because, mediated by the shield of rhetoric and here pathos especially, the tragic spear of our fellow human beings allows us to see that it is their sacrifice that has helped the rest of us as a collective to feel the touch of truths and thus of better lives.

Tianming (天命) and rendao (人道) in Confucius G. E. R. Lloyd maintains, “The order of the heavens was a major preoccupation in both classical China and Greece, and in both ancient civilisations a matter

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with grave consequences for politics and morality” (Adversaries 186). Michael Puett states that in China, “just as in early Greece, a highly theistic vision of the world was pervasive in elite religious activities” (65). Finally, Jiyuan Yu argues, “Confucius in the Analects presupposes a natural heaven and thus a cosmological foundation of his ethics” (20). In agreement with these writers, I discuss in this section why Confucius’ teaching is not merely secular, how it contains a notion of probable knowledge that is similar to that of Aristotle’s, and then how the two teachings also differ. As the section title indicates, the focus of this section is on two Confucian ideas: tianming and rendao in relation to probable knowledge. First, what is tianming? Tian (天) and ming (命) denote, respectively, sky/heaven and life/destiny/ order. I see tian (天) and ming (命) in the Analects of Confucius as comparable to, respectively, Aristotle’s prime mover and form, and I translate tianming as the cosmic order in the sense of cosmic pattern, design, or way, a kind of necessity similar to the dynamic substance or form that is originated from the prime mover in Aristotle. As Harbsmeier puts it, an example of the Chinese concept of necessity is “what is ordained by Heaven” (209). In addition, related to this notion of tianming-the-cosmic-order is the idea of rendao. To Confucius, ren (人) and dao (道) denote, respectively, people and path/reason. Again, I see similarities between Confucius and Aristotle here and translate rendao as the-way-of-people. To Aristotle the element of certainty is form-in-the-matter and, to Confucius it is tianming (天命)-in-the-world or in-people. The connection to Aristotle’s rhetorical thinking is in eikos, probable knowledge of hylomorphic substances with both form and matter, or tian-the-cosmic-energy enmattered in ren-the-people. This connection can be illustrated by the both powerful and imperfect probable knowledge revealed in a story referred to four times in the Analects, the story of the brothers Bo Yi and Shu Qi. During the Shang dynasty more than three thousand years ago, there was a small state called Guzhu. When the Duke of Guzhu died, the oldest son Bo Yi deferred the throne to the youngest son Shu Qi out of filial respect for their father’s wishes, but Shu Qi, too, declined the throne out of filial respect for his elder brother. Both brothers were observing ritual propriety, an act that resulted in a problem in reality. In addition, to be a duke in Shang at the time meant that one must be subjected to the self-indulgent King Zhou (紂), and the two brothers decided to withdraw, not serve, until dao-the-way (道) would prevail in the kingdom. They therefore chose to live in exile with the Yi tribe, leaving the sovereign power of their dukedom to the middle brother. Later they learned about the reputable Marquis Ji Chang of the West and set off to join him. However, the Marquis died before the brothers arrived, and his middle son Ji Fa launched a war against King Zhou (紂) so soon after his father’s death that he had to carry the wooden stele that showed his authority in the place of his father. The brothers deemed Ji Fa’s action untimely and excessive, and at the risk of being executed they tried to stop Ji Fa on his way to the capital of Shang, pleading: “You should be in mourning for your father and be loyal to your king, but you are doing neither by launching this war.” They failed and watched Ji Fa not only continue but also win

Rhetorical probability 105 the war, become King Wu of the new Zhou Dynasty5, and confer posthumously his father the late Marquis Ji Chang the title of King Wen of Zhou. Disappointed in and ashamed of King Wu’s actions, the brothers retired once again from political life, went into seclusion in the mountains to live on wild berries and herbs, and protested by declining King Wu’s invitation for them to be his court officials. One day, a woman saw the brothers and pointed out to them that even the wild berries and herbs belonged to the King of Zhou. Prompted by this reminder, the brothers went on a hunger strike from then on until they died. Seven days after they started the hunger strike and feeling the imminence of death, it is said, they sang, Using violence against violence, the king cannot even realize that this is so wrong. The truly benevolent kings of the past are no more; where can we take shelter? We have to die like this; such is our sorrowful ming/fate (命). Throughout history, Chinese have debated the meaning of this story. For example, recording these events in the Shiji (《史記》), the Records of the Grand Historian, Sima Qian lamented for the brothers, Some say that tianming-the-cosmic-order is not biased and treats people fairly, but why the lives of the kindhearted and honest Bo Yi and Shu Qi ended the way they did! … If it is because of tianming-the-cosmic-order, it baffles me: Is such a cosmic design fair or vicious? In contrast, Lu Xun criticized Bo Yi and Shu Qi for not standing up to the oppressors and allowing injustice to continue, and Mao Zedong similarly believed that the praises of Bo Yi by people like Han Yu of the Tang Dynasty were misplaced because Bo Yi was irresponsible in abandoning his state and used bad judgment in trying to prevent King Wu from liberating the people from the rule of a corrupt king. From a rhetorical perspective, it can be said that Bo Yi and Shu Qi’s story has an appeal to the Chinese people because they see in the tragedy of the brothers that the best probable knowledge, eikos, is not enough and that people must continue to invent collective stories. In other words, their story is tragic in a similar sense that Greek tragedy is tragic. In both cases, the characters do not have, as the audience does, the hindsight on the overarching form of the plot, form, or tianming-the-cosmic-order. Not only is the Zhou Dynasty (1046–256 BCE) a golden age according to people like Confucius (511–479 BCE), it is the longest-lasting dynasty in Chinese history. There is evidence in the Analects that supports the argument that this rhetorical view reflects Confucius’ perspective on the brothers. Confucius praises the brothers for refusing to accept what they do not believe but points out at the same time that he himself differs from Bo Yi and Shu Qi in that he is more flexible than the brothers (18.86). As flawed as the characters (the brothers) are, however, Confucius believes that it is precisely the lifelong dedication to studying and producing probable knowledge—neither perfect nor completely random—that allows us to know and walk dao-the-way7 (道): it is the path to the knowledge of

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tianming-the-cosmic-order (天命), to the truths of things. To support this argument, I will discuss below Confucius’ dynamic and multifaceted view of the relation between tianming-the-cosmic-order and the world, of the importance of learning in the world, before I share some thoughts on the differences between Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking. Tianming-the-cosmic-order (天命) What really is tianming-the-cosmic-order? Ames and Rosemont translate it as the propensity of tian (天), and I understand their concerns about translations like mine. They state, Tian is a term we have chosen not to translate, largely because we believe its normal English rendering as “heaven” cannot but conjure up images derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition that are not to be found in China; and “nature” will not work either … The God of the Bible, often referred to as metonymically ‘heaven,’ created the world, but tian in classical Chinese is the world. (46–47) They are right about the prevalent view of heaven as being a metaphor for the Christian God, yet cosmos in my translation indicates, but does not coincide with, heaven, thus not identifying the two. Furthermore, in introducing the Chinese word tian to readers of the English language, Ames and Rosemont indeed convey the important message that sometimes Chinese concepts simply need to be rendered on their own terms and therefore transliterations are the best choice. At the same time, it is also important to let our translations reflect the fact that there is a variety of traditions in the West and that Aristotle provides a Western view of “heaven” and “nature” that both relates to and differs from other Western views. Therefore, I combine Ames and Rosemont’s introduction of the Chinese word tian with the English concept of cosmos rather than heaven. Also, while I agree with Ames and Rosemont that the connection between the cosmos and people is truly important, I think it is an overstatement to say that “tian … is the world” for Confucius. The human perception of tian does happen in the world, but tian is not itself the world, like Aristotle’s prime mover is understood in the world but it is not itself the world. It is important to understand the relation between the tian and the world because techne-the-probable-knowledge is only possible in this space of differences and relations and because this space of differences and relations is very real to Confucius as seen in the Analects. Finally, citing other scholars on China, Ames and Rosemont defend their interpretation, stating that tian is like “Chinese gods [who] are, by and large, dead people” and that “in the absence of some transcendent creator deity as the repository of truth, beauty and goodness, tian would seem to stand for accumulative and continuing cultural legacy focused on the spirits of those who have come before” (47). As discussed so far, this accumulative and communal view of reality is very much a dimension in Aristotle’s understanding of truths, yet the spiritual realm to Confucius, as to

Rhetorical probability 107 Aristotle, includes but goes beyond “those who have come before.” As seen in the Analects, the transcendent is not absent and the spirit is not generally dead people. For example, 子曰：「為政以德，譬如北辰居其所而眾星共之。」The Master says, “Govern by embodying moral virtues, like the Northern Star that stays where it is while other stars orbit around it.” (2.1) Here I use moral virtues in the Aristotelian sense I have been discussing in this study. According to Paula Gottlieb, moral virtue in the Aristotelian sense refers to the appetitive being guided by the rational; in fact, a lack of the appetitive is deemed a vice (Gottlieb Virtue 63). We know that Aristotle also refers to the stars and planets in relation to the ultimate (Metaphysics XII 8). Here Confucius’ likening of the exemplary persons to the stars indicates that to Confucius tian-thecosmos is out there as well as in here. Even more clearly, 子曰：「予欲無言 ！」子貢曰：「子 如不言，則小子 何述焉？」 子曰：「天何言哉！四時行焉，百物生焉；天何言哉？」The Master says, “I would like to stop talking!” Zi Gong asks, “If so, how do we carry on your teaching?” The Master replies, “What does tian-the-cosmos say? Yet, the four seasons are in motion and hundreds of animals and plants are given birth; what does tian-the-cosmos say?” (17.19) 子曰：「大哉堯之為軍也，巍巍乎，唯天為大，唯堯則之，蕩蕩乎， 民無能名焉。巍巍乎，其有成功也，煥乎，其有文章。」 The Master says, “Great is Yao the exemplar! So magnificent is he that only tian-thecosmos can be that magnificent and only with tian-the-cosmos can Yao compare. So far-reaching is he that people do not know how to praise him. Awe-inspiring is his attainment, and impeccable is his ruling. (8.19) In the Chinese Confucian culture, sages like Yao are of a rather small number, and even Yao is only compared to tian-the-cosmos; he is tian-like, not tian itself, similar to Aristotle’s ideas of God and God-like human beings. The difference and connection between tian-the-cosmos and di (地)-the-earth (and therefore people both dead and living) indicate that Confucius—like Aristotle—sees the in-between as a vibrant and spirited space for the knowledge of eikos, the space for rhetorical invention. The difference and connection also raise the question as to whether Confucius treats all spirits the same or makes the space between the two poles dynamic. Ghosts, spirits, cosmos, and cosmic order Just as tian-the-cosmos is not merely the world and tianming-the-cosmic-order both resides in and transcends the world as a kind of knowledge of necessity, Chinese gods are not more or less dead people, although some of them are. Tianming-the-cosmic-order is also known as tiandao-the-way-of-cosmos;

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therefore, the clarification of the gods or the spirits is important to the comparison of Aristotle’s eikos and Confucius’ rendao or the human understanding of, respectively, form and cosmic order. The Analects shows, in fact, that Confucius views the spirits differently, and the differences reveal how and why to Confucius learning “down here” can lead gradually to knowing tianming-the-cosmic-order “up there” 「下學而上達」 14.378 where down refers to probable knowledge, up refers to knowledge of tianming-the-cosmic-order, and the in-between refers to different levels or extents of actualization or realization (達). In the Analects, the “gods” form a group of at least three overlapping but different concepts: gui (鬼)-the-ghost, shen (神)-the-spirit, and tian (天)-the-cosmos. In the Analects, Confucius differentiates these from each other as well as from di-the-earth (地) and the ren-the-people (人). The “dead people,” the ancestors “who have come before,” can be “gods,” as pointed out by Ames and Rosemont correctly, but they are the kind of “gods” referred to as gui-the-ghosts and can be kind or unkind just like people. It is true that the Confucian culture in general reveres ancestors and emphasizes the sacrificial ceremonies for them. As said by Zeng Zi, “It is the care given to the burial ceremonies and the memory kept for the dead that foster sincerity and magnanimity in people” (曾子曰：「慎終， 追遠，民德歸厚矣。」1.9). To this I would add the phrase general after generation to make more explicit the similarity between this thinking and Aristotle’s idea of the limited immortality being the only kind possible to human beings. Those departed can indeed become gui-the-ghosts, but when Confucius uses this word by itself as seen in the Analects, it often has a negative connotation. For example, Confucius comments that one does not offer sacrifice to others’ ancestors (gui-the-ghosts), for doing so is “disingenuous” in the sense that it is asking favors rather than expressing gratitude (2.249). Confucius also chastises Zi Lu, who asks about both the ghosts and spirits, by addressing selectively only the issue of the ghosts: “not yet knowing how to deal with the affairs of the living, how can you attend to those of gui-the-ghosts?” (11.1110), indicating the difference between gui-the-ghost and shen-the-spirit. Despite this negativity, when Confucius mentions ghosts and spirits together in the Analects, he does so with a more positive attitude. Sage Yu makes offerings to ghosts-and-spirits (gui-shen 鬼神) with all his heart (8.2111), and Fan Chi should keep a distance from ghostsand-spirits but respect them (6.2012). This fact that gui-the-ghost, which Qian Mu clearly identifies as ancestors (zukao 「祖考」 66) or the “dead people,” is not thought of favorably when Confucius uses the concept by itself but treated more favorably when he uses it with the concept of shen-the-spirit shows that Confucius has a dynamic understanding of the relation between the physical and the spiritual worlds, an understanding reminiscent of Aristotle’s levels of actuality and problematizing the overgeneralization that all Confucian spirits or gods are the same. Similarly, two kinds of shen-the-spirits emerge in the Analects: the kindhearted gui-the-spirits-of-ancestors and the spirits of tian-the-cosmos and di-the-earth. Most of the time, Confucius refers to these two kinds of “gods” or shen-the-spirits more favorably than he does the kind of “gods” that are gui-the-ghost. He states, “If I do not offer sacrifice like the spirits are present, I do not do it at all” (3.1213);

Rhetorical probability 109 the spirit of Mount Tai will surely not accept insincere offerings (3.614); and the spirits of mountains and rivers do not judge by human likes and dislikes (6.415). Denouncing desecration, Confucius clearly treats shen-the-spirits differently from just the “dead people.” It is indeed true that sometimes shen-the spirit is not treated most favorably. For example, it is recorded in the Analects an unidentified speaker saying that “The Master ordinarily does not comment on the bizarre, the violent, the chaotic, and the spirits” 「 ( 子不語怪，力，亂，神。」7.20). Qian explains that here spirits refer to the supernatural figures who are worshipped out of confusion (254). Overall, however, Confucius speaks about shen-the-spirit more sympathetically than he does gui-the-ghost enough to reflect his generally more positive attitude towards shen. When Confucius discourages Zi Lu from praying to shen-the-spirit on behalf of Confucius to help Confucius recover from a serious illness, he does so quite indirectly. 子疾病，子路請禱。子曰：「有諸？」子路對曰：「有之；誄曰： 『禱爾於上下神祗』」子曰：「丘之禱久矣。」The Master is seriously ill, and Zi Lu asks to pray for him. The Master asks Zi Lu, “Can you pray for others?” Zi Lu replies, “Yes. The prayer book from the past says, ‘Pray on your behalf to shen-the-spirits of heaven and earth.’” The Master replies, “I have already done so for a long time.” (7.34) Qian explains the passage in terms of tianming-the-cosmic-order, which Confucius teaches as something that takes lifelong learning to know 「 ( 知命則不待禱」 Qian 273). In other words, Confucius is saying that Zi Lu could spend his time in a different way because if one does not learn to know tianming-the-cosmic-order step-by-step or level-by-level with their actions and deeds all the way through one’s life, praying to shen-the-spirit when ill can only do so much 「 ( 素行合於神 明，故曰禱久矣，則無煩別人代禱」Qian 273). The indirectness of Confucius’ reply reveals the difference between Confucius’ attitudes towards shen-the-spirit, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, gui-the-ghosts and tian-the-cosmos, positioning shen between the ghosts and the cosmos. Shen-the-spirit clearly has a mixed nature or is at a level higher than gui-the-ghost. This mixed nature is important because while shen can refer to the spirit of heaven and earth, it can still refer to the spirit of the departed, kind or unkind, the latter of which is actually gui-theghosts. In other words, the importance of this kind of “gods,” shen-the-spirit, lies precisely in its more mixed characteristic. The differences make rendao-the-wayof-people a continuum, ranging from people through gui-the-ghost, shen-thespirit, to tian-the-cosmos. In short, in the Analects, they are not all generalized as just dead people. Confucius treats the last kind of “gods,” tian-the-cosmos, with reverence and awe. A minister once tries to insinuate an insult to Confucius by asking him to comment on the saying that it is more practical to pray to the lesser spirit of the stove than to the greater spirit of the family. Confucius counters by saying that “the key is not to offend tian-the-cosmos” (3.1316). Once when Confucius and his students are conducting a ritual ceremony under a tree in the State of Song,

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Song’s Minister of Justice Huan Tui comes to file down the tree, attempting to kill Confucius. Confucius’ response to his students’ plea for him to leave is as follows: “My excellence is endowed by tian-the-cosmos. What can Huan Tui do to me really [if he cannot do much to my excellence]?” (「天生德於予，桓魋 其如予何？」7.22). A similar response is also recorded in the Analects about Confucius’ incarceration by mistake in Kuang: Since the passing of King Wen of the Zhou Dynasty, isn’t all cultural legacy with me? Had tian-the-cosmos decided that it be discontinued, I would not have received the legacy. If tian-the-cosmos wants it to continue, what can these people in Kuang do to me? (「文王既沒，文不在茲乎。天之章喪斯文也。 後死者不得與於斯文也。天之未喪斯文也。匡人其如予何。」9.5). On the death of his student Yan Hui at a young age, Confucius is heard stating, “Tian is abandoning me!” (「噫！天喪予！天喪予！」11.8). In response to Zi Lu’s criticism of Confucius’ decision to meet with Nan Zi, the disreputable concubine of Duke Ling of Wei, Confucius’ response is that tian-the-cosmos will be the judge (「予所否者，天厭之！天厭之！」6.26). Repeatedly, Confucius is also recorded as stating that tian-the-cosmos is not to be complained about (14.3717) and cannot be fooled (9.1118), indicating clearly that this kind of “god,” tian-the-cosmos, has a connection to the world but its power transcends that of people: it is beyond Huan Tui, beyond the people of Kuang, beyond Zi Lu, beyond Yan Hui, and beyond Confucius himself. Tiandao-the-cosmic-way can be known because tian-the-cosmos manifests its way in the world, like the Aristotelian form inherent in the matter. This is what Tu Weiming describes as the “anthropocosmic dimension” of Confucius’ tian-the-cosmos (119). Once again, this is where eikos, probable knowledge, comes in. Confucius differentiates the “gods” as ghosts, spirits, and the cosmos and as different extents of probable understanding. With tian-the-cosmos is tianming-the-cosmic-order (Qian 307), just as with the prime mover is the form or truth at its ultimate level. In the Analects, as said before, ming (命) by itself denotes fate, the necessity “ordained by Heaven” (Harbsmeier 209). Zi Xia quotes Confucius in the Analects, “Life and death are matters of ming-the-fate, and riches and fortune are matters of tian-the-cosmos” (12.519). Similarly, when Bo Niu was dying of leprosy, Confucius sighed, “It is the design of ming-the-fate that Bo Niu suffers such a disease” (6.820). The Analects reinforces also that when tian (天) and ming (命) are used together, as said earlier, the concept is the cosmic order or the dao of the cosmos. A Zifu He once told Confucius that Gongbo Liao had maligned Zi Lu to the Head of Ji Clan and then Zifu He offered to use his own influence to have Gongbo Liao pay by death. Confucius responded, “whether dao of the cosmos, the cosmic order, will prevail in the world is a matter of ming-the-destiny, and Gongbo Liao is not more powerful than the cosmic order” (「道之將行也與？命也；道之將廢也與？ 命也；公伯寮其如命何！」14.38). Tianming-the-cosmic-order is to be treated with awe (16.821) because, as Qian puts it, “it is not controlled by human desires” (Qian 603).

Rhetorical probability 111 At the same time, despite the clearly transcendent dimension of Confucius’ thinking of tian, tianming-the-cosmic-order can be known. In fact, one cannot become an exemplary person unless one knows it: 子曰：「不知命，無以為君子也。不知禮，無以立也。不知言，無以 知人也。」The Master says, “Not knowing how to reconcile with ming-thefate, one cannot become an exemplary person. Not knowing how to observe ritual propriety, one cannot establish oneself in a community. Not knowing how to speak, one cannot know other people.” (20.3) Only a petty person takes tianming-the-cosmic-order lightly: 孔子曰：「君子有三畏：畏天命，畏大人，畏聖人 之言。小人不 知天命而不畏也，狎大人，侮聖人之言。」Confucius says, “Exemplary persons hold three things in awe: tianming-the-cosmic-order, those in higher positions, and words of the sages. Petty persons do not know tianming-thecosmic-order so they do not hold it in awe, ignore people in higher positions, and sneer at the words of the sages.” (16.8) Interestingly, here a difference between Aristotle and Confucius seems to emerge. Recall that to Aristotle those who do not know if the gods exist should be punished. To Confucius, however, they are petty, a view that suggests Confucius’ emphasis more on education than on punishment when it comes to knowing tianming-the-cosmic order. 子曰：「吾十有五而志於學， 三十而立， 四十而不惑，五十而知 天命，六十而耳順，七十而從心所欲，不踰矩。」 The Master says, “By the age of 15, I set my goal at learning earnestly. By 30, I established myself firmly. By 40, I removed doubts and clarified confusion. By 50, I realized what tianming-the-cosmic-order is. By 60, I was able to comprehend everything I heard in connection with each other. And by 70, I can act according to my heart/mind’s desire without transgression.” (2.4) A related difference seems to emerge here as well. Note that even though knowing tianming-the-cosmic-order is more advanced than establishing oneself in one’s social environment and being clear about one’s everyday responsibilities, the process goes beyond knowing tianming-the-cosmic-order. In the end, acting according to one’s heart-mind means being able to move in harmony with all that is in an ever-changing cosmos, a cosmos without tianming-the-cosmic-order analyzed but with its transcendent presence affirmed. Potentially, therefore, there is a difference between Aristotle’s and Confucius’ thinking. Before I discuss these differences, however, it will be helpful to address one more point, Confucius’ view of the cosmic order and language-use in relation to the process of learning. What does it mean to say that an exemplary person must know tianming-the-cosmic-order22 and what does being exemplary entail? The exemplary are those who tirelessly engage the processes of learning in the world.

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Tianming-the-cosmic-order and learning Confucius’ life process, seen in 2.4 above, acknowledges the space between tianthe-cosmos and di-the-earth or ren-the-people. In this space, where probable knowledge and the rhetorical project take place, Confucius strives to know the cosmic order through learning, acting, and living in the world, just as Aristotle searches for form in matter. Engaging the interaction between the two, both of them devote their lives to learning and teaching the techne of knowing the true through inventing the approximately true. 子曰：「若聖與仁，則吾豈？抑為之不厭，誨人不倦，則可謂云爾已 矣。」公西華曰：「正唯弟子不能學也。」The Master says, “The sagely or renly-the-equitable—I do not dare to compare myself to them. I only tirelessly learn and tirelessly teach, and that describes me.” Gong Xihua says, “That is precisely what we have not learned to do.” (7.33) 子曰：「賜也，女以予為多學而識之者與？」對曰：「然，非與？」 曰：「非也！予一以貫之。」The Master asks, “Zi Gong, do you think that I memorize all that I learn?” “Yes.” replies Zi Zong, “Do you not?” The Master replies, “No, I do not. I connect all that I learn.” (15.2) Learning is lifelong and is ultimately continued by new lives. What is certain is that tian-the-cosmos exists and that, with it, human beings gradually co-invent dao-the-way, the path, through the never-static process of learning and teaching (7.33). This Confucian world of teaching and learning indicates that probable knowledge is not just about the world or the otherworld: It is a process between the two. At one end of it is tian-the-cosmos and at the other, human learners: 子曰：「莫我知也夫！」子 貢曰：「何為其莫 知子也？」子曰： 「不怨天，不尤人；下學而上達。知我者，其天乎！」The Master says, “No one knows me.” Zi Gong asks, “How do you mean by ‘no one knows me’?” Confucius replies, “I do not complain about tian-the-cosmos, nor do I blame other people; I learn here and reach up there. That which knows me is tian-the-cosmos.” (14.37) It is by learning right here that people may get to know tian-the-cosmos out there, a concept similar to Aristotle’s path that connects common opinions and first principles. For Confucius, this comes down to learning and practicing the responsibilities of the everyday in carefully observing ritual propriety (li禮), a kind of probable knowledge: 子見齊衰者，冕衣裳者，與瞽者，見之雖少必作；過之必趨。When the Master sees those who are in heavy mourning apparels, who are in lighter mourning attires, and who are blind, he always stands up to greet them even if they are younger than himself. When he walks by them, he always quickens his steps. (9.9)

Rhetorical probability 113 顏淵喟然歎曰：「仰之彌高，鑽之彌堅，瞻之在前，忽焉在後！夫子 循循然善誘人：搏我以文，約我以禮。欲罷不能，既竭吾才，如有所 立，卓爾；雖欲從之，末由也已！」 Yan Hui sighs and says, “The higher I look up at my Master’s teaching, the higher it gets; the harder I study, the harder it gets. Now it appears in front of me and now it appears behind me. [Profound and subtle as this is,] the Master guides me through it step by step: enriching me with the study of classics and disciplining me with the practice of ritual propriety. Even though I cannot stop studying, I feel I have done my best and yet see the teaching still high and steep in front of me as if impassable. I would like to continue but I’m unsure how!” (9.11) I will discuss in Chapter Five the similarities and differences between Confucian deference (li) and Aristotelian predicables (topoi) as modes of probable thinking. But here, given that Yan Hui is known as one of Confucius’ best students, the passage clearly reinforces the need for teaching and learning of the dynamic and challenging probable knowledge. Not only are the teaching, learning, and using of probable knowledge guided by tian-the-cosmos that manifests itself in the world, they are also guided by renxing (人性). What is renxing? Similar to Aristotle’s form that corresponds to the soul, Confucius’ tianming-the-cosmic-order corresponds to renxing-the-human-nature. Even though Confucius does not address the metaphysical question of “what is the soul?” as does Aristotle in his threefold analysis of the soul, it is clear that to Confucius renxing-the-human-nature is “in here.” 子曰：「蓋有不知而作之者，我無是也。多聞，擇其善者而從之； 多見而識之；知之次也。」The Master says, “If there are those who create the new without knowing [the old that others have known and done], I am not one of them. Listening, I choose to follow the best way; observing, I comprehend the happenings: I have the second-best kind of knowledge.” (7.27) Admittedly and especially in the beginning of the passage, Confucius’ view of the existence of renxing-the-human-nature as potential insights is ambiguous. However, other passages like the following in the Analects make explicit Confucius’ view regarding the existence of renxing-the-human-nature as insights: 子曰：「我非生而知之者，好古，敏以求之者也。」The Master says, “I am not one who was born with knowledge. Loving the ancients, I am one who studies diligently to attain what I know.” (7.19) 孔子曰：「生而知之者，上也；學而知之者，次也；困而學之，又其 次也。困而不學，民斯為下矣！」Confucius says, “Those who are born with knowledge are the best. Those who know as a result of learning are the next best. Those who learn to know after they have run into difficulties are the third best. Those who won’t learn even after they have run into difficulties are at the bottom.” (16.9)

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As is well known, very few people in China have emphasized the importance of learning more than Confucius. At the same time, there is no question that renxingthe-human-nature operates in the Analects and plays a role in learning as well. Later Confucians argue, up until today, whether renxing-the-human-nature is good or bad, but it is possible that it is fundamentally mixed to Confucius—the way the soul is mixed to Aristotle. Here the similarity between Aristotle and Confucius is striking. Stichler describes Aristotle’s world as “the world of everyday phenomenal experience in which self-actualizing substances strive to complete and perfect their natural and inherent potentialities,” the self-actualization that “is not a spontaneous and incomprehensible production of novelty but an intelligible process of self-completion guided by a rational understanding of a life that is humanly worth living” (246). I will focus on the rational dimension of Confucius’ thinking in Chapter Four, but it is clear that the Confucian learner is between what is given and what is made—not merely a social construct. This understanding of tianming-the-cosmic-order and renxing-the-human-nature reinforces Confucius’ valuing of probable knowledge, which can be seen as levels of actualization of renxing-the-human-nature guided by tianming-the-cosmic-pattern and moving along dao-the-way. This kind of probable knowledge is imprecise but immensely useful, similar to Aristotle’s. I have discussed so far that, in the Analects, there is a clear sense of tianthe-cosmos as a kind of originating force or energy and tianming-the-cosmicorder as an overarching form of necessity that transcends human actions and yet also can be known through teaching, learning, cultivating—realizing or actualizing—renxing-the-human-nature. Tian-the-cosmos operates in the world, and tianming-the-cosmic-order manifests itself in the human realm as rendao-theway-of-people. Again, tiandao-the-way-of-cosmos (knowledge of certainty) and rendao-the-way-of-people (knowledge of probability) are both connected and different, like Aristotle’ form and enmattered form are both connected and different, the reason Confucius urges everyone to study rendao-the-way-of-people in order to know tianming-the-cosmic-order, like in 14.37 above. This kind of Aristotelian and rhetorical interpretation of Confucius’ tian-the-cosmos in relation to human learning combines the interpretations of tianming-the-cosmic-order as a kind of objective inevitability (Huang S. 13), on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the interpretations of rendao-the-way-of-people as having a sense of “indecidability” (Norris 28) or “indeterminability” (Habinek 83). This Aristotelian interpretation is consistent with interpretations of the human relation to tian-the-cosmos as an “epistemic” journey (Keightley 123). It is consistent also with interpretations of the Shang inscriptions23 themselves as being “at least part of the message” (Chang 81). Like the Shang inscriptions, in other words, the discursive techne of rhetoric and rendao-the-probable-knowledge mediate human inquiry, as opposed to being mere conduits. With the help of both tianming-the-cosmic-order and

Rhetorical probability  115 renxing-the-human-nature, Confucian lifelong learners can become tian-like sages by untiringly engaging rendao-the-way-of-people or probable knowledge. At the same time, acknowledging concepts such as tianming-­the-cosmic-order and renxing-the-human-nature in Confucius’ teaching can also help us explore further the differences in their rhetorical legacies. Progressive and deferential rhetorical thinking It is one of the most important similarities—the process in which probable knowledge that contains both truths and incomplete truths is sought, invented, and valued—that compels us to deepen our understanding of the differences. That is, a lack of consideration of this similarity has led to preliminary observations that need to be examined more closely. But first, a brief review is in order. As we know, one view about the difference is that the ancient C ­ hinese had no rhetoric, but this view is based on a partial understanding of ­Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric. In The Origins of Rhetoric in Ancient Greece, Thomas Cole maintains that rhetoric cannot exist before Plato and ­Aristotle have “formulated … universal truths” with “clarity and u­ nivalence” (x). Taking Aristotle’s “modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken words” (1356a1) at the “narrowest and the most conventional sense” (Cole ix), Cole argues that Greek literature before Plato and Aristotle is “­ arhetorical” (x) and that “non-Western discourse [contains] very little outside” the discourse of the “fossilized” sort (47–8). This view presupposes that rhetoric only transmits the univalent truth clearly and is not part of the process through which Plato and Aristotle “formulated” truth—neither prior to nor during or outside of the process. The current study problematizes this argument by showing that there is plurality in the West, that Plato and Aristotle differ in their views of truths, and that to Aristotle the univalent and formal truths are also enmattered, so much so that the human understanding of truths has a necessarily continuous and communal dimension, the reason both ­Aristotelian and C ­ onfucian cultures value probable knowledge and therefore cannot be dichotomized as either having or not having rhetoric. Interestingly, even though Arabella Lyon’s comparative rhetorical study is anti-Eurocentric and anticolonial, her reading of the d­ ifference is not that different in the end. “In ancient China,” Lyon states, “there is great skepticism about persuasion as an ethical undertaking and even about language as revealing knowledge, action, or character” (132). While Cole upholds that Confucius could not have r­ hetoric that clearly expresses truth “formulated” by Plato and ­Aristotle, Lyon argues that Confucius was too ethical not to be suspicious of discursive activities’ capacity to “reveal” the ethical knowledge, action, and character. Either way, they both contend that Confucius could not have a conception of rhetoric that Aristotle would recognize. Given that both conclusions are based on a dichotomized understanding of Greek rhetoric as Plato-­versus-Gorgias, as ethical-versus-unethical, both are challenged by the same fact that Aristotle and Confucius alike see language-use as a necessary part of the journey through different levels of actualization of the soul or cultivation of renxing-the-human-nature ­animated by the mover or tian-the-­cosmic-energy. The discussion so far problematizes their conclusion and is summarized in Table 3.1 on the next page.

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Table 3.1 Some similarities between the two processes of Rhetorical Invention Process

Aristotle

Confucius English

Beginning The perishable human being is born with the soul that has “a bare capacity to understand” (Lear 126), the capacity that is potentially the forms of all things.

Middle

End

Inspired by God, the soul’s ultimate actuality, the soul actualizes itself at higher levels through interaction with the forms found in the world.

Eventually, the human being “continues its existence in something like itself—not numerically one, but one in form.” (Aristotle On the Soul 415b7)

Chinese

The finite human being is born with xing-the-human-nature that knows or can know: • “I am not one who was born • with knowledge. Loving the ancients, I am one who studies diligently to attain what I know.” (7.19) • “Those who are born with • knowledge are the best; those who know as a result of learning are the next best.” (16.9) • “Renxing-the-human-nature • of all people is similar; it is learning and practice that set people apart.” (17.2) Inspired by tian-the-cosmos, the learning and the practice develop into higher stages: • “I do not complain about tian• the-cosmos, nor do I blame other people; I learn here and reach up there.” (14.37) • “By the age of 15, I set my goal • at learning earnestly. By 30, I established myself firmly. By 40, I removed doubts and clarified confusion. By 50, I realized what tianming-the-cosmicorder is.” (2.4) • According to Confucius’ student • Zixia, it is not the exemplary person but “the sage alone who walks the path every step from start to finish.” (19.1224) Eventually, the human being can know some dao-the-way and become one with its cosmic environment: • “Having learned and tread • dao-the-way in the morning, a person can die that evening without regret.” (4.8) • “By 60, I was able to • comprehend everything I heard in connection with each other. And by 70, I can act according to my heart/mind’s desire without transgression.” (2.4)

「我非生而知之 者，好古，敏以 求之者也。」 (7.19) 「生而知之者， 上也；學而知 之者，次也」 (16.9) 「性相近也， 習相遠也。」 (17.2)

「不怨天，不尤 人；下學而上 達。」(14.37) 「吾十有五而志 於學，三十而 立，四十而不 惑，五十而知天 命」(2.4) 「有始有卒者， 其惟聖人乎！」 (19.12)

「朝聞道夕死可 矣」(4.8) 「六十而耳順， 七十而從心所 欲，不踰矩。」 (2.4)

Rhetorical probability 117 There is no question that both the mover and tian-the-cosmic-energy inspire and guide human inquiry; both the soul and xing-the-human-nature are dynamic processes that have an unearthly dimension through which human beings are inspired to participate in a limited immortality possible to them. At the same time, the fundamental similarity leads to less sweeping but nonetheless significant differences. Many passages in the Analects suggest, for example, that an important difference may be rooted in the fact that Aristotle’s metaphor for truth is form and that Confucius’ metaphor for truth is dao-the-way. This dissimilarity shapes the different views of probable truths as well as different ways of rhetorical thinking. Tentatively, I would characterize the Aristotelian approach as emphasizing the progressive and the Confucian approach, the deferential. In other words, Aristotelian rhetorical processes emphasize progresses towards increasingly higher or clearer visions of the form that is attainable, while Confucian rhetorical processes emphasize fields radiating with the deferential way that is adjusted. This difference of emphases on attainment and on adjustment can help explain why, as pointed out earlier, Aristotle punishes those who do not love their parents while Confucius educates them and why Aristotle talks less than Confucius about realms beyond attaining truths or knowing the way. Aristotle certainly teaches deference, but he emphasizes it differently than Confucius does. As seen in Farrell’s rhetorical analysis of Greek tragedy, Aristotle’s awe-inspiring, overarching or highest form of necessity could transpire as a sequence of events alone: “For where would be the need of a speaker if the required effects could be conveyed without the use of language?” (1456b5–10). Here both rhetoric and poetic are largely subservient to the mute force of necessity, (Farrell 132) subservient in the sense of reticence and deference. Aristotle states: We must be content then in speaking of such subjects and with such premisses to indicate the truth roughly and in outline, and in speaking about things which are only for the most part true and with premises of the same kind to reach conclusions that are no better. (Nicomachean Ethics 1094b19–22) Richard Cherwitz and James Hikins put it this way: while human beings persevere in what is humanly possible, they also learn to cope with the fact that “we may, on occasion, be simply unable to find solutions to grave problems” (265). In short, deference, especially the kind to necessity, has a definite place in Aristotle. This deference is very similar to what is seen in the Analects where Confucius defers to tian-the-cosmos (17.1925). Aristotle, however, emphasizes the deference for the overarching form more than that for fellow human beings in their effort to attain the true. As a result, the Aristotelian rhetorical outlook emphasizes progress towards clearer visions of the truths, emphasizes eloquence that sounds confident and clear. In contrast, the constant ripple effect of the deferential relations taught by Confucius emphasizes that the human vision of tianming-the-cosmic-order is

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rooted in their relation with each other (1.226), so much so that Confucius prioritizes harmony, human as well as cosmic, at times over what seems to be the cosmic order, prioritizes openness over clarity. This is not because Confucius compromises the cosmic order but because he deems such prioritization the cosmic order itself, thus the difference between the metaphors of the form and the way. I will explain this point by using an extended example of different interpretations of Analects 15.28: 子曰﹕「人能弘道﹐非道弘人。」The Master says, “It is people who can broaden dao-the-way, not dao-the-way that broadens people.” (15.28) The difficulty with the passage is the meaning of the dao that does not broaden people. Edward Slingerland explains that dao-the-way is “transcendent, in the sense that it continues to exist even when it is not being actively manifested in the world” but it “requires human beings to be fully realized” (186). The descriptors of transcendent, manifestation, and realization give Slingerland’s interpretation a distinct otherworldly or Platonic emphasis on the form independent of the matter. In contrast, Ames and Rosemont interpret the passage as “making the journey one’s own” (45) and “becoming consummately and authoritatively human” (46), giving their interpretation a distinct this-worldly or Sophistical emphasis. At least to informed readers, these two kinds of interpretative preferences are very clear. In contrast, Yang Bojun’s interpretive preference is much less clear. Translating the Analects from classical Chinese to modern Chinese, he recommends that we let the enigma be given that no one throughout more than two millennia of effort has resolved it (168). While Yang leaves many interpretive possibilities open, Qian Mu offers a reading that tries to reconcile opposing interpretations. First, Qian points out that the dao in 15.28 refers to rendao-the-way-of-people. He explains that the passage can be interpreted as that people broaden the way by generations of effort to understand and to learn, not by rendao-the-way-of-people itself. While this interpretation accepts the more sophistical readings like the one by Ames and Rosemont, Qian clearly identifies the dao in 15.28 as rendo-the-way-of-people, differentiates it from tiandao-the-way-of-cosmos, and therefore accepts also a transcendent dimension in Confucius’ thinking as seen in interpretations like the one by Slingerland. A third Chinese rendering of the dao by Yichun Liu and Xiaoye You also sees discourse of the dao as a connection “between Heaven [tian] and human subject” (161). Recall now that Cole and Lyon, as seen above, also interpret rhetoric as either Western or Chinese. It can be said that what we see here is four Chinese Confucian scholars’ habit to defer to different interpretations of dao-the way, a habit that is contrasted with five North American Confucian scholars’ tendency to clarify the form, to clarify what it is. However, it is important to note that this difference is complex or is a difference of emphases, rather than an absolute difference, in Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking. Indeed and as Llyod argues, “certainty is the aim” for Aristotle because “the ultimate truth is incontrovertible” (Adversaries 219); however, it is also true that in the end Aristotle sees human beings as only able to be God-like, having limited immortality, and therefore

Rhetorical probability 119 “remain[ing] always incapable of part of [truth], never able to grasp the totality” (Long “Duplicity” 150–51). In fact, it is Aristotle who states that human beings can never be completely clear and absolutely incontrovertible about everything, and it is Confucius who describes himself clearly as knowing tianming-the-cosmic-order by the age of fifty, even though he continues going beyond it as well. At the same time, even though the difference is one of emphasis, it has noticeable consequences for rhetoric. Several examples in the Analects illustrate how Confucius’ discourse lends itself more readily to walking dao-the-way and at times prioritizes deference over clarity, the deference to tian-the-cosmos but also to ren-the-people. In addition to praising legendary sages like Yao (堯), Shun (舜), and Yu (禹) who walk the way in epic proportions, Confucius is seen repeatedly praising more those who have the fortitude to suffer persecution or to withdraw when necessary. 子謂公冶長，「可妻也。雖在縲絏之中，非其罪也。」以其子 妻 之。The Master talks about Gongye Chang, saying, “He can marry my daughter. Even though he was imprisoned, it was not his fault.” He then gives him his daughter in marriage. (5.1) 子謂南容，「邦有道不廢，邦無道免於刑戮。」以其兄之子妻之。The Master talks about Nan Rong, saying, “He works in public office when daothe-way prevails in the land and, when it does not, he avoids punishment and execution.” He then gives him his niece in marriage. (5.2) 子曰：「甯武子，邦有道，則知；邦無道，則愚。其知可及也；其愚 不可及也。」The Master says, “Ning Wuzi seems wise when dao-the-way prevails in the land but, when it does not, he seems dumb. One can match his wisdom but hardly his dumbness.” (5.20) 子曰：「篤信好學，守死善道。危邦不入，亂邦不居，天下有道則 見，無道則隱。邦有道，貧且賤焉，恥也，邦無道，富且貴焉，恥 也。」The Master says, “Trust dao-the-way; learn about it; and defend it with your life. Do not enter the states that are unsafe or reside in one that is riotous. Be visible when dao-the-way prevails under the sun but be invisible when it does not. When dao-the-way prevails in the land, it is a shame to be poor, but when it does not, it is a shame to be wealthy.” (8.13) 憲問「恥」。子曰：「邦有道穀，邦無道穀；恥也。」Yuan Xian asks about shame. The Master says, “It is a shame if one is an official and gets paid when dao-the-way prevails in the land but still is an official and gets paid when dao-the-way does not.” (14.1) 子曰：「邦有道，危言，危行；邦無道，危行，言孫。」The Master says, “When dao-the-way prevails in the land, act upright and speak candidly; when it does not, act upright but speak more carefully. (14.4) 子曰：「直哉史魚！邦有道，如矢；邦有道，如矢。君子哉蘧伯玉！ 邦有道，則仕；邦無道，則可卷而懷之。」The Master says, “Shi Yu is

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Not surprisingly, therefore, to Confucius, “Great ministers are those who serve their lord in keeping with dao-the-way and they stop when they can no longer do so” (「以道事君，不可則止」11.23). One more very vivid passage on the theme of deference is the following: 子謂顏淵曰：「用之則行，舍之則藏，惟我與爾有是夫。」子路曰： 「子行三軍，則誰與？」子曰：「暴虎馮河，死而不悔者，吾不與 也。必也臨事而懼，好謀而成者也。」The Master says to Yan Hui, “Walk dao-the-way when given office but preserve dao-the-way when not; you and I are the only ones who can do this.” Zi Lu asks, “When it comes to military matters, whom would the Master work with?” The Master replies, “I cannot work with those who fight a tiger or wade through tumultuous waters all by themselves and then have no regret for dying in doing so. I have to work with those who are careful when facing danger and astute when facing difficulties.” (7.10) Qian’s comments are particularly helpful here to illustrate this Confucian emphasis on deference more than progress. Annotating 7.10, Qian explains, “walking dao-the-way and not effecting it through public service can be tianming-thecosmic-order, and not being able to win military campaigns all the time can also be tianming-the-cosmic-order” (242). Knowing tiaming-the-cosmic-order—the daothe-way that is open to both holding and not holding public office, both winning and losing—one can move with the cosmic and human dao even in the face of events such as virtuous and capable people meeting unfortunate ends. Qian puts it even more explicitly, “learning diligently and fostering virtues depend on human beings, but the results do not all depend on them,” and this is called “fortune or ming-the-fate-of-timing” 「 ( 時命」287). The moving with the dao is xin (心)-ing, hearting/minding, or feeling/thinking, very similar to how the appetitive and the rational parts work together in actualizing the soul. But Confucius emphasizes this undulating characteristic of such moving with the cosmic and human dao by seeing it as the kind of knowing that is beyond or higher than knowing how to establish oneself within human communities, knowing how to have no doubt in running everyday affairs, and even simply knowing tianming-the-cosmic-order. Quoting Confucius, Qian concludes that those who can move this way with the dao know that “dao-the-way sometimes works and other times does not” 「 ( 天命有 窮通」531). That is why the best dao-walkers sometimes forge ahead according to tianming-the-cosmic-order even though dao-the-way will be frustrated 「 ( 道之行 不行屬命，而人之無行而不可不於道亦是命」538), while at other times they wait according to tianming-the-cosmic-order even if there are things to do 「 ( 知 有可為而不為」534). Other passages in the Analects support Qian’s reading. For example, among the four times when Bo Yi and Shu Qi are mentioned in the

Rhetorical probability 121 Analects, Confucius praises the brothers twice as people who do not complain about what happened to them (5.22 and 7.14), praises them once as having richness of character (16.12), but then also differentiates himself from the two brothers: 逸民：伯夷、叔齊、虞仲、夷逸、朱張、柳下惠、少連。子曰：「不 降其志，不辱其身，伯夷叔齊與？」謂柳下惠、少連：「降志辱身 矣；中倫，行中慮，其斯而已矣！」謂虞仲、夷逸：「隱居放言，身 中清，廢中權。」「我則異於是，無可無不可。」 Recluses include Bo Yi, Shu Qi, Yu Zhong, Yi Yi, Zhu Zhang, Liu Xiahui, Shao Lian. The Master says, “Will unbent and bodies/reputation untarnished are Bo Yi and Shu Qi.” The Master says also, “Liu Xiahui and Shao Lian bent their will and tarnished their bodies/reputations ever so slightly but spoke properly and acted thoughtfully; they are fine.” The Master says, “Yu Zhong and Yi Yi left off speaking but their bodies/reputations were untarnished. Their abandonment of speech is understandable.” The Master says also, “Yet I differ from them: I do not insist on one presupposition or another.” (18.8) Not insisting on certain presuppositions means hearing, feeling, and moving with tianming-the-cosmic-order. While Aristotle’s form emphasizes how a higher level of truth enables a clearer understanding of the truths of things, Confucius’ daothe-way emphasizes how the processes of knowing tianming-the-cosmic-order necessarily rise and fall with deferential relationships, human and cosmic. In the Rhetoric, for example, Aristotle states, “if the decisions of judges are not what they ought to be, the defeat must be due to the speakers themselves, and they must be blamed accordingly” (1355a23–24)—because of truths’ natural tendency to triumph. Confucius, however, may see it in less certain and clear terms. A Confucian rhetorical education, therefore, emphasizes how to walk or actualize the way in relation to others; at times, relationality can have priority over progression towards better clarity. The Analects contains many passages on this relational characteristic of the dao. As You Zi says, “Exemplary persons focus on the basics, from which dao-the-way arises” (1.227). These basics start with filial responsibilities and fraternal relationships. The dao lived by the former kings (1.1228), the ancients (3.1629), and King Wen and King Wu (19.2230), refers to their proper way to govern, and to govern exemplarily as they do is to collaborate with people (17.431). Characteristics that exemplary persons consider important in walking dao-the-way include the following: •

• •

being “respectful in deportment” 「 ( 行己也恭」), “conscientious in serving their superiors” 「 ( 事上也敬」), “kind in attending to the needs of the common people” 「 ( 養民也惠」), and “reasonable in employing their services” 「 ( 使民也義」) (5.1532) “maintaining a dignified appearance” 「 ( 動容貌」) and “a respectable countenance” 「 ( 正顏色」) and “being thoughtful with words and tone” 「 ( 出辭 氣」) (8.433) being “equitable thus not anxious, knowledgeable thus not in a quandary, and courageous thus not timid” 「 ( 仁者不憂；知者不惑；勇者不懼」 14.3034).

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Similarly, Zeng Zi sees “just doing one’s utmost (zhong 忠) and putting oneself in the other’s place (shu 恕)” 「 ( 夫子之道忠恕而已矣」4.15) as the most important characteristic of the dao-the-way of exemplary persons. Qian interprets zhong (忠) and shu (恕) as among the most comprehensible scope of rendao-the-way-ofpeople (人道之端，要在能反求諸己。忠恕之極，即是明誠之極 36–37). In the words of Confucius’ student Zi Zhang, being good but not relating it to others 「 ( 執德不弘」) is not truly walking the way 「 ( 信道不篤」 (19.235). In the end, however, I have stressed that Aristotle’s and Confucius’ views of rhetoric do not differ fundamentally, even though the different emphases have significant ramifications. Confucius’ teaching and practice of deference as a prominent rhetorical choice are fundamentally consistent with everything we see in Aristotle’s view of probable knowledge. It is not simply relativistic; rhetoricians must be prepared to persevere in working with the audience—and themselves—all the while keeping in mind that probable knowledge, being itself imprecise and incomplete, “is always open to objection” (Aristotle Rhetoric 1402b28). True rhetoricians, Aristotelian or Confucian, do not always succeed in making and maintaining probable knowledge and they must be able to invent and be open. As Farrell puts it, Aristotle’s rhetoric makes “ongoing sense of appearances by expressing them as proposed themes … open-ended themes” (25). When the senior official Ji Huanzi in the State of Lu accepts an entertaining troupe as a gift and then stops holding the court for three days, Confucius leaves the State of Lu (18.4). The dynamics between the official and Confucius is such that there is little Confucius can do to help Ji walk dao-the-way and there is much danger if Confucius tries to persuade Ji. As Qian comments, “When something can be done, do it; when nothing can be done, stop. This is how Confucius embodies the quintessential spirit of ‘knowing when’ 「 ( 時中之聖」)” (653). At the same time, however inconvenient the metaphor of the form, Aristotle’s substance is dynamic, and Aristotle himself, flexible: he, too, left Athens to avoid having the Athenians “sin against philosophy a second time.”

Conclusions Both Aristotle and Confucius believe that eikos, probable knowledge, and rhetorical invention operate in the realm between the dynamically immutable and the immutably dynamic. Both, therefore, deem the rhetorical project indispensable to functional human communities and good human lives. Both also deem deference an integral part of rhetorical practice. The differences between them stem from their conceptual metaphors for truth as being fundamentally the form or the way, respectively, and this difference must be understood in the larger context of their thinking in order for us to understand the difference meaningfully and usefully. With this said, Aristotle’s view of actualizing the form has contributed to Western rhetoric’s focus on progress and clarity, while Confucius’ way of riding out cosmic relations has contributed to Chinese rhetoric’s emphasis on resilience and deference. Clarity, as progressive as it can be, has the potential for simplicity and narrowness, while deference, as harmonizing as it can be, has the potential for deception and confusion. Therefore, these two kinds of rhetorical thinking

Rhetorical probability 123 need to understand and complement each other. In both cases, however, rhetorical invention of probable knowledge genuinely elicits responses in an unremitting and epistemic journey with rhetoricians constantly figuring out the cadence of the anthropocosmic dao or the hylomorphic form in each given human situation— both in the East and in the West.

Notes 1 I use Ross’ original translation, instead of the one Urmson edited later and Barns included in the Oxford collection, because of the consistent rendering of the Greek words for the modes of thinking, for example, the translation of episteme as scientific knowledge rather than knowledge. For my context here, I find the variation between the two translations minimal and the consistency valuable. 2 The Oxford translation is the same, but I choose Lee and Long’s because while the Oxford translation uses the translation account, Lee and Long keep the Greek word logos (λογος) untranslated. 3 See, for example, Christoph Delius and Matthias Gatzemeier’s The Story of Philosophy: From Antiquity to the Present. English Edition. Trans. David Jenkinson and Michael Scuffil. Cologne, Germany: Konemann, 2000. 4 The Oxford translation uses the word account, instead of speech. 5 Even though the zhou in King Zhou and the zhou in the Zhou Dynasty look and sound the same in English, in Chinese they are two unrelated and different words, so they are homophonous rather than synonymous. 6 The passage (18.8) is discussed and translated below (see page 121) and it is also discussed in Chapter Four. 7 I treat most of the key concepts this way, for example, renxing-the-human-nature. Not only do I read some essentialism in Confucius’ view of being and nature, but also I agree with Paula Gottlieb that the essentialism in Aristotle is at times “fuzzy” (Gottlieb “Aristotle” 7¶2). The compromised translation that doubles up the Chinese and English, I hope, signals or hints at the complexities with both thinkers’ views. 8 For the translation of 14.37, see translation in the text below (112). 9 子曰：「非其鬼而祭之，諂也。見義不為，無勇也。」The Master says, “Sacrificing to others’ ghosts is disingenuous [asking for favors rather than expressing gratitude]. Not acting on the appropriate, one lacks courage.” (2.24). 10 季路問事鬼神。子曰：「未能事人，焉能事鬼？」「敢問死？」曰：「未知 生，焉知死？」Zi Lu asks about how to attend to the affairs of ghosts and spirits [of the dead]. The Master replies, “Not yet knowing how to deal with the affairs of the living, how can you attend to those of the dead?” Zi Lu asks again, “Could I ask about death then?” The Master replies, “Not knowing about life, how can you know about death?” (11.11). 11 子曰：「禹吾無間然矣，菲飲食，而致孝乎鬼神，惡衣服，而致美乎黻冕， 卑宮室，而盡力乎溝恤，禹吾無間然矣。」The Master says, “Of Yu I have no criticism. He eats perfunctorily but gives all his heart to making offerings to ghosts and spirits. He dresses plainly usually but wears the finest garments for sacrificial ceremonies. He lives modestly but devotes himself to building canals for the people. I truly have no criticism of Yu.” (8.21). 12 (樊遲問知。子曰：「務民之義，敬鬼神而遠之，可謂知矣。」問仁。曰： 「仁者先難而後獲，可謂仁矣。」Fan Chi asks about knowing [how to govern]. The Master says, “Focus on how to work with people appropriately; respect but keep a distance from gui-sheng/ghosts-spirits. That is how.” Fan Chi asks about ren/ equitableness. The Master replies, “Those who are equitable are in front of others when difficulties arise and behind others when rewards arrive.” (6.20).

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13 祭如在，祭神如神在。子曰：「吾不與祭，如不祭。」The Master makes offerings to the ancestors like they are present; he makes offerings to shen-the-spirits like they are present. The Master says, “If I do not offer sacrifices like shen-the-spirits are present, it is like I do not do it at all.” (3.12). 14 季氏旅於泰山。子謂冉有曰：「女弗能救與？」對曰：「不能。」子曰： 「嗚呼！曾謂泰山不如林放乎？」The Ji clan is going to make sacrificial offerings to Mount Tai. The Master says to Ran You, “Cannot you stop them?” Ran You says, “No, I cannot.” The Master says, “Really! Are you saying that shen-the-spirits of Mount Tai know less than Lin Fang [about ritual propriety and will accept their offerings]?” (3.6). According to ritual propriety, mountains like Tai are not for clans to make offerings to. Lin Fang is known for being observant of ritual propriety. 15 子謂仲弓，曰：「犁牛之子騂且角，雖欲勿用，山川其舍諸？」The Master talks about Zhong Gong, saying, “The calf of cattle with its reddish hide and ship-shape horn, even though people do not allow the cattle to make a sacrificial offering, will shen-thespirits of mountains and rivers refuse the calf?” (6.4). 16 王孫賈問曰：「與其媚於奧，寧媚於竈，何謂也？」 子曰：「不然；獲罪於天， 吾所禱也。」Wang Sunjia asks, “It is said, ‘One would rather pray to shen-the-spirits of stove than pray to shen-the-spirits of the family.’ What does it mean?” The Master replies, “It is not so. Offending tian-the-cosmos, one has nothing to pray to.” (3.13). 17 Passage (14.37) is translated below (112). 18 子疾病，子路使門人為臣，病聞，曰：「久矣哉，由之行詐也！無臣而為 有臣，吾誰欺？欺天乎？且予與其死於臣之手也，無甯死於二三子之手乎！且 予縱不得大葬，予死於道路乎？」The Master is very ill. Zi Lu makes all students act like ministers of senior officials in preparation for the funeral. After the Master gets better, he says, “For too long Zi Lu has engaged in this kind of pretense! Pretending to have senior officials while I do not have any, am I trying to fool someone? To fool tianthe-cosmos? Besides, I would rather die with all of you around me than with some senior officials. The ceremony will not be grand, but will I die by some roadside?” (9.11). 19 司馬牛憂曰：「人皆有兄弟，我獨亡！」子夏曰：「商聞之矣：『死生有命， 富貴在天』。君子敬而無失，與人恭而有禮；四海之內，皆兄弟也。君子何患 乎無兄弟也？」Sima Niu sighs and says, “Everyone has brothers except me!” Zi Xia says, “Have you heard what the Master used to say, ‘Life and death are matters of mingthe-fate, and riches and status are matters of tian-the-cosmos.’ Exemplary persons are respectful and avoid errors; they are reverent and observe ritual propriety; and everyone under heaven becomes their brother. Why worry about having no brothers?” (12.5). 20 伯牛有疾，子問之，自牖執其手，曰：「亡之，命矣夫！斯人也有斯疾也！ 斯人也有斯疾也！」Bo Niu is seriously ill, and the Master goes to see him. Holding his hand over the south window of the house to say goodbye, the Master says, “What a loss; this must be ming-the-fate. This person can have such a disease! This person can have such a disease!” (6.8). 21 See the translation in the text below (111). 22 See 16.8 and 2.4, both of which are just translated and discussed above in this section on this page (111). 23 Also known as the oracle bone scripts, Shang transcriptions are the texts inscribed on the oracle bones, pieces of animal bones such as a cow’s scapula and a turtle’s shell. These transcripts on the oracle bones were used in royal divination ceremonies from the mid-Shang (ca. 1766 BCE–ca. 1050 BCE) to the early-Zhou (1122 BCE–256 BCE) dynasties in ancient China. 24 子游曰：「子夏之門人小子，當洒掃，應對，進退，則可矣。抑末也；本之 則無，如之何？」子夏聞之曰：「噫！言游過矣！君子之道，孰先傳焉？孰 後倦焉？譬諸草木，區以別矣。君子之道，焉可誣也？有始有卒者，其惟聖 人乎！」Zi You says, “Sweeping the floor, greeting the guest, entering and exiting the hall according to ritual propriety, how can students of Zi Xia perform these superficial details and not focus on the roots of them? When Zi Xia hears this, he says, “Ah! Zi You

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is mistaken. Of dao-the-way of exemplary persons, what is the first to teach and what is the last to neglect? Learning can be compared to farming, both of which are working although of different kinds. How can walking dao-the-way of exemplary persons deviate from this? Only the sages can cover the beginning, the end, and everything in between.” (19.12). The translation of the passage is under “Tianming-the-Cosmic-Order” in this chapter (107). 有子曰：「其為人也孝弟，而好犯上者，鮮矣；不好犯上，而好作亂者，未之 有也。君子務本，本立而道生。孝弟也者，其為仁之本與！」Master You says, “It is rare for those who love their parents and their brothers to affront those in higher positions. It is unheard of for those who do not affront those in higher positions to revolt. Exemplary persons attend to the basics, from which dao arises. Loving parents and siblings are the basis for becoming ren-the-equitable.” (1.2). See translation in previous footnote. 有子曰：「禮之用，和為貴。先王之道，斯為美；小大由之。有所不行，知和 而和，不以禮節之，亦不可行也。」Master You says, “The function of li-the-ritualpropriety is to harmonize with appropriateness: this is the beauty of dao-the-way of the former kings, and it is the basic principle for all affairs, big and small. But to achieve such harmony by blindly insisting on it without any restraints by ritual propriety, it will not work either.” (1.12). 子曰：「射不主皮，為力不同科，古之道也。」The Master says, “The archery competition is not judged by whether the arrow penetrates the leather, because people differ in their strengths. This is dao-the-way of archery according to the ancients.” (3.16). 衛公孫朝問於子貢曰：「仲尼焉學？」子貢曰：「文武之道，未墜於地， 在人。賢者識其大者，不賢者識其小者，莫不有文武之道焉。夫子焉不學， 而亦何常師之有！」Gongsun Chao asks Zi Gong, “The learning like that of Confucius, whence is it learned?” Zi Gong replies, “Dao-the-way of the former Kings Wen and Wu is not lost; it resides among people. The more able have learned the major points; the less able, the minor details; but neither is devoid of dao-the-way of the former Kings Wen and Wu. My Master learns from everywhere and constantly; why would he need a special teacher or a particular teaching?” (19.22). 子之武城，聞弦歌之聲，夫子莞爾而笑曰：「割雞焉用牛刀？」子游對曰： 「昔者，偃也聞諸夫子曰：『君子學道則愛人；小人學道則易使也。』」子曰： 「二三子！偃之言是也；前言戲之耳！」The Master is in City Wu and hears Zi Yu play music while teaching. The Master smiles and says, “Why use the knife for butchering the cow on the chicken?” Zi Yu replies, “I have heard the Master say in the past ‘Through learning to work on dao-the-way [i.e., through observing ritual propriety and playing music], those in higher positions become loving to their people and those in lower position become cooperative with their superiors.’” The Master says, “Please listen to him; I was only teasing him just now.” (17.4). 子謂子產，「有君子之道四焉：其行己也恭，其事上也敬，其養民也惠， 其使民也義。」The Master says about Zi Chan, “He exemplifies dao-the-way of exemplary persons in four ways: He conducts himself reverently, serves his superior respectfully, provides for people caringly, and employs their service appropriately.” (5.15). 曾子有疾，孟敬子問之。曾子言曰：「鳥之將死，其鳴也哀；人之將死， 其言也善。君子所貴乎道者三：動容貌，斯遠暴慢矣；正顏色，斯近信笑； 出辭氣，斯遠鄙倍矣。籩豆之事，則有司存。」Master Zeng is ill, and Meng Jingzi goes to see him. Master Zeng says, “The sound a dying bird utters is sad, and the words a dying man utters are kind. The treasures of dao-the-way of those in higher positions are three: keep a dignified appearance to avoid being violated and ignored; adopt a respectable countenance to avoid being distrusted; and be thoughtful with words and tone to avoid blunders and mistakes. As for the routine details in ritual ceremonies, they can be taken care of by minor officials.” (8.4).

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34 子曰：「君子道者三，我無能焉：仁者不憂；知者不惑；勇者不懼。」子貢 曰：「夫子自道也！」The Master says, “Dao-the-way of exemplary persons leads to three excellences, and I have not yet obtained any of them. Ren-the-equitable are not anxious; zhi-the-learned are not confused; and yong-the-brave are not afraid.” (14.30). 35 子張曰：「執德不弘，信道不篤，焉能為有？焉能為亡？」Zi Zhang says, “Those whose excellence is kept within and whose dao-the-way stays a façade, their presence and absence do not, respectively, enrich or diminish anything.” (19.2).

Works Cited Anton, John P. Categories and Experience: Essays on Aristotelian Themes. Binghamton, NY: Global Publications, 1996. Aristotle. The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation. Ed. Jonathan Barnes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984. ———. On Rhetoric. Trans. George A. Kennedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. ———. Rhetoric. Trans. W. Rhys Roberts. New York: The Modern Library, 1954. ———. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. Martin Ostwald. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962. ———. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. W. D. Ross. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Ed. Richard McKeon. New York: The Modern Library, 2001. 927–1112. Chang, Kwang-Chih. Art, Myth, and Ritual: The Path to Political authority in Ancient China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983. Cherwitz, Richard A. and James W. Hikins. “Rhetorical Perspectivism.” Quarterly Journal of Speech. 69 (1983): 249–66. Cole, Thomas. The Origins of Rhetoric in Ancient Greece. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. Confucius. The Analects of Confucius. Trans. and Anno. Arthur Waley. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. ———. The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation. Trans. Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr. New York: Ballantine Books, 1998. ———. The Analects of Confucius: A Translation with Annotations. 《論語譯注》Anno. Yang Bojun (楊伯峻). Beijing: Zhonghua shuju (中華書局), 1980. ———. Confucius Analects: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Trans. Edward Slingrland. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2003. ———. Lun yu xin jie. 《論語新解》Anno. Qian Mu (錢穆). Taipei Shi: Lian jing, 1994. Dunne, Joseph. Back to the Rough Ground: “Phronesis” and “Techne” in Modern Philosophy and in Aristotle. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993. Engberg-Pedersen, Troels. “Is There an Ethical Dimension of Aristotelian Rhetoric?” Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Ed. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. 116–41. Farrell, Thomas B. Norms of Rhetorical Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993. Grimaldi, William M. A. Aristotle: A Commentary. New York: Fordham University Press, 1980–1988. ———. Studies in the Philosophy of Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GMBH, 1972. Habinek, Thomas. Ancient Rhetoric and Oratory. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. Harbsmeier, Christoph. Science and Civilisation in China / Vol. 7 Science and Chinese Society. 7.1, Language and Logic. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Huang, Shou’an (黃受安), Fude Duan (段福德), Quanhui Cui (崔全会), Wei Peng (彭微), Tao Zheng (郑涛), Zhizhong Liu (刘志忠). Zhongguo gu dai jiu da si xiang xue pai ji yao.《中國古代九大思想學派集要》. Beijing: Jie fang jun chu ban she, 2001.

Rhetorical probability 127 Irwin, T. H. Aristotle’s First Principles. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Keightley, David N. The Ancestral Landscape: Time, Space, and community in Late Shang China (ca. 1200–1045 B.C.). Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, 2000. Kennedy, George. Trans. On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Lear, Jonathan. Aristotle: The Desire to Understand. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Lee, Richard A. and Christopher P. Long. “Nous and Logos in Aristotle.” Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie. 54.3 (2007): 348–67. Liu, Yichun and Xiaoye You. “Reading the Heavenly Mandate: Dong Zhongshu’s Rhetoric of the Way (Dao).” Ancient Non-Greek Rhetorics. Eds. Carol S. Lipson and Roberta A. Binkley. Anderson, SC: Parlor Press, 2009. 153–75. Lloyd, G. E. R. Adversaries and Authorities: Investigations into Ancient Greek and Chinese Science. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ———. Aristotelian Explorations. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Long, Christopher P. Aristotle on the Nature of Truth. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. ———. “Aristotle’s Phenomenology of Form.” Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy. 11.2 (2008): 435–48. ———. “The Duplicity of Beginning: Schürmann, Aristotle and the Origins of Metaphysics.” The Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal. 29.2 (2008): 145–59. ———. “My Responses and the Q and A.” The 11th Annual Ancient Philosophy Society Conference, Sundance, UT. March 4, 2011. Response. May 2, 2011. Available online at www.personal.psu.edu/cpl2/blogs/cplportfolio/APS%20Book%20Panel%20Long%20 Response.mp3 (accessed June 15, 2014). Lyon, Arabella. “Confucian Silence and Remonstration: A Basis for Deliberation?” Rhetoric before and beyond the Greeks. Eds. Carol S. Lipson and Roberta A. Binkley. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2004. 131–45. Norris, Christopher. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice. New York: Methuen, 1982. Nussbaum, Martha C. The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pellegrin, Pierre. “Aristotle.” Greek Thought: A Guide to Classical Knowledge. Eds. Jacques Brunschwig and Geoffrey E. R. Lloyd. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 2000. 554–75. Puett, Michael. “Humans and Gods: The Theme of Self-Divinization in Early China and Early Greece. Early China / Ancient Greece: Thinking through Comparisons. Eds. Steven Shankman and Stephen W. Durrant. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002. 55–74. Qian, Mu. （錢穆）Lun yu xin jie. 《論語新解》Taipei Shi: Lian jing, 1994. Sim, May. Remastering Morals with Aristotle and Confucius. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Stichler, Richard N. “Interpreting the Zhongyong: Was Confucius a Sophist or an Aristotelian?” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy. 3.2 (2004): 235–51. Stone, Mark A. “Aristotle.” Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 176: Ancient Greek Authors. Ed. Ward W. Briggs. Detroit: A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book Gale Research, 1997. 55–76. Tinerney, Richard. Review of Aristotle’s Theory of Language and Meaning, by Deborah K. W. Modrak. The Journal of Philosophy. 99.4 (2002): 203–09. Tu, Weiming (杜維明). Centrality and Commonality: An Essay on Chung-Yung. Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press, 1976. Warnick, Barbara. “Judgment, Probability, and Aristotle’s Rhetoric.” Quarterly Journal of Speech. 9 (1989): 299–311. Yu, Jiyuan. The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2007.

4

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I have discussed that the concepts of form-in-the-matter and of tiandao-the-wayof-cosmos in rendao-the-way-of-people show Aristotle’s and Confucius’ refusal to disbelieve even though what is believed can never be grasped in its totality. In this chapter, I will discuss the ideas of epieikeia, kairos, ren, and yi to show Confucius’ and Aristotle’s refusal to deny humanity the possibility of knowing, even though what is not denied entails human vulnerability. Both aspects of their thinking reflect the similarities and differences between the conceptualization and practice of their rhetorical thinking. Here I turn to the enthymeme to examine how their rhetorical reasoning and thinking compare and contrast, focusing on how the sophistical aspect of Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking is intertwined with the formal and the cosmic aspect of it. To see the similarities and differences between Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical reasoning, one must challenge, once again, stereotypes of Aristotle having only linear logic and Confucius, only circular thinking. Let us recall what we have discussed so far more specifically and then move onwards from there. To Aristotle, we make sense of things or deem things reasonable by understanding, discursively as well as nondiscursively, the truths or forms enmattered in things. This is why to him “sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter” (On the Soul 424a19). Accepting things as reasonable is reasoning, and therefore reasoning to Aristotle is the ability to separate, in our thinking, form and matter. In the Rhetoric, Aristotle states that persuasive reasoning or logos is effected in two ways: deductive enthymemes or inductive examples (1356b7–8), but he describes only the enthymeme as “the substance of rhetorical persuasion1” (1354a15) and “the orators’ proper mode of persuasion” (1354b20). Are inductive examples not the substance of rhetoric? I will discuss the complex relation between enthymemes and examples or what David Schaberg describes as Aristotle’s conflation of the two in rhetoric. I will then compare and contrast Aristotle’s and Confucius’ enthymematic thinking. But first it is helpful to recall that substance has three meanings of “form, matter, and the complex of both” (Aristotle On the Soul 414a15) because to Aristotle the enthymeme is the substance of rhetoric in all three of these senses. I now turn first to the idea of the enthymeme as enmattered form.

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Enthymemes and syllogisms Aristotle describes the enthymeme as “a rhetorical syllogism” (1355b5), and syllogism can be illustrated as follows: M=P (All humans are mortal.); S=M (S is a human.); and S=P (S is mortal). How do syllogisms and enthymemes relate and how do they differ? Jonathan Barnes suggests that the form of the argument “will give the logical part of rhetoric a character and an interest of its own” (“Rhetoric” 271). In depicting the enthymematic form as giving rhetoric its character and interest of its own, Barns seems to suggest that the difference between enthymematic and syllogistic thinking goes beyond the superficial. At first, however, the difference between syllogisms and enthymemes may seem to be merely in their lengths. Aristotle himself explains the enthymeme as a truncated syllogism because the rhetorical “audience of untrained thinkers” cannot follow syllogistic reasoning “owing to [its] length” (1357a12). Aristotle states further, the enthymeme must consist of few propositions, fewer often than those which make up the categorical syllogism. For if any of these propositions is a familiar fact, there is no need even to mention it; the hearer adds it himself. (1367a17–18) In discussing the enthymeme in Book III of the Rhetoric, Aristotle reiterates this idea (1395b25–26), providing support for the reading of the enthymeme as an abbreviated syllogism. In addition, the reading of the difference between syllogisms and enthymemes as merely in their length leads to a static view of the rhetorical audience. Even Barns describes the relation between the orator and the audience as quite nonreciprocal: I first look up a location appropriate to my desired conclusion and use it to discover premises that would be useful. Then I consult the relevant inventory of opinions to see if those premises are found there. If they are, I have my argument. (261) Again, however, this passive view of the audience is also partly supported by Aristotle’s own words and thus by those scholars who argue that “rhetoric consists of continuous discourse” (Warnick “Judgment” 305). Aristotle states, orators are “to hunt down the maxims required” and “to guess the subjects on which his hearers really hold views already, and what those views are, and then must express, as general truths, these same views on these same subjects” (Aristotle Rhetoric 1395b4, 9–12). Furthermore, Aristotle states, orators must have by them, before anything else, “a selection of arguments about questions that may arise and are suitable for [them] to handle” (1396b5–6). Christof Rapp puts it more directly: dialectic that deals with knowledge “proceeds by questioning and answering, while rhetoric for the most part proceeds in continuous form” (3 ¶ 3). The enthymeme, in this respect, is not dialogic in a true sense, and it moves from existing conclusions held by the orator to existing premises held by the audience.

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In other words, the invincible orators move one-directionally from their own conclusions to the premises accepted by the audience for the purpose of enabling the audience to see that, according to the audience’s own beliefs and reasoning, they must agree with the orators. In short, enthymematic thinking differs from syllogistic thinking only in length; the enthymeme is but a formula just like the syllogism; and neither generates new knowledge in action. There are reasons to believe this is only one dimension of Aristotle’s view of the enthymeme and, relatedly, of the rhetorical audience. A more complete reading, however, is crucial to comparative rhetorical studies and should be explored. For one thing, if what the orator argues for and what the audience already knows match, then perhaps indeed and as Barnes says above, “I have my argument”; however, what if they do not match? What if the orator and the audience appeal to different perspectives among the “inventory” of opinions? An orator’s audience is first and foremost to be engaged, then perhaps educated, and this is, I believe, a very important difference between enthymematic invention and syllogistic reasoning. As pointed out by Aristotle, rhetoric is necessary “where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided” (Rhetoric 1356a8)—“often contradict each other” (1402a34)—and consensus of different opinions is to be reached or invented. M. F. Burnyeat speaks more directly to the interpretation of the enthymeme merely as an abbreviated syllogism when he states, “a premise suppressed is still a premise of the argument. What we are interested in is … [that] few of them are invariable necessities” (110). In other words, a character-defining difference between the syllogism and the enthymeme is that the latter deals mostly with probable, provisional, or variable knowledge. A disadvantage of limiting Aristotle’s view of the orator-audience relationship to being merely continuous or linear can be seen quite readily in comparative studies, where minute details of presuppositions are often heightened. Contrasting Chinese and American perspectives in communication studies, for example, Lawrence Kincaid criticizes certain Western rhetorical theories as being “exclusively concerned with the straightforward use of logical analysis and means-ends goal attainment”; he concludes with a rhetorical question, “How can a logical syllogism function if the meaning of some of the statements are taken as irony or self-contradiction, [as Chinese rhetorical thinking can]?” (337) The answer, of course, is that logical syllogism may not be able to; however, the enthymeme may and the enthymeme, too, is another Western idea. My argument here is that even though the enthymeme as described by Aristotle is indeed a continuous and linear movement from the orator to the audience, it at the same time moves dialogically and therefore differs from the syllogism. Most of the time dealing with the “contingent” and using premises that are only “usually true” (1357a14–16, 1357a28–33), the rhetorical syllogism unfolds one-directionally but also resonates among multiple probable truths, thus reciprocating between the orator and the audience. Understood this way, Aristotle’s view of the enthymeme is similar to Confucius’ rhetorical thinking in important ways. In other words, to deepen our insights into similarities and differences between rhetorics of East and West, we need to attend to the complexities within each of them.

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If to Aristotle the enthymeme does not rely on premises that are “invariable necessities” most of the time, what are some characteristics of its more frequently used premises? Aristotle explains, “Enthymemes are based upon one or other of four kinds of alleged fact: (1) Probabilities, (2) Examples, (3) Infallible Signs, (4) Ordinary Signs” (Rhetoric 1402b13–14). The multiple kinds of facts are crucial to understanding the plurality that characterizes Aristotle’s rhetorical thinking and probable knowledge. First to note is that Aristotle does include the fact of the infallible kind or necessary signs (tekmeria), and that the enthymeme that draws upon this kind of fact is indeed one-directional, in fact and ultimately, the kind of one-directionality that is “involved in metaphysics” (Madden “Enthymeme” 372). This kind of enthymeme is basically syllogistic in that it leads to absolute conclusions. Aristotle lists a few examples in the Rhetoric. Fever is an infallible sign of illness, and lactation is an infallible sign that one just gave birth (1357a1–20). Even this use of the infallible sign relates to the thinking of Confucius even though he did not study the natural world scientifically. To Confucius, tian-the-cosmos does show signs. Are they infallible signs? One may say that they are not devoid of science as the West knows it2. To explain, I must digress just momentarily into Confucius’ teaching. Confucius says in the Analects, for example, “The phoenix is not showing itself and the river pattern is not emerging; I am probably finished!” 「 ( 鳳 鳥不至，河不出圖，吾已矣乎！」9.8). By phoenix and river patterns, Confucius is referring to two well-known events in ancient Chinese history. It is said that a phoenix appeared to Sage Yao (堯 circa 2000 BCE) and also to Ji Chang (1152–1056 BCE), the Marquis of Zhou who was posthumously named King Wen of Zhou by his son Ji Fa, as mentioned in Chapter Three. In both cases, the appearance of the phoenix was a sign that tian-the-cosmos bestowed a blessing on Yao and the Marquis, respectively. Regarding the river pattern, one interpretation is that it is from the Book of Changes (Yi Jing《易經》), whose first author is said to be Fu Xi (伏羲). Fu Xi, according to the Book of Changes, studied extensively the sun, the moon, the stars, and time. One day Fu Xi witnessed a dragon-horse leaping out of the Yellow River with a pattern on its back that resonated with the patterns and relations of the constellations he had observed. Fu Xi wrote down the pattern, which today is known as the eight gua (卦) or diagrams and it was the beginning of the Book of Changes, the book that helps to divine, or discover through divination, tianming-the-cosmic-pattern. I am fully aware that all of this can sound superstitious, but it is equally important, especially in cross-cultural studies, to remember that beliefs often appear superstitious to non-believers at first, yet things are not always what they first seem. In this case, as May Sim argues, Confucius’ practice of watching the signs “is not an arbitrary act” (89) and is directly related to how language, especially name, is used scientifically. Quoting other scholars on China, Sim recounts how studies have shown that to the ancient Chinese like Confucius, “nature and human society, inseparably, coexist in accord with the laws by which Heaven [tian-the-cosmos] exerts its control” (Yosida 73) and by which each founder of a new Chinese dynasty was expected to “correct the beginnings of years and months” (Yabuuti 95), precisely because “the regulation

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of the calendar was not just a matter of practical concern like agriculture but also [had] one of the far-ranging implications for the order of the state” (Lloyd 167). Human affairs and cosmic movement are connected, and the connection is not just in when we rest and work but also in how and why we do so. Sim explains that the sign and the calendar relate directly to the names or definitions of things, and that is why Confucius watches the signs and emphasizes the proper use of names (13.33). Sim argues, “The quest for definition and a sort of objectivity need not imply mathematical exactitude or claim to certainty, and the alternatives are not so dichotomous that a rejection of this exactitude and certainty must leave one with social conventionalism”; therefore, to Confucius “names are bound up with things even as they are bound up with custom and ritual” (87). “Things” as used by Sim refer to substances in all three meanings of that concept of “form, matter, and the complex of both,” and the signs of phoenix and dragon contain a higher level of certitude than mere names in relation to things. One may say that things are enmattered Forms, and names are enmattered Logos. We see once again the familiar thinking that reconciles the seeming opposites. Reading signs like this is learning to know tianming-the-cosmic-pattern, to know the infallible signs, like in the science of astronomy. Aristotle did something similar as well: “There is then something which is always moved with an unceasing motion, which is motion in a circle; and this is plain not in theory only but in fact. Therefore the first heavens must be eternal” (1072a21–23). Aristotle knew “in fact” because he observed natural phenomena. Therefore, this reasoning, direct and one directional, exists in both Aristotle and Confucius as part of their probable and enthymematic thinking. Besides infallible signs, there are three other kinds of premises that the enthymeme draws upon. As pointed out by Aristotle, they are examples, fallible signs, and probabilities. Drawing upon these premises, the enthymeme moves multi-directionally among different opinions and reciprocally between the orator and the audience. These premises are not necessarily or irrefutably true, and the enthymematic thinking based on these premises has its own character, requires closer examination, and is the focus of this chapter. Historically, one example of it can be the use of the Chinese calendar. As Ho Peng Yoke and F. Peer Linsowski note, Chinese emperors were watchful of those who “could have employed astronomers to interpret celestial events contrary to the interest of the existing dynasty” (120). Once different readings of the cosmic river pattern would engage each other, there emerged a movement of give and take, question and answer, demonstration and refutation—interactions among these readings. The lines of reasoning are less syllogistic and more enthymematic. The abbreviated syllogistic formula, as put by Burnyeat, is indeed still formula in essence but is also, at the same time, made quite different by premises of fallible signs, probabilities including maxims, and examples. Maxims, “the premises or conclusions of Enthymemes” (1394a22–27), are common beliefs concerning practical questions and courses of actions (1394a22–26). Maxims make enthymematic thinking quasi-syllogistic: the thinking “by which general propositions are applied to justify particular conclusions about individuals” (Toulmin 108); enthymematic conclusions “are almost but not quite universal” (Madden “Aristotle’s” 167); and enthymematic

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judgments are “supplied by the audience” (Zulick 115). Lloyd Bitzer elaborates: “The speaker draws the premises for his proof from propositions which members of his audience would supply if he were to proceed by question and answer, and the syllogisms produced in this way by speaker and audience are enthymemes” (“Aristotle’s” 408). The arrangement of question-and-answer reflects a rhetorical audience rather different from those who are simply manipulated; just as important, the enthymeme is now based on premises that are only probably true most of the time. Even though these enthymematic premises are not as exact as syllogistic ones, they are just as indispensable because the dynamic phenomenal reality is still enmattered with stability. This point can be seen in the concept of koina in the Rhetoric. The word koina means commons and has the connotation of the universals in the sense that they are characteristics of all rhetorical arguments. Accordingly, Grimaldi translates koina as “the common and basic requisites postulated with respect to any subject in order that it may become an object of the rhetorical techne” (38). In other words, they are the primary criteria for arguments to be of the rhetorical kind and to differ from the scientific and philosophical kinds. Even though Grimaldi’s translation differs from the popular translation of koina, which does not differentiate koina from topoi or common topics, Kennedy observes, too, that “Aristotle in general separates koina from topoi” (On Rhetoric 50), requisites, and common topics. I agree with them and think it is helpful to observe the difference between the two. One of the requisites or koinos is the rhetorical premises and conclusions that concern themselves with the greater and smaller. Aristotle devotes one chapter (I.7) to this matter in the Rhetoric, discussing how to think through issues such as “greater good” (1364a1), “more guilty4” (1364a20), “greater pleasure,” and “more unmixed with pain” (1364b). As one of the requisites for rhetorical subject matter—that is, to qualify to be suitable material for deliberative, judicial, and ceremonial discourses—the koinos of greater and smaller highlights how and why enthymematic or rhetorical thinking accepts and focuses on variations of degree and nuances of difference. It shows how enthymematic reasoning focuses on the space between dichotomized good and bad, innocence and guilt, great and small, pleasure and pain, between actuality and potentiality where “each substance is involved in constant and eternal motion” (McKeon “Introduction” xxi). Although the enthymeme evolves from the syllogism, its linearity yields, and its level of tolerance for uncertainty and equivocation deepens—giving rhetorical thinking its character. Embracing enmattered substances, in other words, enthymematic thinking allows people to deal more readily with the complex human reality of extents of truth and degrees of falsity, happenings permeating human activities. The validity as well as the ubiquity of this enthymematic and probable thinking is argued compellingly by Steven Toulmin in The Uses of Argument, where Toulmin refers to the thinking as practical argument and “ways of inquiry” (257). Significantly, Toulmin’s argument frequently refers to the science of astronomy. One more issue regarding the relation between enthymemes and syllogisms should be addressed here. Syllogism is more clearly deductive than enthymeme,

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which is inductive at times. David Schaberg describes this as “Aristotle’s tendency to ‘conflate’ sign and paradeigma” or example, arguing that “The true difference between sign and paradeigma lies in Aristotle’s assumption that the latter involves reasoning from historical precedents … [and] universal premises only in retrospect” (“Logic” 162). Schaberg’s explanation of sign and example helps to clarify that induction retrospectively produces universal premises for the enthymeme but also reinforces “Aristotle’s tendency to ‘conflate’” the two modes of reasoning. Let me explain this aspect of enthymematic thinking further. Overall, dealing with both necessity (infallible signs) and contingency, although mainly the latter, enthymematic thinking is both synchronic, non-discursive, and intuitive—connecting to the vision necessary for inventing consensus in context— and diachronic, discursive, and socio-cultural—providing the flexibility necessary for interpreting visions that are particular, historical, but “never clearly fallacious” (Madden “Aristotle’s” 169). This fusion of the two entails that enthymematic thinking is both inductive and deductive. This is an important clarification for comparative studies because Western thinking has been generalized as linear and Asian thinking, circular. As a clear instance of Western inferential and rational reasoning, the enthymeme’s complex relation with induction can help shed light on the complex relation between different modes of thinking across cultures. How does enthymematic thinking overlap with induction? We see in Chapter Three that Lee and Long address this same question in discussing the interrelatedness, which they describe as the “two-facedness,” of both nous and logos. Nous is epagōgē or induction, they point out, but could not function without discursive and deductive logos; the two are intertwined in Aristotle’s thinking. More specifically in the Rhetoric, Aristotle states that, as seen above, one of the four sources of the enthymematic thinking is examples and his Topos number 10 “is based on induction” (Rhetoric 1398a32–1398b18); both embed inductive thinking into deductive enthymematic reasoning. In addition, as Sally Raphael argues, eikos, probable thinking, is here itself inductive because Aristotle defines probability as “bear[ing] the same relation to that in respect of which it is probable as the universal bears to the particular” (1357a39–40). That is, the probable instances lead to universal features of instances of the same kind, and this is induction. Raphael argues further, in fact, that “a syllogism from both probabilities and signs is rarely a deductive argument” given that both can be arguments from particular to particular (160–61), which is again Aristotle’s definition of induction or examples in the Rhetoric (1402b17). Enthymematic thinking, therefore, can move dialogically or spatially among different particulars as well as linearly or one-directionally from universal principles to particulars, from beginning to end, or from orator to audience. Similarly, Larry Arnhart explains, Aristotle’s argument based on the fallible sign that “the fact that Socrates was wise and just is a sign that the wise are just” is “an argument through example transformed into an enthymeme, for it reasons from the particular to the general” (1357b11–12). Arnhart concludes by stating, “Here as well as elsewhere in the Rhetoric—and in the logical treatises— Aristotle assumes that examples can be stated as enthymemes just as induction can be stated syllogistically” (46). Even though Burnyeat challenges this line of

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interpretation, especially Raphael’s relating induction to probable thinking by arguing that “Aristotle never associates epagōgē [induction] with probability” (104), it is important to remember that epagōgē differs from examples just as sullogismos differs from the enthymeme in important ways. That is, the difference between epagōgē and probability does not transfer automatically and completely to that between examples and probability. Just as the enthymeme moves from probable premises to probable conclusions while the syllogism moves from necessary premises to necessary conclusions, the example moves from particular to particular while epagoge moves from particular to universal. Moving from particular to particular clearly requires spatial, connecting, or deductive movement. Aristotle’s example of reasoning from that fallible sign that Arnhart quotes above can be helpful here: Socrates is wise; Socrates is just; the wise are just. Even though the movement ostensibly moves deductively (M=S; M=P; S=P), as Arnhart points out correctly, the universal or the middle term is at the same time still a particular in the sense that it is a probable universal, not truly universal. Given that a syllogism moves from the major premise that is universal to a minor premise that is individual5, the middle term, Socrates, in the enthymeme is also quite different in that it is both individual (Socrates as Socrates) and universal (Socrates as a member of the category human beings). As a result, this signinduced enthymeme shows an argument that moves from a particular universal to a universal particular. This movement shows how enthymemes, based on fallible signs and probabilities as seen in this enthymeme, move from particulars of sorts to other particulars of sorts, thus being inductive and deductive at the same time. In fact, and even with the most rigorous first-figure syllogistic form, a probable or not categorical premise still makes the reasoning, in Toulmin’s word, only quasisyllogistic. For example, all green apples I have tasted are tart; this is a green apple; this green apple is probably tart. The modifier “I have tasted” makes “all green apples” not truly a middle term and thus makes the conclusion necessarily probable and the reasoning, quasi-syllogistic. I think that enthymemes’ complex relation with induction is one of the most important reasons Aristotle switches terminologies from syllogism and epagoge in logic to enthymeme and example in rhetoric. The different premises lead to different characteristics of reasoning, characteristics that include but also go beyond the lengths of the reasoning or the number of premises. In being at once deductive and inductive, Aristotle’s probable, enthymematic, and rhetorical thinking involves both the demonstrative and the analogical—something, as I will discuss in the second part of this chapter, that resonates profoundly with Confucius’ thinking. Finally, and most crucial to this discussion, is that through it all, “Truth then may be found in signs whatever their kind” (Prior Analytics 70a38), despite their degree of fallibility. Again, truths to Aristotle take change into consideration and are therefore more complex than being always a matter of the simply unambiguous either-or. Given this, enthymematic and rhetorical thinking is indispensably useful in the human search for the true precisely because it helps human communities to move through the process of the “degree of certainty” (Mudd 410). It is a dynamic, recursive, and relational process, a process that is seen clearly today, for

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example, in American classrooms where Lloyd Bitzer guides students to engage “the enthymematic relation between one’s own ideas and the assumptions held by one’s audience” (“Teaching” 39) so as “to question their own positions” (40); where John Gage helps students undergo topical invention of answers to questions, not merely “finding topoi to confirm an already determined conclusion” but also to learn “when to make up and change their own minds” (158); and where Janice Lauer provides students with strategies to inquire into “the social, political, economic, racial and gender factors that permeate” (4) their life experiences of “loving, encountering, learning, wondering, and fearing” so as to invent new probable knowledge (3). This is very much a legacy of the Aristotelian and Western rhetoric, but it is also both similar to and different from Confucius’ rhetoric. To explain further, I turn next to two characteristics of enthymematic thinking as seen in Aristotle’ Rhetoric.

Epieikeia and kairos in Aristotle’s Rhetoric The strictly logical, linear, and dualistic thinking of orator-to-audience in the West is often said to be associated with Aristotle, but what should also be discussed is that the quasi-logical, dialogic, and enthymematic thinking of orator-withaudience is also associated with Aristotle. Both kinds of logical thinking operate in Aristotle’s rhetorical thinking and can be seen in two key rhetorical concepts: epiekeia and kairos. Epieikeia or equity in Aristotle Aristotle describes epieikeia or equity as a kind of natural justice or principle that “makes up for the defects of a community’s written code of law,” “the sort of justice which goes beyond the written law … owing to the endless possible cases presented” (Rhetoric 1374a24–33) in life. Even though Aristotle discusses epieikeia in his works on ethics, it is in the Rhetoric that he provides the most complete discussion of it (Hamburger Morals 99), a fact indicative of the importance of equity to enthymematic thinking and probable knowledge. I traced the twofold nature of rhetorical thinking in general in Chapter One and emphasized the connection between rhetorical knowledge and truth in Chapter Three. Here I continue this theme and discuss the twofold nature of rhetorical knowledge but focus on epieikeia. William Grimaldi provides a nuanced reading of this twofold characteristic of rhetorical knowledge. He explains the dialectical aspect of Aristotle’s concept of rhetorical discourse as formal or methodological: “We are given a method which is applicable to all subject-matter to construct, or criticize, discourse in its inferential form” (49). Pointing to the inclusion of infallible signs as a type of premise for enthymemes, Grimaldi argues that the enthymeme brings together “the field of probable and the certain knowledge” (106) and is “sometimes like the scientific syllogism” (86). In a characteristically Aristotelian move, however, Grimaldi then turns to the other side of Aristotle’s view of rhetoric: it is not merely formal, and its subject matters are twofold. In other words, while emphasizing that probability itself is “rooted in the real order” (110), Grimaldi points out also that

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to Aristotle “enthymemes based upon Probabilities are those which argue from what is, or is supposed to be, usually true” (Rhetoric 1402b15). In doing so, Grimaldi highlights Aristotle’s juxtaposition of true and supposedly true. Similarly, while clearly taking Aristotle’s enthymeme as a methodology, “a mode of inference” (50), Grimaldi also discusses extensively the dynamic and probable characteristic of enthymematic thinking in the following manner: Eikos, or the probable, possesses a note of stability and permanence. This stability is described well when Aristotle makes eikos a kind of universal with respect to individual probabilities (A2.57 [i.e., 1357b1]). While this stability is not inherently necessary yet it is not subjective and extrinsic. It is intrinsic and objective since it is grounded in reality. This relative intrinsic necessity [emphasis mine] is aptly described in … Metaphysics 1027a20–21 [where Aristotle] states that with respect to such a stabilized contingent [emphasis mine] there can be knowledge: e.g., all episteme is of that which is always or of that which is for the most part. (107) The juxtaposition of relative necessity, dynamic stability, always and for the most part is consistent with what we have seen: rhetorical subject matters are enmattered necessity, stability, or permanence. This theme continues through Grimaldi’s study. The enthymeme to Aristotle, Grimaldi points out, incorporates “ethos as well as reason” (148), the latter of which Grimaldi substitutes once with nous (147), the act of intuitive grasping or understanding. Furthermore, “rhetoric is an activity of the intellect working together with the appetitive elements as man moves towards a judgment (krisis)” (26), as described below: Reason starts from an assumed or desired telos and considers the means necessary to achieve it through deliberation. This activity terminates at the first means necessary and there it stops since neither deliberation nor reason can give the end. Something else must come in to initiate this final action. … When reason has done its work then an evaluation (krisis) and a choice must be made. Deliberate choice, proairesis, must step in (1113a2–14). This is the appetitive part of the psyche, “orexis assenting to the result of deliberation” or, as Aristotle explains it (1113a15−b2; see also 1111b5ff), “deliberate desire of things in our power.” (146) The completion of deliberation entails both the rational and the appetitive parts of the human soul; it involves both necessity and choice; and it is both dynamic and stable. This view of the fundamental human need to deliberate underlines a reason Aristotle develops his concept of epieikeia most fully in his Rhetoric: the relational characteristic of Aristotle’s view of rhetoric. Aristotle explains epieikeia as follows: Equity bids us be merciful to the weakness of human nature; to think less about the laws than about the man who framed them, and less about what he

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Rhetorical reasoning said than about what he meant; not to consider the actions of the accused so much as his intentions, nor this or that detail so much as the whole story; to ask not what a man is now but what he has always or usually been. (Rhetoric 1374b10–15)

Max Hamburger explains that ethics, politics, and rhetoric are inseparable to Aristotle: “Ethics is only a branch of political art and rhetoric is only a science auxiliary to politics and ethics” (“Aristotle” 241). While students of Aristotelian ethics, politics, and rhetoric may disagree regarding the importance of the three in relation to each other6, they are likely to agree that they all connect the rational and the emotional and therefore are all indispensable to the well-being of human communities. In Aristotle’s own words, justice is a virtue, “alone of the excellences that is thought to be another’s good” (Nicomachean Ethics 1130a3–4) and “justice is political; for the just is the order of political community, but justice is the discernment of what is just” (Politics 1253a37–39 trans. Long Aristotle 2467). In other words, epieikeia is developed most fully in the Rhetoric because enthymematic thinking brings together the self, the other, the community, and knowledge, and this is especially the case in judicial rhetoric that deals with the other in the form of justice. Aristotle states, “man is a political creature and one whose nature is to live with others. … [T]he happy man needs friends” (Nicomachean Ethics 1069b18–21). Pointing to the Nicomachean Ethics where Aristotle states that “the truest form of justice is thought to be a friendly quality” (1155828), Hamburger argues that “this truest form of justice is the equivalent to epieikeia, equity” (Morals 119), which is the means to the kind of justice that is “true” (104), on the one hand, and, on the other hand, “essentially something human” (Nicomachean Ethics 1137a30). Hamburger contends that the close connection between justice and philia or friendship is what Aristotle means when he states the following: “the demands of justice … seem to increase with the intensity of the friendship, which implies that friendship and justice exist between the same persons and have an equal extension” (Nicomachean Ethics 1159b25–1160a8). True justice, in other words, is enmattered in “social sympathy or civic friendship” (Hamburger “Aristotle” 241), in the willingness to “be merciful to the weakness of human nature,” and in philia or ren in the vocabulary of Confucius, as shall be discussed below. Both epieikeia in Aristotle and ren in Confucius refer to ultimate truth and justice enmattered in a human ideal or principle. As such, they both characterize the enthymematic premises and products that are at once rational and appetitive, steadfast and flexible, constant and dynamic. In the Categories and Experience, John P. Anton discusses how, according to Aristotle, epieikeia as an ideal or principle requires, as well as helps to effect, enthymematic thinking. Aristotle states, The same thing, then, is just and equitable, and while both are good the equitable is superior. What creates the problem is that the equitable is just, but not the legally just but a correction of legal justice. The reason is that all law is universal but about some things it is not possible to make a universal statement which will be correct … The error is not in the law nor in the legislator

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but in the nature of the thing, since the matter of practical affairs is of this kind from the start. (Nicomachean Ethics 1376b9–20). Focusing on this corrective function of epieikeia, Anton states, a man who is epieikēs is … primarily a man of virtue who complies with rather than works against the law. The superior justice he effects is not superior to the law within whose jurisdiction the equitable person acts, but superior only to the shortcomings due to the unexceptional application of generality. (249) In other words, the superiority belongs neither exclusively to the universal nor exclusively to the individual, but rather the two are intertwined. Anton concludes that such probable or practical knowledge is determined not merely by the availability of the major (the universal) and minor (violation of the universal) premises, i.e., the general law and the particular act, but the series of deliberations he himself will introduce to establish the quality of the connection that has allegedly been obtained between law and act. (253) To be equitable, we cannot simply match a ready-made enthymematic premise from the inventory of premises with what orators already believe and mechanically push it through the enthymematic form and onto their audience. The very premise itself is too general not to be “corrected” or adjusted. This is why an education in the enthymeme involves more than merely selecting and matching premises; it entails also probable reasoning if the decision or knowledge produced through enthymematic thinking is to be useful for “acts to be done” (Nicomachean Ethics 1144a31–32). Epieikeia as a characteristic of enthymematic thinking also has heuristic value in the classroom. Students of rhetoric can conceptualize the syllogistic, the enthymematic, the probable, but the concept of equity helps them see rhetorical invention in the bigger picture of the process and in a rather concrete way. Many examples students use show such a grasp of the concept, for instance, a police officer deciding whether to ticket a speeder en route to an emergency room with her grandfather having a heart attack in the back of the car. The more examples students give to illustrate epieikeia, the more they understand enthymematic reasoning with all its complexities. They learn to not try to separate its inseparable form and the matter, and they learn the enmattered universals and truths through practicing how to infer judgments and decisions that are particular and probable, knowledge that is creative but only provisional. Kairos or appropriateness in Aristotle Another way to say that the truest justice is equivalent to epieikeia or equity is, in James Kinneavy’s words, that justice exists but is “decided by circumstances:

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justice was kairos”: “giving to each according to merit” (“Kairos” 214). Kairos is another concept that characterizes enthymematic thinking. Kinneavy explains kairos as “the dominating concept” in classical rhetoric, defines it as “the right or opportune time to do something, or right measure in doing something,” and he illustrates it using examples from Aristotle such as “the righteous anger justified in a war situation would be excessive and improper in a family dispute: the kairos would not be right” (211). Importantly, of course, my focus here is that the right kairos makes circumstances constitutive of probable knowledge and judgment, uniting reason and circumstances in rhetorical inquiries. Interestingly, as Kinneavy points out, it takes at least two words in English, “reason” and “occasion,” to translate the Greek word poia (“Kairos in” 70), potentially a possible difference between Greek-speaking and English-speaking cultures. Reason and occasion are one to the Greek because what is reasonable or right for one situation is not necessarily so for another. Being principled about what is right sometimes requires, paradoxically, being flexible according to the circumstances. As seen above, while the rational dimension of Aristotle’s view of rhetoric is “partly like dialectic” (1356a11) and while probability is not “anything whatever” (1357a36), rhetoric to Aristotle is clearly also “partly like Sophistical reasoning” (1356a11). When probable knowledge is said to be “not inherently necessary” and when epieikeia allows adjustments of the law according to circumstances, there is no question that the rhetorical project takes place in time and has a dimension that is human and earthly. Sally Raphael’s analysis of Aristotle’s view of eikos expresses this point well. Contrasting Aristotle’s words that “A probability … bears the same relation to that in respect of which it is probable as the universal bears to the particular” (Rhetoric 1357b28–39) with his explanation of eikos as “a reputable proposition” (Prior Analytics 70a4), Raphael interprets Aristotle’s conception of eikos in the Rhetoric as “a general statement which is usually true and which probabilifies a particular statement” (159). Probable knowledge, as a major objective of rhetorical invention, is in fact a probabilifying process in time, through which general probable statements including some maxims are enthymemized into particular ones. Corresponding to form and tianming-thecosmic-order, therefore, kairos is a fundamental characteristic of discoursing, probabilifying knowledge, and enthymemizing judgment in time. Many find it disturbing that Aristotle sometimes recommends somewhat disquieting means of persuasion. The concern is understandable; in fact, Aristotle himself seems to be ambivalent about the practice. On the one hand, he is up-front about rhetoric being partly like sophistical reasoning, announcing it unambiguously. On the other hand, he uncharacteristically shows little interest in theorizing this aspect of the art of rhetoric, the art that according to him has a definite theoretical dimension, as I have tried to point out all along. Robert Wardy, already referred to in the Introduction, finds it “intensely problematic” as well as “profoundly important” that while Aristotle insists rhetoric is about finding the “facts” (1355a33), he clearly also “subordinates truth to victory” (Birth 138). Other scholars speculate that the reason for this inconsistency in Aristotle is that although unbecoming of the dialecticians, “bad means are justified by their advancement of good ends”

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(Arnhart 11) to Aristotle “due to the badness of the audience” (Rapp 4.5 ¶1). Even though I have interpreted Sally Raphael’s findings as evidence for the difference between syllogisms and enthymemes and the interrelation between deductive and inductive rhetorical thinking, Raphael herself explains the connection as confusion on Aristotle’s part (160, 161, 166), confusion that gives rise to the purportedly contradictory commitments to finding the truth and using the invalid syllogistic form. Raphael points to two examples for her argument: “the fact that Socrates was wise and just is a sign that the wise are just” (Rhetoric 1357b13) and “Lovers are useful to their countries, since the love of Harmodius and Aristogeiton caused the downfall of the tyrant Hipparchus” (1401b10–12). Raphael argues that these signs are both fallible but Aristotle uses the first as helpful and treats the second as fallacious. Tracing a certain “vagueness” in the Rhetoric, Raphael argues that the inconsistency results from Aristotle’s eagerness to disagree with Plato (157), an eagerness seen in his rash comparison of the enthymeme with the syllogism (1356b1–4). Raphael concludes that orators, unlike dialecticians, “are not interested in discovering the truth” (164) and that they treat fallible signs as they please because to Aristotle rhetorical invention is committed to the devices, not the truth. I have to say that these conclusions are based on the somewhat reductive assumption that dialectic and rhetoric are mutually exclusive. But first, Raphael should be applauded for examining the seeming contradiction—an important aspect of the Rhetoric that deserves serious attention. In fact, more people may appreciate and study Aristotle’s, and for that matter Confucius’, rhetorical thinking if so many of their students do not look the other way every time a seeming inconsistency like this one in Aristotle’s Rhetoric arises. Nevertheless, the dichotomized presuppositions of Raphael’s argument should be examined critically. In particular, her conclusion that rhetoric is not interested in discovering the truth and that rhetoricians can do what they please reveals a superficial reading of the sophistic rhetoric in general and the Aristotelian sophistical side of rhetoric in particular. Aristotle’s view of rhetoric is complex because it is definitely sophistic but not entirely so. Ultimately, Raphael’s understanding of Aristotle’s view of rhetoric excludes the hylomorphic dimension of Aristotle’s thinking in general. As I discussed in Chapter Three, probable knowledge to Aristotle is not severed from the true; discursive practices are integral to human inquiries of all kinds; and, therefore, rhetoricians cannot do what they please. Just because rhetoricians do not inquire in exactly the same way philosophers do does not mean they inquire in an exactly opposite way. Aristotle should be given the benefit of the doubt that he means, rather than misses, the “inconsistency,” for Aristotle repeatedly states that rhetoric exists because of tensions among differences, including opposites. I have discussed the conflation of modes of inference above, but the conflation of different views, too, is rooted in Aristotle’s openness to using fallible signs and probabilities as enthymematic premises, rooted, as Aristotle is clearly and deeply aware, in the fundamentally hylomorphic tensions. As put by M. F. Burnyeat, Aristotle’s doctrine of the enthymeme embodies the claim that the clash of opposing arguments in deliberative and forensic gatherings is a positive

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Rhetorical reasoning expression of human reasonableness in a world where issues are complex and deciding them is difficult, because there really is something to be said on either side. (91)

Burnyeat illustrates this point and states, “‘If the sky is clouded over, it is likely to rain’ and ‘if the barometer is high, it is likely not to rain’ do not contradict each other” (103). He argues that seemingly opposing statements like these are unavoidable in life and they are invaluable because most of our practical decisions and actions are enthymemized from premises similar to these. Like justice, therefore, truth in the realm of the contingent is dealt with mostly at probable and kairic levels. To Aristotle, rhetorical activities take place in the realm of the “both/and” much more than that of the “either/or”; that is, victories and truths, the sophistical and the philosophical are far from being mutually exclusive or dualistically dealt with. It is in this sense that Grimaldi concludes his study of the Rhetoric by stating that to Aristotle “rhetoric is not philosophy nor is it a mere technical game” (151); rather, it is the use of language that brings together knowledge and understanding. Like epieikeia, kairos is rooted in the real order and at the same time deals with changes in time, a very distinct twofold theme in both Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking. Let us look at an example. To Aristotle, the valid form and sound premises are not all there is to enthymematic thinking. A third dimension is its plausibility. As put by Aristotle, “Speeches that rely on examples are as persuasive as the other kind, but those which rely on Enthymemes excite the louder applause” (1356b23–24). This plausibility is exemplified by the following passage from the Rhetoric about Homer’s use of a rhetorical device to create illusions, giving the passage more literariness and enhancing its plausibility: Moreover, things look better merely by being divided into their parts, since they then seem to surpass a greater number of things than before. Hence Homer says that Meleager was roused to battle by the thought of All horrors that light on a folk whose city is ta’en of their foes, When they slaughter the men, when the burg is wasted with ravening flame, When strangers are haling young children to thralldom, [fair women to shame]. (1365a10–15) In this passage, Aristotle illustrates how to develop the content for deliberative speeches by the use of multiple when-clauses to create delusions about the fact or the truth. Wardy finds this device no better than “the merest subterfuge, as if one were to console an infant disappointed with a ten-pence piece by exchanging it for ten pennies”: both “trade on … the childish delusion about the coins, the common cognitive defect which fools us into automatically correlating having more parts with an increase in magnitude” (128). Interestingly, the passage is taken from Aristotle’s explanation of the koinos of greater and smaller (I.7), the

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requisite that should be met for the argument to be rhetorical. This means that even though in focusing on the absolute and the immutable, one may find the value of a dime the same as that of ten pennies, in the realm of the mutable or the human, rhetorical knowledge is invented and reinvented in every minute it takes the rhetorician to enumerate every penny or every detail that makes up the sum. In the classroom, for example, when knowledge and reasoning are pursued in a monotone or presented with rhetorical flare of adjusted pace, pulsation, and pitch, the process as well as the quantity shapes the total experience with the knowledge and the reasoning, often for both instructors and students, precisely because it all happens in time. Knowledge and devices shape each other in rhetorical activities. This kind of rhetorically tinted knowledge is probable, hovering between absolute certainty and absolute arbitrariness, the in-between situation that calls for rhetoric. The rhetorical spectacle therefore plays an irreplaceable and constitutive role in inventing probable knowledge through human deliberation. That it can be abused is very true but, as said by Aristotle, so can “all good things except virtue” and especially “things that are most useful” (1355b4–5) in the realm of enmattered truths and ensouled humans. It is not just orators but also the audiences who are ensouled. This kairic characteristic of enthymematic thinking entails that the rhetorical audience—or the judge as referred to by Aristotle (but also the one in deliberative discourse)—has a stake in the situation and thus genuinely participates in the decision-making process. This ensouled audience can participate in a substantive way. It is true that Aristotle generalizes the rhetorical audience as those whom “one cannot instruct” (1355a27) and who are “untrained thinkers” (1357a12). Generalizations like these give rise to arguments that bad means are justified due to the badness of the audience and the goodness of the end. It has also been argued that probabilities and fallible signs are merely arguments that boost the orator’s thesis and are already accepted by the audience (Smith 8.1 ¶ 2; Rapp 6.3 ¶1). Examining the omission of the virtue of self-love in the Rhetoric, Irwin argues similarly that Aristotle does not discuss self-love in the Rhetoric because it requires “the sort of reflection we cannot reasonably expect from the audiences that an orator addresses” (Irwin 160). However, it is one thing to say that some audiences cannot be instructed, that many do not have training in abstract thinking, and that most have no time to reflect; it is another to assume they cannot move towards the true. To Aristotle, not only are all human beings ensouled but the actuality of the soul or truths takes place kairically in time, in the world, that is, through where and when the audience is. “Things that are true and things that are just,” states Aristotle in the Rhetoric, “have a natural tendency to prevail over their opposites” (1355a21); “men have a sufficient natural instinct for what is true, and usually do arrive at the truth” (1355a15); and one is “not to avoid uttering maxims that contradict such sayings as have become public property” (1395a19–20). Therefore, the argument that the “badness” of a rhetorical audience requires “badness” of rhetorical means is based on a narrow reading of the kairic or rhetorical situation and therefore cannot explain Aristotle’s faith in ensouled human beings, rhetorical audience included. Far from being a sign of confusion or his paying lip service to Plato, this

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faith in the audience is consistent with Aristotle’s insight that, for example, even “self-interest is politically sublimated and transformed into a social precondition of human excellence” (Halliwell 183). Rhetoric is about transformation; being imperfect, ignorant, or self-interested is being human, being in the transformative process, and being connected by nature to the goal of living good lives. One thing all this does not mean is that they are not ensouled. Trained thinking and instructions may separate the orator and the audience in important ways but only partially. They are also connected by the fact that they are both ensouled. The argument that the “goodness of the end” justifies the means also reveals a static, unkairic, view of the rhetorical situation; it assumes that the orator, from the outset, both knows and determines the good end for a rhetorical situation. Rhetorical deliberations, however, truly happen in time; therefore, the orator does not determine single-handedly what the good is for the public. The orator determines and decides kairically through the rhetorical process and with the audience. Aristotle describes the rhetorical situation as those particular moments in time that “seem to present us with alternative possibilities” (1357a5): 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. (1357a25–27) Aristotle cannot make clearer the kairic nature of rhetorical activities in general and rhetorical invention in particular. The outcome of the rhetorical process is not predetermined by any party alone, because most of the time the rhetorical process does not start until it is clear to the parties involved that they collectively are in a quandary or standstill and that a consensual solution is not only necessary but also absent. As a result, all parties need to be willing to explore and to be deferent to others as the potential consensus emerges from the deliberative process. Without the need for deliberation, there is no rhetoric, and most of the time the need is real for the orator as well as for the audience. In the words of Nola Heidlebaugh, to Aristotle “probability, or the forceful appearance of truth, is created out of, not prior to, the situation in which the rhetor finds himself” (89). Discussing rhetorical topoi, Heidlebaugh states, If rhetoric is to be directed, in its final cause, toward transformation of a situation from an unclear to a clear one, to whom is the situation unclear at the outset? It may be easy to read Aristotle’s Rhetoric as a treatise on manipulating the perceptions of listeners, but it is equally easy to read it as directed toward remedying a lack of clarity in the rhetor: the topics of invention exist, of course, to meet the rhetor’s need for discovery. (94) Importantly, Heidlebaugh explains the “novel and contingent moments” as containing “not a truth … but a variety of truths” (88). If the rhetorical situation contains not one but multiple truths, then both the orator and the audience must

Rhetorical reasoning  145 be flexible as well as principled, and their goal must be as much to negotiate a solution as to win. In this orator-audience partnership, not only is the audience the subject of persuasion, but the audience is also the agency in the rhetorical situation. Together, orators and the audience invent probable knowledge through the art of rhetoric that includes devices exemplified by Homer and quoted by ­Aristotle. They engage the enthymematic, the probable, or the rhetorical because they cannot, and may not want to, avoid being human.

Ren and yi (仁、義) in Confucius’ Analects Something in Aristotle’s twofold rhetorical thinking resembles very much the Chinese gua-thinking as seen in The Book of Changes, to which ­Confucius might have contributed. Yu Dunkang (余敦康), a contemporary Chinese scholar on the Book of Changes, explains some of the basics as follows. The book works with 64 guas (卦) or hexagrams that are formed by lines called yao (爻). And yao (爻) is of only two kinds: Yin yao (陰爻) is symbolized by a disrupted line “--,” while yang yao (陽爻), a continual one “—.”

Yin

yang 

Yin and yang, when combined, give rise to the Bagua (八卦) or the “Eight Trigrams”:

Qian 乾

Zhen 震

Kan 坎

Gen 艮

Kun 坤

Xun 巽

Li 離

Dui 兌

The shape of the trigrams clearly resembles the shape of a syllogism. But the ancient Chinese further illustrate the relation among the eight guas as seen on the next page in Figure 4.1. Indeed, this graph looks quite different from the syllogistic form, especially the circle of taiji in the middle that illustrates the yinyao (陰爻--) and yangyao (陽爻—). But perhaps this is what the enthymeme, the enmattered syllogism, could look like if it were illustrated. I would not exclude this possibility, because, as I have discussed above, the enthymeme differs from the exclusively linear movement of the syllogism. I would like to show that the gua- or the ­yinyang-thinking is similar to as well as different from Aristotle’s enthymematic thinking. First, let us look at one example to understand better the gua- or the ­yinyang-thinking, which may seem to be initially counterintuitive. From the eight trigrams come the 64 different combinations of the trigrams, and these combinations are called hexagrams. Like yin and yang, the 64 hexagrams have meanings

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Figure 4.1 Relations among eight guas.

to be interpreted. For example, the most auspicious of the 64 hexagrams is tai-gua ( 泰卦) or the tai-hexagram, which has three yin lines (trigram kun 坤 or Earth) above three yang lines (trigram qian 乾 or Heaven). This upside down earthheaven formation may seem counterintuitive but is the most auspicious of all the hexagrammic formations because when the changing, heavy, and descending yin and the continual, light, and ascending yang move towards each other, Heaven and Earth come together and give birth to life and peace. Conversely, the least auspicious hexagrammic formation is the pi-gua ( 否卦) or the pi-hexagram. Even though it seems to be right-side-up with earth under heaven, by having the most yang trigram qian (乾) on top of the most yin trigram kun (坤), yin and yang are going in opposite directions, and this movement threatens disintegration and implosion. These two hexagrams illustrate one basic principle of the gua- or yinyang-thinking. Opposites do not have to eliminate each other; in fact, each must find ways to work with the other as a natural precondition for the other’s as well as its own well-being. Having not just differences but also opposites find ways to complement each other, this kind of gua- or yinyang-thinking is not either linear or recursive, either disruptive or continual. Rather, it is at once linear and recursive, at once continual and changing. This is the kind of thinking that permeates Confucius’ rhetorical thinking, just as both the absolute and the contingent are intertwined in Aristotle’s enthymematic thinking, even though the two ways of thinking are not identical. Such a comparative as well as contrastive approach has been used by some of my colleagues in comparative Western-Chinese rhetorical studies; I would like to continue that effort. For example, examining rhetorical practices as living activities, Hui Wu has argued that “the enthymematic demonstration of proofs is rhetorical universals in argumentative discourse regardless of cultures” (115), and that “it is a

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universal phenomenon that all human beings have an inborn disposition for logical reasoning” (121). As discussed in Chapter Three, there is a universal dimension to Confucius’ view of renxing-the-human-nature. But what is its rational aspect? This is what I would like to examine more closely below to provide more elaboration and support. At the same time, do the two kinds of rhetorical thinking differ? Wu’s effort to address this question is to be continued as well. She concludes that Chinese rhetoric can be “puzzling and inpenetrable [sic]” to Western readers because Chinese “cultural values” (119) prompt Chinese writers first to secure the trust of the audience (117), appeal to the authority of history and of tradition (118), and trust the reasonableness of the audience’s nature (119). Clearly, the suggestions that Western rhetoricians do not secure the trust of the audience first, do not appeal to the authority of history and tradition, and do not trust the reasonableness of the audience’s nature must be fine-tuned. I would like to continue the investigation Wu and many others have initiated by considering the diversity and dynamics within each culture, each teaching, as the foundation for both comparing and contrasting them. To connect Confucius’ and Aristotle’s rhetorical thinking in the twofold, recursive, or gua-like characteristic, I first compare ren (仁) in Confucius and epieikeia in Aristotle as two cultural ideals, two principal characteristics of enthymematic thinking, with both similar and different enthymematic emphases. Ren and epieikeia: Enthymemes of continuity and change As a central Confucian cultural ideal, ren (仁) characterizes the product as well as the premise of Confucius’ enthymematic thinking. What is ren? Jay Williams (1991) describes ren as “a series of relationships” that must be reconstructed in historical and socio-cultural contexts (110). Ames and Rosemont explain that constructing relationships with others is essential to the Confucian self’s becoming fully human, becoming ren. They argue that the fact the word ren contains within it the word two (二) and the radical for persons (仁) “underscores the Confucian assumption that one cannot become fully human by oneself—we are, from our inchoate beginnings, irreducibly social” (48). Ames and Rosemont conclude that, to Confucius “the human being is not something we are; it is something that we do, and become” (49). While this dynamic aspect of ren is rooted in the Analects, both Qian Mu and Yang Bojun explain ren by simply quoting Confucius’ own words: Ren is to “love others” 「 ( 愛人。」12.22). Does loving others entail only human becoming? I see ren or “loving others” as comparable to epieikeia or equity in Aristotle, a kind of human empathy that is “imbued with” (Gottlieb 168–69) or “permeated by” reason (112), and therefore it is an inferential process that entails both being and becoming. Confucius says, in essence, it is from one’s own dislikes that loving is empathized, inferred, or enthymemized (12.2). It is because Confucius emphasizes this kind of loving/reasoning so much that I see his teaching of ren as similar to Aristotle’s teaching of epieikeia in that both count on the innate human capacity and the acquired human ability to empathize with others and thus to enthymemize knowledge. Let me explain this further.

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Ren and epieikeia resemble each other as ways of rhetorical thinking both in the formal (lines of reasoning) and the material (subject matter reasoned) aspects of the enthymeme. Indeed, the form of reasoning or the discursiveness of Asian thinking has been a familiar subject to many. Prominent sinologists used to think that Eastern thinking is non-inferential. Arthur Waley characterizes the teaching of Confucius polemically: “Never is there any suggestion of a long interior process of cogitation or ratiocination” (45–46). Similarly, Herbert Fingarette describes the teaching of Confucius as based on narration and observation and as differing fundamentally from conceptual and abstract reasoning (65–67). This view has its indisputable cogency. Robert Kaplan famously contrasts Western and Eastern discourse as, respectively, straight and spiral, and many scholars have productively applied this characterization to rhetorical analysis, for example, Carolyn B. Matalene’s examination of a particular case in her “Contrastive Rhetoric: An American Writing Teacher in China.” However, in the second half of the last century, this view was also reconsidered and supplemented. David Cahill protests against the “exaggerated” (187) practice of overburdening certain Chinese expressions with rather generalized conclusions about Chinese thinking; James Myers emphasizes the fact that thought systems, Chinese or otherwise, are open systems with flexibility. Carol Severino and Ryuko Kubota warn against the casual equation of generalizations about thinking and isolated discursive practices. Similarly cautioning against equating spirality with non-inferentiality, David Soles states that there are “obviously valid deductive arguments” (255) in the Analects. Soles argues that those who interpret Confucian teaching as the kind of narration and observation that opposes reason or argumentation falsely dichotomize what are fundamentally related processes, for “surely there are thought processes which fall between these extremes, some of which might appropriately be called ratiocination or cognition” (250). Soles’ interpretation of an inferential process in Confucius’ teaching is supported by Chinese Confucian scholars like Chen Tongsheng (陈桐生437) and Ge Zhaoguang (葛兆光144), both of whom take ren (仁) as a process involving tui (推) as in tuiduan yanyi (推斷演繹), a Chinese expression for inference. Christoph Harbsmeier concludes that the syllogism by the first-century Chinese philosopher Wang Chong (27–100 AD) “is more purely and more precisely Aristotelian than the standard medieval Western form that has become current in the history of Western logic since medieval times”8 (278). Comparative rhetorical studies reflect these more dynamic and complex interpretations of Chinese thinking. For example, Kennedy points out that “Western readers have sometimes found Chinese rhetoric lacking in logical argument, but this is a superficial judgment” (Comparative 159). The logicality of Chinese rhetoric is a subject that needs to be pursued further, however, given that Kennedy provisionally limits that inferential characteristic to induction: “deductive argument in the form of enthymemes seems undeveloped” and “argument [in Chinese rhetoric] is chiefly inductive, based on examples, precedents, quotation of authorities, and analogies” (151)9. As I have started to discuss and will continue to discuss below, analogical thinking indeed permeates Confucius’ thinking and teaching, but the conclusion that deductive thinking is undeveloped

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should be examined more closely because enthymemes and examples are not mutually exclusive modes of inference. As I discussed above, the distinction may be more discrete between epagoge and sullogismos in logic than between examples and enthymemes in rhetoric. Once the absoluteness of the middle term relents (not all green apples but only those I have tasted) and once what is conventionally known as the major premise is no longer absolutely universal but rather only mostly or even apparently true, then enthymemes based on probability, fallible signs, and—as Aristotle himself states explicitly—examples can move among particulars. Not only does the enthymeme entail induction, but examples are not devoid of deduction. Aristotle states, Now induction, or rather the deduction which springs out of induction, consists in deducing a relation between one extreme and the middle by means of the other extreme, e.g. if B is the middle term between A and C, it consists in proving through C that A belongs to B. For this is the manner in which we make inductions. For example, let A stand for long-liver, B for bileless, and C for the particular long-lived animals, e.g. man, horse, mule. A then belongs to the whole of C: [for whatever is bileless is long-lived]. But B also (not possessing bile) belongs to every C. If then C is convertible with B, and the middle term is not wider in extension, it is necessary that A should belong to B. (Prior Analytics 68b15–25) This can be illustrated as follows: Long-Liver (A) →

Mule (C)

Bileless (B) →

Mule (C)

Long-Liver (A) →

Bileless (B)

As seen here, even strictly inductive reasoning, which moves from particular situations to universal conclusions, entails deductive ability to make connections. Rhetorically inductive reasoning, which moves from particular situations to particular conclusions, works similarly. The enthymeme “springs out of” the example. Take an example from the Rhetoric: Peisistratus, Theagenes, and many others in the past had asked for bodyguards before they turned into despots once their requests were met; therefore, the same may happen to Dionysius who is now requesting a bodyguard (Rhetoric 1357b30–1358a2). This is, indeed, reasoning through examples, as Aristotle says, but it is not to be interpreted as entailing no enthymematic deduction. The information of the historical facts would be of little use to anyone unless some kind of deduction takes effect to connect the particulars: many who had asked changed in the past; this person is asking now; this person is likely to change in the future. Take yet two other examples. Xiaoye You states that ren leads to the way, to rites, and eventually to the well-being of the community, and “this is the Confucian logic” (432). Is this logic exclusively deductive or inductive?

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The answer is that it is both, and that is why Yichun Liu and Xiaoye You are right when they describe the Han [Dynasty] Confucian Dong Zhongshu’s thinking as enthymematic: “In Dong’s reasoning, history reflects the Heavenly mandate and dao; therefore what happened in the past can be a reference for the present and the future” (163). Again, this overtly inductive reasoning cannot work if it were not for the deductive links or moves within it. The thinking here, therefore, entails both. Indeed, Confucius did not analyze the two and then use them interdependently in the way seen above; he did not teach rhetorical thinking analytically as induction and deduction. However, theorizing like this, according to Kennedy as discussed in Chapter Two, is only one dimension of rhetoric. Although important to Aristotle, it is not all there is to his concept of rhetoric. Another dimension is, in Kennedy’s words, rhetoric as energeia, which is interestingly not merely alogical. Quoting A. C. Graham who describes the concept of ren as “a directed force operating in actions in public space and time,” Kennedy comments, “[ren] thus closely resembles ‘rhetoric’ as a form of energy, a definition [of rhetoric]” (Comparative 154). Now, on the one hand, Aristotle states that the enthymeme is the substance of rhetoric; on the other hand, Kennedy has found ren resembling something quintessentially rhetorical. Therefore, this connection between enthymeme and ren is what I would like to explore below: Confucius’ enthymematic thinking as seen in his teaching of ren. Analogical thinking permeates Confucius’ teaching, the kind of enthymematic analogical thinking in which inductive and deductive lines of reasoning correlate. It is clear that Confucius inferences or enthymemizes knowledge of how to attend to spiritual affairs from knowledge of how to conduct human affairs (“Not yet knowing how to deal with the affairs of the living, how can you attend to those of the dead?”「未能事人，焉能事鬼？」11.11). In the passages below, Confucius also describes the process of learning—becoming, actualizing, realizing ren more fully continuously—the process of “reaching up there” 「 ( 下學而上達」14.37) as fundamentally analogical: 子曰：「不憤不啟，不悱不發。舉一隅不以三隅反，則不復也。」The Master says, “Unless students want to learn but cannot quite get it, I do not teach them. Unless they think but cannot quite complete their thoughts, I do not guide them. Unless they can infer three corners [of a room] on being given one, I do not return to them.” (7.8) 子謂子貢曰：「女與回也，孰愈？」對曰：「賜也，何敢望回？回也， 聞一以知十；賜也，聞一知二。」 子曰：「弗如也；吾與女，弗如 也。」The Master asks Zi Gong, “How do you compare yourself to Yan Hui?” Zi Gong replies, “How could I compare myself to Hui? On given one, Hui knows ten and I only know two.” The Master says, “You cannot, and I cannot either.” (5.8) Inferring three from the one instance known is thinking analogically or inductively. This is especially clear in the first passage above where the objects of knowing, four corners of the room, are more or less identical. In the second example,

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however, the objects of knowing are more general and open because the nature of the ten is not specified as identical to the one known, like the three corners of a room to the one known. In addition, Zi Gong and Confucius both clearly suggest that the ability to infer ten in this case differs qualitatively from the ability to infer two from the given one. Yan Hui and Zi Gong cannot be compared. Inferring or analogizing one or two things from an identical given is like looking for what one has learned, but inferring or analogizing ten from a different given entails more the discovery and invention of the new and it requires more connecting, judging, and enthymemizing abilities; the issues and events of the ten may be more similar to, than identical with, each other than those of the three. This theme of the intertwining of enthymematic and analogical thinking is prominent and consistent throughout the Analects. Analogically responding to someone who comments that Zi Gong is better than his teacher Confucius, Zi Gong says: 「譬之宮牆：賜之牆也及肩，窺見屋家之好；夫子之牆數仞，不得其 門而入，不見宗廟之美，百官之富。得其門者或寡矣！」 Let me use walls as an example. Mine are shoulder high, and the passersby can see everything inside from outside of the walls. Our Master’s are so much higher [than mine] that outsiders won’t see the beauty of the temples and the riches of the dwellers unless they find the gate to enter and then see what is behind the walls. So few do find our master’s gate. (19.23) The analogy is clear: my walls are to lower walls as my master’s are to higher ones. But several enthymematic lines of reasoning are also operating among these words. For example, lower walls are walls that reveal the enclosed more; this is a lower wall; this wall is one that reveals the enclosed more. Without the ability to reason enthymematically, one can hardly make sense of Zi Gong’s analogy. Similarly, Confucius enthymematically praises Zi Gong’s ability to infer new understanding from what he has learned through reading the Book of Songs: 子貢曰：「貧而無諂，富而無驕，何如？」 子曰：「可也；未若貧而 樂，富而好禮者也。」 子貢曰：「詩云：『如切如磋，如琢如磨』， 其斯之謂與？」子曰：「賜也L，始可與言詩已矣，告諸往而知來 者。」Zi Gong asks, “Poor but not obsequious and rich but not arrogant: what do you think about people with these characteristics?” The Master says, “Very good, but even better are those who are poor and still happy, rich and still deferential.” Zi Gong says, “It is said in the Book of Songs, ‘It is like sculpting the bones, carving the ivory, polishing the jade, and grinding the marble.’ Is this what you mean?” The Master says, “Zi Gong, I can talk about the Songs with you now: you can infer from what you are told.” (1.15) Like some Confucian texts, this passage may sound enigmatic, and an obvious reason is the extent to which Confucius, his students, and Confucian writers in general off-handedly reference historical writings and events. While this is true in general and a feature I will discuss shortly, here in this passage it is not just, or

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even necessarily, not knowing the Book of Songs that prevents one from comprehending the exchange. A key Confucian principle that can help open up this passage, as Qian points out, is actually a very familiar one: the Confucian emphasis on education. What is expected of the reader is to supply or make the enthymematic connections with this fundamental presupposition, without which the passage is opaque. Those who are poor but self-assured and those who are rich but humble are good but they still rely on basic human dispositions more than those who are poor but happy and those who are rich but respectful, because the latter group transcends richness and happiness (Qian 26), exemplifying a state of mind that is cultivated through education. Once again, the analogy is clear. Learning is to rich or poor as sculpting, carving, polishing, and grinding are to bone, ivory, jade, and marble. One of the enthymemes in the thinking here is that education is cultivation beyond renxing-the-human-nature; to be poor but happy and to be rich but respectful are [results of] education; to be poor but happy and rich but respectful are development beyond renxing-the-human-nature. With this understanding of the interdependence between inductive and deductive lines of reasoning in the enthymeme, we move on now to how Confucius’ ideal of ren characterizes such enthymematic premises, processes, and products. For example, Zi Gong infers, from Confucius’ assessment of the legendary and sage-like Bo Yi and Shu Qi, Confucius’ opinion of their contemporary Duke Chu Zhe of the State of Wei (7.14) in the following passage: 冉有曰：「夫子為衛君乎？」子貢曰：「諾；吾將問之。」入，曰： 「伯夷﹑叔齊何人也？」曰：「古之賢人也。」曰：「怨乎？」曰： 「求仁而得仁，又何怨？」出，曰：「夫子不為也。」Ran You asks Zi Gong, “Do you think that our Master [who is in the State of Wei at the time] is in favor of King Chu [Zhe] of Wei’s action [whose father was in exile]?” Zi Gong replies, “That’s a good question. Let me ask the Master.” Zi Gong enters [the room] and asks, “What kind of people are Bo Yi and Shu Qi?” The Master says, “The noble kind.” “Would they complain [about what happened to them]?” Zi Gong asks again, and the Master replies, “Pursuing the cultural ideal ren, they realized it in the end. Why would they complain?” Zi Gong returns to Ran You, saying, “The Master is not in favor [of what King Chu Zhe of Wei is doing].” (7.14) This is a typical Confucian text where the synchronic inference is so intricately laced with the diachronic development that understanding it does depend, in crucial ways, on the knowledge of the contexts, cosmic and societal. King Chu Zhe of Wei (492–481BC) was the grandson of Duke Ling. Zhe’s father Kuai Kui, who was the prince of Wei, had been forced into exile by the Duke. The Duke died, and Zhe became the King of Wei, but this was ritually problematic because Zhe’s father was still alive even though in exile. The Analects shows that instead of directly asking Confucius’ view of Zhe’s behavior, Zi Gong indirectly asks whether Bo Yi and Shu Qi would have any complaints about what happened to them as a result of

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what they chose to do. Bo Yi and Shu Qi, of course, are the brothers who resolved the conflict of two appropriate actions—filial respect for their father’s wishes and ritual respect for the practice of primogeniture—by leaving their homeland and eventually dying while on hunger strike against King Wu’s violent action of war. Replying to Zi Gong’s query, Confucius says that the brothers sought to become ren, realized it, and therefore would have nothing to complain about. From this reply, Zi Gong infers that since Confucius approves of Bo Yi and Shu Qi’s filial act, he must disapprove of the unfilial conduct of King Chu Zhe of Wei. The intertwining of the enthymematic and analogical thinking in this passage is quite similar to that in the passages discussed above, but here ren refers to the brothers’ effort both to observe ritual propriety and maintain peace in the midst of opposing actions. For example, to observe ritual propriety as Bo Yi and Shu Qi did is ren and praiseworthy; King Chu Zhe of Wei is not observing ritual propriety as Bo Yi and Shu Qi did; King Chu Zhe of Wei is not ren or praiseworthy. Ren here indeed requires, as Wu suggests, something universal to all human beings. This is supported especially by those passages in the Analects where ren is discussed in relation to xiao-the-filial: 有子曰：「其為人也孝弟，而好犯上者，鮮矣；不好犯上，而好作 亂者，未之有也。君子務本，本立而道生。孝弟也者，其為仁之本 與！」Master You says, “It’s rare for those who love their parents and their siblings to disrespect the superiors. It has never been known that the respectful are riotous. Exemplary persons focus on the roots from which comes daothe-way. Being filial to one’s parents and loving to one’s sibling—these must be the roots for ren-the-equitable, are they not?” (1.2) 宰我問：「三年之喪期已久矣！君子三年為禮，禮必壞；三年不為 樂，樂必崩。舊穀既沒，新穀既升；鑽燧改火，期可已矣。」子曰： 「食夫稻，衣夫錦，於女安乎？」曰：「安！」「女安，則為之！ 夫君子之居喪，食旨不甘，聞樂不樂，居處不安，故不為也。今女 安，則為之！」宰我出。子曰：「予之不仁也！子生三年，然後免於 父母之懷。夫三年之喪，天下之通喪也；予也，有三年之愛於其父母 乎？」Zai Wo says, “The three-year mourning for one’s parent is too long a time! If exemplary persons do not participate in ritual practices, ritual propriety will discontinue, and if they do not practice music, music will lose its pertinence. In a year’s time, the old grain is used up; the new crops are brought in; and the cycle for the kinds of wood used for starting the fire completes: one year should be enough.” The Master asks, “Would you feel at ease eating white rice and wearing satin fineries only a year after the passing of your parents?” Zai Wo replies, “Yes.” The Master says, “If you feel at ease, then go ahead! Exemplary persons in mourning cannot taste the aroma of rice, or feel the happiness of music, or the ease of home, and that’s why they do not stop mourning after one year. But if you feel right, go ahead.” After Zai Wo leaves, Confucius says, “Zai Wo is really un-ren (仁)! Infants only leave the bosom of their parents after the first three years of their lives. The ritual

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Rhetorical reasoning of the three-year mourning period for one’s parents is practiced everywhere. Doesn’t Zai Wo have three years of love for his parents?” (17.21).

It is natural for human beings to engage the enthymemizing process of actualizing ren and walking dao-the-way, and there is only so much one can say about it. In addition, Confucius suggests that we stay with, not just cultivate or acquire, ren: 子曰：「里仁為美。擇不處仁，焉得知？」The Master says, “Those who reside in ren-the-equitable are the most beautiful; as for those who choose not to do so, how can they be thought as knowing?” (4.1) 子曰：「不仁者，不可以久處約，不可以長處樂。仁者安仁，知者利 仁。」The Master says, “Those who are not renly cannot persist in difficulties or extend happiness. Those who are renly stay with ren-the-equitable, and those who are wise long for ren-the-equitable.” (4.2) 子曰：「仁遠乎哉？我欲仁，斯仁至矣。」The Master says, “How could ren-the-equitable be at all remote? No sooner do I seek it than it has arrived.” (7.29) Repeatedly, actualizing ren-the-equitable is said to be a matter of staying with it in the sense that human beings have the natural ability to relate, love, and enthymemize. In short, there is something in ren-the-equitable that is quite similar to epieikeia, which is a virtue related to the natural human capacity for compassion and mercy. At the same time, ren-the-equitable is obviously a dynamic process of human becoming in social and historical contexts as well. Like in Aristotle, friendship is said in the Analects to be a way of becoming ren-the-equitable (12.2410). Commenting on a passage where You Ruo tries to persuade the Duke of Lu to lower the taxes because the State is prosperous only when its people are (12.911), Qian Mu states that to Confucius “human beings are inseparably related. … Therefore, what You Ruo is talking about is actually ren.” Qian explains that “the question ‘how can we [be poor if our people are not]?’ is profound because, as Confucius says, ‘Without others, what am I?’” (432). This relational aspect of ren-the-equitable is also clearly described as fundamentally inferential and analogical: 子貢曰：「如有博施於民而能濟眾，何如？可謂仁乎？」子曰：「何事 於仁！必也聖乎！堯舜其猶病諸！夫仁者，己欲立而立人，己欲達而 達人。能近取譬，可謂仁之方也已。」Zi Gong asks, “Is ren charity to all?” The Master replies, “How could that just be ren-the-equitable? Isn’t that sagehood? Even [Sages] Yao and Shun would feel inadequate at times [if that were ren]! Those of ren help others to li [立 take their stands according to ritual propriety] by doing so themselves and help others to da [達become

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known by being appropriately respectful, observant, humble, and considerate] by becoming so themselves. Making progress from things close by to those farther away, from the self to others—this is more like the way of ren-the-equitable.” (6.28) Ren-the-equitable is inference from the better-known to the lesser-known, from the self to others (「能近取譬」), and it is this logically inferential and socially relational characteristic of ren that makes Confucius’ thinking, in Graham’s words, a force that is principled but also functional and therefore an ideal of human actualization in Confucius’ view. Confucius himself constantly enthymemizes his way to knowledge of ren-the-equitable. For example, in the Shang Dynasty, three people responded to the same outrage in three different ways, yet Confucius sees these different responses similarly as ren: 衛子去之；箕子為之奴；比干諫而死。孔子曰：「殷有三仁焉！」Wei Zi left; Ji Zi became his slave; and Bi Gan was executed for remonstrating. The Master says, “Yin has three people of ren.” (18.1) The Shang Dynasty’s King Xin, who was overthrown by King Wu as described in Bo Yi and Shu Qi’s story, was posthumously referred to as King Zhou (紂) or King Ruthless. Zhou’s brother, the Nobleman of Wei, walked away from him; Zhou’s uncle, the Nobleman of Ji, failed to change Zhou, was forced to feign insanity, and became Zhou’s slave; and Zhou’s other uncle, Bi Gan, remonstrated and was put to death by Zhou. Confucius says that all three are people of ren despite how differently they reacted to the ruthless king. Confucius’ view of these three people shows both that ren has real socio-political consequences and that it reasons to different conclusions. Just as epieikeia in providing the enthymeme with different premises leads to different conclusions, ren-the-equitable—loving others—is the process through which different conclusions are enthymemized. Such a process is both linear and intuitive. Also like epieikeia, ren-the-equitable is superior to the law in a special sense: both are the best combination of being and becoming, timelessness and time, in human circumstances. This twofold characteristic of ren can be seen even more clearly in Confucius’ complex views of Guan Zhong as a person of ren. At one point, Confucius describes Guan Zhong as someone who is miserly to others and vainly extravagant with his own homes and as someone who flouts ritual propriety li (禮 3.2212). But Confucius also speaks of Guan Zhong not only as an exceptional statesman (14.913) but also as a person of ren: 子路曰：「桓公殺公子 糾，召忽死之，管仲不死。」曰：「未仁 乎！」子曰：「桓公九合諸侯，不以兵車，管仲之力也。如其仁！如 其仁！」Zi Lu says, “When Duke Huan [of the State of Qi] had his brother Prince Jiu murdered, Jiu’s tutor Zhao Hu chose to die with him, but his tutor Guan Zhong chose to accept the Duke’s invitation and joined his charge Jiu’s murderer. Is Guan Zhong un-ren?” The Master says, “Duke Huan could

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Rhetorical reasoning bring the feudal lords together many times without relying on military forces because of Guan Zhong’s ability to assist him. This is Guan Zhong’s ren! This is Guan Zhong’s ren!” (14.17) 子貢曰：「管仲非仁者與？桓公殺公子糾，不能死，又相之。」子曰： 「管仲相桓公，霸諸侯，一匡天下，民到于今受其賜。微管仲，吾其 被髮左衽矣！豈若匹夫匹婦之為諒也，自經於溝瀆，而莫之知也！」 Zi Gong asks, “Isn’t Guan Zhong un-ren? His charge Prince Jiu was killed [by his brother Duke Huan]. Not only didn’t Guan Zhong die with Prince Jiu, but he served the Duke, Prince Jiu’s murderer.” The Master says, “Because of Guan Zhong’s service, Duke Huan was able to unite the feudal lords and bring peace to the empire. The people today are still benefiting from his service. Without Guan Zhong, we would be wearing our hair loose and opening our coats on the left [i.e., being ruled by others]. Should he have chosen to keep his words [to Prince Jiu] without any adjustment, to commit suicide, and to die in some ditch?” (14.18)

According to different historical documents14, Duke Huan of Qi, or Prince Xiao Bai before he became the Duke, was the younger brother of Prince Jiu. Their elder brother Duke Xiang was tyrannical, and the situation of the State of Qi was so precarious that the brothers fled the state. When Duke Xiang was assassinated, Prince Xiao Bai managed to return to the state first and claim the throne. The newly titled Duke Huan immediately attacked the State of Lu, where his elder brother Jiu was residing, and forced the State of Lu to kill his brother Jiu to eliminate the competition for the throne. With Prince Jiu in the State of Lu were his two mentors, Shao Hu and Guan Zhong. When Jiu was killed, the Duke invited both mentors to return and serve under him. While Shao Hu committed suicide out of his loyalty to Prince Jiu, Guan Zhong accepted the Duke’s invitation. The Analects records both Zi Lu and Zi Gong separately asking Confucius whether Guan Zhong’s change of allegiance to someone who had his master slain is unren (仁), apparently based on the assumption that it is unren to break one’s promises to one’s late master and to serve the murderer who usurped the throne (Qian 508). Confucius, however, argues from a different premise. Helping to keep peace under tian-the-cosmos (天) and thus prohibiting more carnage, something Guan Zhong accomplished subsequently, is ren (仁). Using assumptions different from those used by Zi Lu and Zi Gong, Confucius shows the inferential power of probable or ren thinking in producing more nuanced, tolerant, but also principled assessments. The same empathetic reasoning produces different conclusions of ren or equitableness for different situations, similar to what epieikeia does in Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric. As a process that draws both on the constant being and the dynamic becoming, ren-thinking enthymemizes knowledge that is gua- or yinyang-like (卦) or dialogic, not merely linear or one-directional: at once formal and dynamic, at once dialectical and sophistical. The either-suicide-or-disgrace mindset is too simplistic for the kinds of rhetorical situations that the Analects focuses on; therefore, Confucius introduces into the discussion an alternative perspective that is at once

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similar to and different from what is used by Zi Lu and Zi Gong, in order to “see clearly what the facts are,” “draw opposite conclusions impartially” (Rhetoric 1355a 33, 36), and decide “what the options really are” (Gottlieb 129). The results of such enthymematic thinking are manifold. The probable or rhetorical knowledge established in the anecdotes of Bo Yi/Shu Qi and Guan Zhong, for example, certainly can be viewed and argued from perspectives other than Confucius’, the always refutable probable knowledge being what it is. This indicates that the perfect balance between being and becoming may or may not be achieved or enthymemized each time and there can very well be more right ways than one in a given situation, ways that always interact now linearly and now gua- or yinyang-like with each other. Epieikeia and ren: Enthymemes and the ideal of the mean or yinyang Despite the similarities, the basic difference in emphasis that I started to explore in Chapter Three is seen again in Aristotle’s and Confucius’ enthymematic reasoning: Aristotle emphasizes progressive clarity of the form and Confucius, deferential relationships on dao-the-way. Here, Aristotle emphasizes deduction and a charismatic display of it; Confucius emphasizes induction and a subdued presence of it. Even though this difference once again reflects the difference between truth envisioned as form or as dao, here I will trace how this parallel of differences unfolds in relation to enthymematic thinking. I will start with the different preferences in enthymematic modes of reasoning, move to the different valuations of epieikeia and ren, continue to the different ideals of the mean and yinyang, and conclude with the different visions of truth as form and as dao. Recall that Aristotle identifies the substance of rhetoric as enthymemes, not examples, although rhetorical reasoning to him is clearly both. I have argued that Aristotle switches terminologies from logical syllogism to rhetorical enthymeme because of the probable nature of the enthymematic premises but also because of the overlap between deduction and induction in enthymematic reasoning. In other words, Aristotle’s conflation of signs and examples, as observed also by Schaberg (“Logic” 162), is one of several clues for us to believe that Aristotle is not only aware of both ways to infer but also the overlap between them. Despite this awareness, however, Aristotle chooses to name the enthymeme the substance of rhetoric with its overt connection more to deduction than to induction. The question is why he does this. Aristotle himself, as seen above, provides an answer in the Rhetoric, “Speeches that rely on examples are as persuasive as the other kind, but those which rely on enthymemes excite the louder applause” (1356b24–25). Verbal fanfare, in other words, is part of rhetoric to Aristotle, an important reason that his rhetoric is partly like sophistical reasoning, only partly like dialectic that leads to truth, which has “a natural tendency to prevail over their opposites” (1355a23). I include this second part here to reiterate that rhetoric to Aristotle is not about either one part or the other part so much as it is about the tension between the two. I add quickly also that this dimension of showmanship is not what makes it

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different from Confucius’ rhetorical thinking. As I will discuss in the next chapter, the emphasis on li-the-ritual-propriety（禮）reflects that Confucius sees going through certain motions or putting on a show as having heuristic value and as having its place in broadening human understanding and living good lives. The difference between Aristotle’s and Confucius’ enthymematic thinking is less in whether to display but more in what or how to display. I first return to epieikeia and ren. Even though both are characteristics of enthymematic thinking, ren is the ultimate cultural ideal for Confucius, but epieikeia is not for Aristotle. Epieikeia or equity is in important ways “the same” as justice (Nicomachean Ethics 1137b9) that, as Anton explains, interprets the law according to particular circumstances and is within the “jurisdiction” of the law (249). Justice is a minor virtue and defers the crown of the virtues, after several major virtues, to a kind of pride (Nicomachean Ethics 1124a1), the mean between the vices of empty vanity and undue humility (1123b8-12). In fact and strictly speaking, justice is not a mean. Of all virtues, Aristotle states in the Nicomachean Ethics, justice is the only one that “is thought to be another’s good” (1130a3), and equity, being the same as but also superior to justice (1137b10), is even more relational and farther away from the mean. Irwin explains this clearly. “The Rhetoric claims that the greatest virtues are those that are most useful to others”; it speaks of ethics as “a capacity rather than a state”; and it “says nothing about doctrine of the mean” (“Ethics 159–60). In contrast, Irwin points out, while “Aristotle does not overlook the reference to the good of others,” his “Ethics say nothing about the benefit of others” (162). In fact, “the discussions of self-love in the Ethics imply that the claims for being useful to others in the Rhetoric are mistaken” 167). Irwin concludes that these claims are made because the Rhetoric is about the ordinary dialectic of human inquiry, and its audience is “ordinary people” (168). These claims are to be left behind by the synoptic dialectic but are used in the Rhetoric to avoid “the more complex account of virtue mentioning the mean” (162). This differentiation between epieikeia or justice as minor virtues and pride as the crown virtue of the mean is reflected in an interesting difference between Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking. Even though Confucius definitely teaches and respects the fact that learning is a process with phases and levels or breadths (6.19, 8.915), guiding this process is an ideal seen as yinyang or dao, which resembles Aristotle’s view of truth as a dynamic, cumulative, and communal process but differs from Aristotle’s view of truth as a state of form or mean. Aristotle explains the mean as a state as follows, “excellence is a kind of mean, since it aims at what is intermediate” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1106b28), the mean between two vices. Courage as a virtue, for example, is a mean between the vices of rashness and cowardice, as is the crown virtue pride a mean between the vices of empty vanity and undue humility. But what does it mean to say excellence is intermediate between two extremes? As Andrew Plak, among many others, points out, it would be absurd to take “moral excellence in terms of what amounts to a half dose” (193). In other words, it should not be static. Still, what is it? Aristotle explains further, in definition or “in respect of its substance,” excellence is a mean; however, “with regard to what is best and right,

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it is an extreme” (1107a8). Aristotle elaborates on this dynamically extreme mean as follows: There is no excess and deficiency of temperance and courage because what is intermediate is in a sense an extreme, so too of the actions we have mentioned there is no mean nor any excess and deficiency, but however they are done they are wrong; for in general there is neither a mean of excess and deficiency, nor excess and deficiency of a mean. (1107a22–25) In other words, a mean is a mean in the sense that there is no “more mean” or “less mean.” As Jiyuan Yu puts it, “virtue is simply right, and vice is simply wrong” (80). In becoming virtuous, to quote Jonathan Lear again, one more fully actualizes the human form, and eventually “in coming to understand the world we become like God, we become God-like” (298). Like God, the most virtuous of us are in a dynamic state that is a kind of extreme excluding its opposites. Understood this way, vice is the extreme opposite of virtue, the mean; paradoxically, the mean is the extreme opposite of vice. Confucius’ ideals are not a mean in the sense of there being a simple right or wrong; they are more of processes, or capacities to quote Irwin again, than of states, and they aim less at being the extremes of two wrongs and more at being a movement between them. For example, Confucius emphasizes that one expects more from oneself than from others, not the mean between the self and others. The Analects opens with the statement “Aren’t those people exemplary who don’t complain when their talents and accomplishments are not known to others?” 「 ( 人不知而不慍，不亦君子乎？」 1.1). The Analects then proceeds with this theme running throughout the entire book. At least seven other passages deal, directly or indirectly, with just this theme16. In addition, when Zi Zhang asks Confucius about the ways of those ready to assume public office, Confucius warns him against four offensive ways to govern: 「不教而殺謂之虐；不戒視成謂之暴 ； 慢 令 致 期 謂 之 賊 ； 猶 之 與 人也，出納之吝，謂之有司。」 Not having educated people but then executing them [for crimes they committed] is barbaric; having been slow with instructions but then nitpicking on the results is tyrannical; having not emphasized the importance of the timetable but then being a stickler about the deadline is criminal; and to be miserly in paying one’s due is unbecoming. (20.217) In other words, expect more from yourself than from others. Similarly, Zeng Zi advises his student Yang Fu on becoming a prison warden not to dwell on his own achievements as reflected in his promotion but rather to focus on empathizing with the prisoners, because the country has lost its way for so long that it has contributed to their becoming criminals (19.1918). All this provides support to Tu Weiming’s observation that the process of becoming ren (仁) is “self-revising, self-perfecting, and self-fulfilling” (18), not the extreme mean or even absolute equilibrium between the self and the other. Tipping the equilibrium of the mean

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and not being the extreme of its opposite, Confucius’ ideal ren-the-equitable can make people gullible if they do not develop it together with diligent studying 「 ( 好『仁』不好學，其蔽也『愚』」17.819). Ren is not simply good. 子曰：「好勇疾貧，亂也。人而不仁，疾之已甚，亂也。」The Master says, “Chivalry and [self-]righteousness against inequity are likely to lead to mayhem. Righteousness without ren leads to mayhem.” (8.10) People can be too passionate for justice and lose the sense of ren or epieikeia or the capacity to “be merciful to the weakness of human nature”—these people are sources of chaos. Courage is not simply right. Even more revealingly perhaps, wrongs are not simply wrong. 子曰：「攻乎異端，斯害也己。」The Master says, “Going overboard with attacking either of the two extremes of wrongs leads to harm.” (2.16) Qian Mu explains, Every event has two sides, like every thread has two ends. Looked at from one end, the other end seems heretical, and vice versa … like fire and water. Yet, Confucius teaches both ends, like ren and li, saying and knowing, nature and culture, and learning and thinking. (53–54) Extremes breathe life into each other, like the interrupted yin-yao (陰爻) and the continual yang-yao (陽爻) working together; the best happens when the two engage each other now here, now there, and now somewhere in a state of the mean. When someone suggests that Confucius give up on a world that disregards dao-the-way, Confucius says he has little to say to someone who is so absolute about giving up on the world or being such an extreme opposite to what contains the wrong 「 ( 果哉！末之難矣。」14.4220). It is true that these passages may be interpreted as Confucius indeed advocating a kind of mean, advocating, for instance, that one stays between the extreme love and the extreme hatred of the world. But read in the context of the following passages from the Analects, the above passages can suggest that a difference between Confucius and Aristotle may lie in their different views of vices, a difference that again relates to their visions of the ultimate truths as form or dao. 子曰：「狂而不直，侗而不愿，悾悾而不信，吾不知之矣。」The Master says, “To be uninhibited yet not candid, unsophisticated yet not earnest, and inept yet not reliable—I don’t understand people like these.” (8.16) 子曰：「古者民有三疾， 今也或是之亡也。古之狂也肆， 今之狂 也蕩；古之矜也廉， 今之矜也忿戾；古之愚也直， 今之愚也詐而 已矣。」The Master says, “The ancients had three blameworthies [that coexisted with three praiseworthies], but such blameworthies are gone

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nowadays. The uninhibited were inspired then but are now wanton; the restrained were detached then but are now fretful; and the dull were forthright then but are now underhanded.” (17.16) As seen here, Confucius focuses not on the mean as simply right and vice as simply vicious. Instead, his emphasis is on the idea that in a vice is always and necessarily the capacity-in-process of its own correction. If a person or a situation is imperfect in one area, something good is expected of the person or the situation. This is why Confucius states explicitly that the “middle” is a motion or the middle motion, which differs from a mean as a state or as simply right. 子曰：「不得中行而與之，必也狂狷乎？狂者進取，狷者有所不為 也。」The Master says, “Since there are few who always know when, I am for those who are uninhibited or withdrawn. The former can forge ahead and the latter can let go.” (13.21) In explaining this passage, Qian Mu explicates the commentary by Mencius (372–289 BC), one of China’s best-known Confucians after Confucius: 中行，行得其中。孟子所謂中道，即中行。退能不為，進能行道，兼 有二者之長。後人捨狂狷而別求所謂中道，則誤矣。又按：伊尹聖 之任，狂者也。伯夷聖之清，狷者也。狂狷皆得為聖人，惟不如孔子 仕止久速之時中。時中，即時時不失於中行，即時而狂，時而狷， 能不失於中道。故狂狷非過與不及，中行非在狂狷之間。What Mencius (孟子) means by middle-path [中道] is riding-the-middle [中行]. Withdrawn, one can let go, and forging ahead, one can walk dao-the-way. Those after Mencius who sought the middle path by abandoning the uninhibited and the withdrawn misunderstood him. Yi Yin (伊尹) is uninhibited, and Bo Yi (伯夷) is withdrawn, and both are sages, even though a step behind Confucius who acts like riding the middle. Riding the middle or not missing the middle means now uninhibited and now withdrawn [emphasis mine]; this is not what it means not to miss the middle path. Therefore those who are uninhibited and withdrawn are not extreme or deficient, and riding the middle does not mean the intermediate between the two [emphasis mine]. (478) Riding the middle (zhongxing中行) differs from achieving the mean in that what is ridden is not simply right; it is now this and now that. Confucius’ enthymematic reasoning is now unrestrained now withdrawn, now vain now humble, negotiating its way through different, conflicting, refutable human imperfections. It validates probable knowledge not just because the world is imperfect but also because the dao or truth that resides in the world is a capacity or process, as opposed to a state, of yinyang. Therefore and once again, Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking differs not because one is enthymematic or inferential and the other is not. They both are.

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The difference is traced back to their cultural ideals that make the tracing of the enthymeme thinking at times challenging across the Aristotelian and Confucian cultures; even the ideal right is not simply right to Confucius. Once we see this, the following passages may become easier to follow. On seeing certain ritual practices conducted in a way he disapproves of, Confucius chooses not to watch (3.1021), expresses uncertainty when asked (3.1122), or asks questions himself (3.1523). Once traveling in the State of Chen, someone puts Confucius on the spot asking that he either praise the late Duke of his home State of Lu in general terms or criticize the late Duke for his ritually inappropriate act. Confucius chooses to praise, but when he hears the same person criticizing, to others, his choice as partisan, Confucius does not rationalize his comments by analyzing the late Duke’s lifelong accomplishments or explaining the awkward24 position the questioner has put Confucius in, something he could do with good reason; rather, he says he is fortunate to have people point out his mistakes when he makes one (7.3025). Finally, even though Confucius sees his choice to engage in socio-political affairs as different from—and better than—the daoist choice to disengage from worldly affairs, he repeatedly praises them highly and respects them as sages (18.1, 18.826). Confucius does not treat rights as simply right, nor wrongs as simply wrong, deferring ultimately to tian-the-cosmos, while he confutes what appears wrong to him much less frequently than negotiates or harmonizes differences in each rhetorical situation. It is very true that the Rhetoric discusses as well the opposites being within each other27. It is also true that, as Irwin points out, the difference between the mean and epieikeia or ren is a reason the Rhetoric contains no discussion of the mean but rather the fullest discussion of epieikeia. Finally, it is true that one may point out also that the Analects contains higher ideals than ren28, just as Aristotle’s works contain higher ideals than epieikeia. These are all correct, partially; nevertheless, the consequence of different emphases is still worth noting. As several passages from the Analects show, the difference in emphasis affects the reasoning, including that, in Qian’s word, “zhongxing is not intermediate between two extremes.” Instead, ren reflects the vision of the dao that emphasizes the process or capacity of now up now down. I hope to reinforce this point in discussing the second characteristic of Confucius’ enthymematic thinking, yi-the-appropriate. But I would like to point out for now that Confucius’ enthymematic discourse makes the audience and orator alike work harder because the ultimate reasonableness of the discourse does not lie in hitting a state of the mean in the sense of simply right but in riding the movement out in a process of yinyang. Understanding this difference may help cross-cultural communications. For example, while Confucian speakers using English as a second language may come across as missing the mean and being unduly humble, effective ways to help them communicate better may lie in a more open discussion of different cultural ethos of equilibrium and disequilibrium—rather than in mere encouragement for them to sound more confident—in order to avoid inadvertently invalidating Confucian ethos. In the section below, I will continue to explore some characteristics of the Confucian ethos through the concept of yi-the-appropriate.

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Yi and kairos: Enthymemes in action 色斯舉矣，翔而後集。曰：「山梁雌雉！時哉！時哉！」[The Master and Zilu are taking a walk in a mountain valley.] A hen-pheasant, on sensing their presence, takes flight immediately, soars about for a while, and then alights again. The Master says, “That hen-pheasant on the mountain ridge— what timing! What timing!” (10.18) The Confucian concept of yi (義), like kairos in Aristotle, is a characteristic of enthymematic thinking. I borrow from Ames and Rosemont their apt translation of yi (義) as appropriateness, or appropriate timing, for two reasons. Yi-theappropriate has been translated before as right or justice (e.g. Legge, Waley, Slingerland), but the right and just that Confucius emphasizes is of the appropriate kind. In addition, translating yi as appropriate only seems awkward in one passage from the Analects where Zi Lu uses the word in conversing with two sons of an older man: “It is not right for scholars not to serve their states” (18.729). It is indeed awkward to use appropriate instead of right here. But the fact that the speaker is Zi Lu, not Confucius, as well as the rarity of this awkwardness actually justifies the translation of yi (義) as appropriate. That yi suggests appropriate timing and therefore the need for constant adjustment is also easily seen in the Analects. When yi (義) is used as a noun, it is always preceded by an action verb: proceed (行 xing) or follow (徒 tu)30, showing the dynamic character of yi. Twice does Confucius discuss fearlessness in relation to yi-the-appropriate, and on one of these occasions he clearly states that as praiseworthy as fearlessness can be, without a sense of appropriateness, it makes one a rabble-rouser or law-breaker: 子曰：「非其鬼而祭之，諂也。見義不為，無勇也。」The Master says, “Sacrificing to the ghosts that are not of one’s own ancestors is obsequious. Seeing yi-the-appropriate without acting on it is cowardly [not bravery].” (2.24) 子路曰：「君子尚勇乎？」子曰：「君子義以為上。君子有勇而無 義為亂，小人有勇而無義為盜。」Zi Lu asks, “What do exemplary persons think of fearlessness?” The Master says, “Exemplary persons deem yi-the-appropriate the most important. Without yi-the-appropriate, exemplary persons who are fearless become rabble-rousers and petty persons who are fearless become law-breakers.” (17.23) Just as bravery is good but insufficient, gaining profit inappropriately makes one petty, while gaining it appropriately makes one exemplary31. Perhaps an example that most memorably illustrates Confucius’ sense of kairos is the following: 子路問：「聞斯行諸？」子曰：「有父兄在，如之何其聞斯行之？」 冉有問：「聞斯行諸？」子曰：‘聞斯行之。」公西華曰：「由也問： 『聞斯行諸』，」子曰：『有父兄在。』求也問：『聞斯行諸？』子 曰：『聞斯行之。』赤也惑，敢問。」子曰，「求之退，故進之。

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Confucius always emphasizes yi-the-appropriate in discussing how to serve the people (5.15, 6.20, 13.432) and ranks acting appropriately as more challenging than keeping one’s word or being trustworthy: 子貢問曰：「何如斯可謂之士矣？」子曰：「行己有恥；使於四方， 不辱君命；可謂士矣。」曰：「敢問其次？」曰：「宗族稱孝焉， 鄉黨稱弟焉。」曰：「敢問其次？」曰：「言必信，行必果；踁踁 然，小人哉！抑亦可以為次矣。」曰：「今之從政者何如？」子曰： 「噫！斗筲之人，何足算也！」Zi Gong inquires, “What must one be like to be called a scholar-official?” The Master replies, “Those who act with a sense of shame and can carry out the mission when sent to other states by their lord can be called scholar-officials.” “May I ask the scholar-official at a lower level?” asks Zi Gong. “Next are those whom family members praise for their filial conduct and fellow villagers praise for their deference to their elders,” Confucius replies. “And next?” “Those who always make good on their word (xin信) and always act with resolve, unyielding and unbendable like rocks, are in fact petty persons but can still be considered the next.” Zi Gong asks about the scholar-official of today, and the Master replies, “Oh, those petty bureaucrats are not even worth mentioning.” (13.20) An example of this kairic sense of right or wrong is already seen earlier in Confucius’ evaluation of Guan Zhong. Also, when Zi Zhang, one of Confucius’ overconfident students (19.15, 19.1633), asks about achievement, Confucius says that the accomplished are those who act while watching others’—the audience’s— countenances and defer to others willingly (12.2034). The Analects also shows that Confucius himself is flexible (9.435) and is even derided as too flexible like a sophist adjusting and changing with circumstances (14.3436). As seen in Chapter Two, Zi Lu questions Confucius’ willingness to meet with Fo Xi, known as a plotter and conspirator, and points out Confucius’ seeming inconsistency by using the Master’s own advice of not to deal with those who are committing wrongs. Confucius’ reply is that indeed he has used the saying before, but there is another saying that the hardest won’t be worn thin and the whitest won’t be blackened (17.737). In other words, avoiding those who are doing wrong is a principle that must be used kairically. The dynamic and provisional aspect of yi-the-appropriate

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is heightened by the fact that on this particular occasion, Confucius does not end up going to meet with Fo Xi (Qian 625). Both interlocutors, Confucius and Zi Lu, move towards new knowledge. To Confucius, yi compares to honesty, seriousness at studying, and persistence in walking dao-the-way, but it is the ultimate challenge: 子曰：「可與共學，未可與適道；可與適道，未可與立；可與立， 未可與權。」The Master says, “Those who study together may not walk dao-the-way together; those who walk dao-the-way together may not persevere on it together; and those who persevere together may not be able to assess and act in each situation appropriately together.” (9.29) That Confucius sees yi as the most challenging helps to illustrate both the similarity and the difference I discuss in this chapter. The Analects shows Confucius comparing himself with some daoists, stating, “I differ from them and do not insist on one presupposition or another” (「我則異於是，無可無不可」18.8). Similarly, “The Master says, ‘Exemplary persons do not approve or disapprove absolutely but rather seek yi-the-appropriate’” (子曰：「君子之於天下也，無適也， 無莫也，義之與比。」4.10). These are difficult passages, but they form a consistent theme in the Analects. The following example epitomizes this theme. 葉公語孔子曰：「吾黨有直躬者：其父攘羊而子證之。」孔子曰： 「吾黨之直者異於是：父為子隱，子為父隱，直在其中矣。」The Governor of She tells Confucius: “We have an upstanding person here: His father stole a sheep and he then turned his father in.” The Master says, “Where I come from upstanding persons are different: fathers cover up for sons, and sons cover up for fathers, and therein lies the upstandingness.” (13.18) Confucian scholars throughout history and across cultures feel self-conscious about this passage and have offered different interpretations. The well-known Song Dynasty Confucian Zhu Xi (1130–1200), for example, states that the word chosen for steal (攘 rang) in this passage specifies stealing in difficult straits (qtd. in Ames and Rosemont 254). In the rhetorical terms discussed in this study, Zhu offers an interpretation where epieikeia or ren rectifies the law under a specific circumstance, as Anton explains earlier. Others similarly find ways to excuse Confucius by arguing for the importance of omission or what the passage does not reveal. Greg Whitlock examines the Confucian culture and concludes that the alternative measures found in clan rules provide a clue: The passage does not speak to the case in which the father repeats his misconduct. Nor does it consider a case in which the family as a whole has repeatedly remonstrated and attempted to educate the father on his misconduct. Nor does it consider a case in which the father has been brought before elders in the ancestral temple, but has disobeyed. (124)

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Given that these are all found in the clan rules, Whitlock concludes that Confucius could be saying that the governmental sphere is not the first place to turn to for solving this kind of problem. In addition to contributing to the interpretation of this particular passage, Whitlock’s interpretation highlights the characteristic of Confucius’ discourse that much of what is in the text depends on what is outside of it and therefore depends on the reader’s knowledge of what is being referenced. Still others defend Confucius by emphasizing family as a unique social institution. Qian suggests that the relationship between parents and children is a special one, thus an exception to the general rule (473–74). Qian’s emphasis on filial piety may seem peculiarly Chinese, but those who are near and dear have presented special challenges to people in more cultures than just the Chinese culture. In Wisconsin, for example, there is the Statute 905.05 Husband-Wife and Domestic Partner Privilege: “A person has a privilege to prevent the person’s spouse or former spouse or domestic partner from testifying against the person as to any private communication by one to the other made during their marriage or domestic partnership.” 38 Finally, Qian’s interpretative reasoning clearly turns also on an appeal to epieikeia, or ren-the-equitable. Together, these interpretations help to confirm that Confucius’ discourse expects readers to establish substantial discursive connections, inferentially as well as contextually. Despite all this, however, the passage keeps haunting Confucian studies as uninspired and unprincipled. I think a more explicitly rhetorical or kairic reading can help. First, zhi-the-upstanding 「 ( 直」) is a complex concept. In the Analects, zhi 「 ( 直」) is used as upright39 or candid40 most of the time, but it is often modified. Zhi 「 ( 直」) is rowdiness and unruliness ( jiao 「絞」) without deference (li 「禮」) and learning (xue「學」)41. Zhi 「 ( 直」) is contrasted unfavorably with exemplary persons who sometimes roll up or preserve (juan 「卷」) their talents or services42. Zhi 「 ( 直」) is combined with yi-the-appropriateness43, without which straightforwardness, honesty, or zhi 「 ( 直」) by itself is not always admirable and in fact is harmful. Still, zhi 「 ( 直」) has a clear sense of justice. When questioning the saying “repay ill-will with beneficence,” Confucius counters, “repay ill-will with zhi” (14.3644). Zhi, in short, is kairic, and it is in this very context of the Analects, a zhi 「 ( 直」) person is said to cover up for the father. Given the kairic nature of zhi 「 ( 直」), it is not surprising that it is the literary scholar Stephen Halliwell whose study of Aristotle’s view of rhetoric sheds most light on an understanding of 13.18. Halliwell focuses on the concept of sumpheron, expediency, as “a systematically (and therefore legally) necessary requisite for a political society” (183). In doing so, Halliwell takes on the difficult ethical issue of straightness in the crooked. Quoting numerous passages from Aristotle’s Politics, Nicomachean Ethics, as well as Rhetoric, Halliwell traces sumpheron or expediency to the idea “that justice is some kind of self-interest” all the way to Plato (Halliwell 189). Halliwell concludes, “to perceive the good, in other words, will sometimes involve, and be involved in, seeing what is advantageous for oneself or one’s community” (184)—or one’s Confucian family that in fact extends very much beyond the family itself. Selfishness, in other words, is complex, and there is a moral dimension to it in Aristotle’s and Confucius’ thinking. This moral

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dimension, as Lear describes in Chapter Three, is our limited immortality through participating in the eternal cosmic energeia in the only way we can: generation after generation. Enthymematic thinking is weighing layers or shades of truths and reaching the best probable knowledge for the time being. This is Confucius’ rhetorical thinking, as it is Aristotle’s. Aristotle explains, [there are] those whose wrongful acts lead to some praise, for example if the results include vengeance for a father or mother, as in the case of Zeno, while the punishments lead [only] to fines or exile or something of that sort … And those who can seem to have acted by accident or by necessity or by natural instinct or by habit and all in all seem to have made a mistake rather than committed a crime. (Rhetoric 1.12.9–14 trans. Kennedy45) Here, Aristotle could very well have explained Confucius’ thinking that is left unexplained by Confucius in 13.18. The wrong and the praiseworthy are not necessarily mutually exclusive; there is a difference between mistakes and crimes; and zhi-the-upstanding is as kairic as yi-the-appropriate. Aristotle is indeed clearer than Confucius in moments like 13.18, and the contrast between Aristotle’s clarity and Confucius’ elusiveness reflects the contrast between the ultimate ideal or truth as the form or mean that is simply right or as the dao or yinyang that constantly transforms. The Aristotelian fondness for clarity, for deduction in rhetoric, and for the display of confidence from the orator reflects a vision of truths as formal and an emphasis on the ascertainable aspect of the truths. It is because of this emphasis that deductive reasoning from universals to particulars can “excite the louder applause.” The Confucian proclivity for subtlety, for induction in rhetoric, and for self-revision reflects a vision of the truths as dao-like and an emphasis on the inhabitable aspect of the dao. To Aristotle, the higher the level of actuality, the more certain we can be about truths, which are shapely. To Confucius, the longer we walk the way, the better we live with tianming-the-cosmic-order, which are dao-like. As Confucius says, he was confident at making decisions by the time he was forty and knew tianming-the-cosmic-order by the time he was fifty. Knowing tianming, however, did not make him know it as simply right; rather, he continues into hearing the movement of reality in the air by the time he was sixty and acting naturally with that movement by the time he was seventy. It is important to be aware of this difference to communicate effectively cross-culturally, to avoid misinterpreting Confucian ethos as a lack of confidence and Aristotelian ethos as a lack of flexibility.

Conclusions In the end, Aristotle’s compassionate and investigative individuals—who “draw opposite conclusions impartially” to see facts clearly, confute those who argue unfairly (1355a28–36)—reason in a similar way as Confucius’ just as compassionate but elliptical ren persons who also examine both sides46 but then insist on

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improving themselves to inspire their community47 like the northern star (2.148). Both rely on the natural human ability to empathize with others, and both take on the challenge to enthymemize judgment and knowledge where obeying the same law or observing the same ritual can be right and not right, contingent upon given situations. Yet, they emphasize different modes of inference, different visions of the most reasonable. These similarities and differences manifest themselves in enthymematic thinking itself. The syllogistic form and the form of the trigrams look similar and they are thought to have originated similarly from the prime mover and tian-the-cosmos, as discussed in Chapter Three. However, while the enthymeme ostensibly retains the syllogistic form, trigrams openly multiply into hexagrams, and this difference in appearance reflects different emphases in thinking. The emphasis on the linear form of the enthymeme, which contains inductive reasoning within itself, reflects the ideal mean as simply right and the ultimate vision of truths as the form. The emphasis on the octagonal shape of the bagua-the-eight-trigrams, which contains the deductive reasoning within itself, reflects the ideal yinyang as riding the middle (zhongxing 中 行) and the ultimate vision of truths as the dao. As a result of the different emphases on the dynamic state of the form and the constant process of the way, the posterity of Aristotle and Confucius have developed different cultural ethos. Aristotelians trust more readily the confident and exact interlocutors because they seem more selfactualized with the simply right. In contrast, Confucians appreciate more deeply the astute and discreet interlocutors because they seem more in tune with the rhythms of the dao’s or cosmic “disequilibrium” (Swimme and Tucker 30).

Notes 1 I use Roberts’ translation because, even though it is less literal, it more effectively reminds the reader of Aristotle’s hylomorphic thinking. Indeed, substance is not a perfect translation, but it works as long as the reader keeps in mind that Aristotle’s view of substance has three meanings, “matter, form, and the complex of both” (Aristotle On the Soul, 414a15). In this context, I think it does work because I have focused my discussion on the very complexity of substance and am therefore counting on the reader’s thinking of substance in this complex sense. The Greek text σῶμα τῆς πίστεως is literally “body of pistis.” Pistis is “proof, means of persuasion, belief” (Kennedy On Rhetoric 30) or faith. The word σῶμα indeed emphasizes the meaning of the material as opposed to the spiritual, justifying the translation of “the ‘body’ of persuasion” (30). Yet body is enmattered for Aristotle, and this is why, I believe, Kennedy uses the quotation marks around body to indicate that body as a translation is not perfect, just as substance is not. Furthermore, Kennedy notes that body is in contrast with “matters external to the subject,” suggesting that it is internal to it. Finally, in the commentary, Kennedy states, if the enthymeme is the body, “one might speculate that the soul, or life, of persuasion comes from ethical and emotional qualities” (30). Given that there are three artistic pisteis to Aristotle, one has to wonder “why is the life or soul of rhetoric ethos, pathos, but not logos?” Ultimately, the reason has to be that the enthymeme is both the body and the soul of rhetoric, as Grimaldi argues compellingly. I will discuss Grimaldi later in this chapter, but Aristotle’s discussion of common and special topics leaves no doubt that rhetorical logos and the enthymeme are inseparably one. Just as rhetorical logos are enmattered Logos, the enthymematic body is enmattered Soul. In other words, Kennedy does not mention logos because, I believe, it has been said to be the body; however, if we remember Aristotle’s hylomorphic view of substance, then we see that there does not have to be a contradiction. Roberts’ translation

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of substance, though not literal, is more upfront about this complexity and can preempt the awkward but conspicuous absence later in the translation and discussion—as long as the reader understands the complexity of Aristotle’s view of substance. I think I can safely assume this to be case of the reader at this point. Indeed, science is done differently as well as similarly across cultures. The concept of the meridian in Chinese medicine, for example, is a way the Chinese do science, a way that goes outside the science as the West knows it. I would presume that the relation between the similarity and the difference among different sciences is as intricate as that between the similarity and difference among different rhetorics and therefore the relation requires separate efforts like this study. Here I use the generalized expression “science as the West knows it” with the understanding of its complexity but without the assumption of its superiority. See Chapter Two for the translation and discussion of 13.3 (55–56). Kennedy translates this phrase as “more wrong.” This discussion is indebted to Richard A. Lee Jr. and Christopher P. Long’s study “Nous and Logos in Aristotle,” where they analyze two examples in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (356–60). The debate can be traced back to that between Plato and the Sophists and continues today. See discussion in Chapter One. I use Long’s translation because it is consistent with the Oxford translation but it also shows the twofold characteristic more easily for this context. Aristotle’s: All humans are mortal; Socrates is human; Socrates is mortal (M=P; S=M; S=P). Wang’s: All men are creatures; all creatures are mortal; all men are mortal (S=M; M=P; S=P). Both Xing Lu (Rhetoric 82) and Kennedy see deductive reasoning as more or less absent from Confucius’ teaching. Lu sees it more in the teaching by the School of Ming (84), and Kennedy, Chinese daoism (Comparative 160). 曾子曰：「君子以文會友；以友輔仁。」 (12.24) “Exemplary persons meet friends through observing ritual propriety and reading and writing; they become people of ren through interacting with their friends.” 哀公問於有若曰：「年饑，用不足，如之何？」有若對曰：「盍徹乎！」曰： 「二，吾猶不足；如之何其徹也？」對曰：「百姓足，君孰不足？百姓不足， 君孰與足？」Duke Ai asks You Ruo, “The harvest has not been good and the state’s inventory is shrinking. What should we do?” You Rou replies, “How about trying the tithe?” The Duke says, “We do not have enough to use now when taxes are twice as much; how can the tithe help?” You Rou replies, “When people have enough, how can you not? When people do not have enough, how can you?” (12.9). 子曰：「管仲之器小哉。」 或曰：「管仲儉乎？」 曰：「管氏有三歸，官事不 攝，焉得儉？」「然則管仲知禮乎？」 曰：「邦君樹塞門，管氏亦樹塞門。邦 君為兩君之好，有反坫，管氏亦有反坫。管氏而知禮，孰不知禮？」The Master says, “Guan Zhong is miserly.” Someone asks, “Is Guan Zhong penny-wise?” The Master says, “He has residence in three places and each member of his staff has only one responsibility—how is that penny-wise?” “Does Guan Zhong know li-the-rituallyappropriate?” The Master says, “The head of the state uses the screen in front of the gate, and Guan Zhong does also. The head of the state uses the ceremonial stand for the drinking goblets, and Guan Zhong does also. If Guan Zhong knows li-the-rituallyappropriate, who doesn’t?” (3.22). 或問子產。子曰：「惠人也。」問子西。曰：「彼哉彼哉！」問「管仲」。曰： 「人也，奪伯氏駢邑三百，飯疏食，沒齒，無怨言。」Someone asks about Zi Chan. The Master replies, “[He is of] the benevolent kind.” The person asks about Zi Xi. The Master says, “Well, well!” Then the person asks about Guan Zhong. The Master says, “He is of the exceptional kind! He confiscated the Bo Family’s land by three hundred households, but the Boes, though eating coarse rice for the rest of their lives, never complained.” (14.9).

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14 Two earlier sources, which Qian uses and which are quoted here, are Shiji 《 ( 史記》), The Record of History, by Sima Qian (c.145–90 BCE) and Zuozhuan 《 ( 左傳》), believed to be written by Zuo Qiuming (5th century BCE). The historical events referred to in these passages took place in the State of Qi during the Spring and Autumn Period with Duke Huan ruling from 685–643 BCE. 15 子曰：「中人以上，可以語上也；中人以下，不可以語上也。」The Master says, “Discuss profound matters with those who are cultivated and educated beyond the level of average; discuss regular matters with those who have not reached the average level.” (6.19); The Master says, “Leading, one should always provide guidance but not always the reasons for the guidance provided.” 子曰：「民可使由之，不可使知之。」 (8.9). 16 子曰：「不患人知不知己，患不知人也。」Worry not about being unknown to others; worry about not knowing others. (1.16); 子曰：「不患無位，患所以立；不患 莫己知，求為可知也。」 The Master says, “Do not worry about not having office; worry about not having the competence to hold one. Do not worry about being unknown to others; worry about having nothing worthy of knowing to others.” (4.14); 子曰： 「不患人之不己知，患其不能也。」The Master says, “Don’t worry about not being recognized by others; worry about not having reasons for such recognition.” (14.32); 子曰：「君子病無能焉，不病人之不己知也。」The Master says, “Exemplary persons are concerned about being not competent, not about being unknown.” (15.18); 子曰：「君子求諸己；小人求諸人。」The Master says, “Exemplary persons expect much from themselves, while their opposite, from others.” (15.20); 子曰：「見賢思 齊焉；見不賢而內自省也。」When seeing the good and talented, one should think how to emulate; when seeing the opposite, one should reflect on how to avoid it oneself.” (4.17); 樊遲問知。子曰：「務民之義，敬鬼神而遠之，可謂知矣。」 問仁。曰：「仁者先難而後獲，可謂仁矣。」Fan Chi asks about knowing. The Master says, “In serving the people, keep a respectful distance from ghosts and spirits.” Fan Chi then asks about ren-the-equitable. The Master replies, “Those of ren are first in facing challenges and last in receiving recognition.” (6.20). 17 子張問於孔子曰：「何如，斯可以從政矣？」子曰：「尊五美，屏四惡，斯可 以從政矣。」子張曰：「何謂五美？」子曰：「君子惠而不費；勞而不怨；欲 而不貪；泰而不驕；威而不猛。」子張曰：「何謂惠而不費？」子曰：「因民 之所利而利之，斯不亦惠而不費乎？擇可勞而勞之，又誰怨！欲仁而得仁，又 焉貪！君子無眾寡，無小大，無敢慢，斯不亦泰而不驕乎！君子正其衣冠，尊 其瞻視，儼然人望而畏之，斯不亦威而不猛乎！」子張曰：「何謂四惡？」 子曰：「不教而殺謂之虐；不戒視成謂之暴；慢令致期謂之賊；猶之與人也， 出納之吝，謂之有司。」Zi Zhang asks Confucius, “How does one govern?” The Master says, “If you respect the five boons and avoid the four banes, you can govern.” “What are the five boons?” asks Zi Zhang. The Master replies, “Exemplary persons benefit people without being wasteful, have people work hard and yet cause no ill will, meet desires without feeding greed. They are composed without being arrogant and dignified without being intimidating.” Zi Zhang asks, “How to benefit people without being wasteful?” The Master explains, “Giving only according to people’s needs, won’t that benefit people without being wasteful? Employ people according to their abilities, who will complain? Desiring ren-the-equitable and realizing it, who will become covetous? Being an exemplary person, if you treat all people respectfully no matter how many or how few, how great or how humble they are, won’t you be composed without being arrogant! Being an exemplary person, you wear proper caps and robes, look at people straight in their eyes respectfully, and inspire awe, won’t you be dignified without being intimidating?” Zi Zhang asks again, “What are the four banes?” The Master says, “To execute people but to have never educated them is barbaric; to be slow with instructions but then to nitpick on the results is tyrannical; to set people up by not emphasizing the importance of the timetable but then being a stickler about the deadline is criminal; and to be miserly in paying one’s owing is unbecoming.” (20.2).

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18 孟氏使陽膚為士師，問於曾子。曾子曰：「上失其道，民散久矣！如得其情， 則哀矜而勿喜。」When Yang Fu is appointed by the Ji clan to be the prison warden, he consults Master Zeng, who tells him, “Dao has not prevailed for a while now among those who lead the country and therefore people are not unified around the common good. Judge cases based on facts, but also sympathize with the wrong doers, and do not be complacent about yourself.” (19.19). 19 子曰：「由也，女聞六言六蔽矣乎？」對曰：「未也。」「居！吾語女：好 『仁』不好學，其蔽也『愚』；好『知』不好學，其蔽也『蕩』；好『信』不 好學，其蔽也『賊』；好『直』不好學，其蔽也『絞』；好『勇』不好學，其 蔽也『亂』；好『剛』不好學，其蔽也『狂』。」The Master asks Zi Lu, “Have you heard of the sayings about the six moral characters and six abuses?” “No,” replies Zi Lu. “Sit down,” Confucius says, “and let me tell you about them. Those fond of ren-the-equitable but not of learning become foolish; those fond of knowing but not of learning become wanton; those fond of trustworthiness but not of learning become causes of harm; those fond of honesty but not of learning become unkind; those fond of bravery but not of learning become unruly; and those fond of strength but not of learning become disrespectful.” (17.8). 20 子擊磬於衞。有荷蕢而過孔氏之門者，曰：「有心哉！擊磬乎！」既而曰： 「鄙哉！踁踁乎！莫己知也，斯己而已矣。『深則厲，淺則揭』」子曰： 「果哉！末之難矣。」The Master is playing music in Wei. A person with a basket is passing by his door, saying, “A thoughtful person! Strong sound!” And then he says, “It’s not good to be so stubborn. If no one knows you, just take care of yourself. ‘If the water is deep, feel your way by stepping on the stones; if the water is shallow, all you have to do is to lift your robe.’” The Master says, “How decisive! I can hardly talk with someone like that.” (14.42). 21 子曰：「禘自既灌而往者，吾不欲觀之矣。」The Master says, “About the di sacrifice, I do not want to watch it once the libation has been offered.” (3.10). 22 或問禘之說。子曰：「不知也，之其說者之於天下也，其如示諸斯乎？」指其 掌。Someone asks about the di sacrifice. The Master says, “I do not know. Those who do would know the world like they know their own palm.” He points at the palm of his hand. (3.11). 23 子入大廟，每事問。或曰：「孰謂鄒人之子知禮乎？入大廟，每事問。」子聞 之，曰：“是禮也？」When the Master enters the Grand Ancestral Hall, he asks questions about everything. Someone comments, “Who says this youngster of Zou knows about ritual propriety? He asks about everything in the Hall.” When the Master hears this, he says, “Are they acting according to ritual propriety?” (3.15). 24 It is awkward because to Confucius one does not disparage the head of one’s own state, especially the head who is deceased, with those from other states, just as one does not disparage one’s own parents with nonfamily members. 25 陳司敗問：「昭公知禮乎？」孔子曰：「知禮。」孔子退，揖巫馬而進之， 曰：「吾聞君子不當，君子亦當乎？君取於吳為同姓，謂之吳孟子。君而知 禮，孰不知禮？」巫馬期以告。子曰：「丘也幸，苟有過，人必知之。」The Minister of Justice in the State of Chen asks, “Did Duke Zhao observe ritual propriety?” The Master replies, “He did.” After Confucius leaves, the Minister bows to Wuma Qi, invites him in, and says to him, “I have heard that exemplary persons are not partisan, but aren’t they? Duke Zhao took a wife from the State of Wu who had the same surname as he did and then called him Wu Mengzi. If the Duke acted according to ritual propriety, who doesn’t?” Wuma Qi tells the Master about this exchange, and the Master says, “I am fortunate to have people notice my mistakes when I make them.” (7.30). 26 衛子去之；箕子為之奴；比干諫而死。孔子曰：「殷有三仁焉！」Nobleman of Wei left him; nobleman of Ji became his slave; and Bi Gan was executed by him because of remonstration. The Master says, “There are three people of ren in the Shang Dynasty.” (18.1); see page 165 below for 18.8, and the passage is also discussed and translated in full in Chapter Three (121).

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27 Explaining topics for epideictic discourse, Aristotle states, “we are also to assume, when we wish either to praise a man or blame him, that qualities closely allied to those which he actually has are identical with them; for instance, that the cautious man is cold-blooded and treacherous, and that the stupid man is an honest fellow or the thick-skinned man a good-tempered one” (1367a32–35). But this thinking is deemphasized, as seen in the fact that the passage is followed by the warning that the audience may mistake the probable truths in the assumptions as absolute, even though these assumptions are no more faulty than most other assumptions discussed such as wise being just. 28 6.28. For translation, see 154–55 “Ren and Epieikeia: Enthymemes of Continuity and Change.” 29 子路從而後，遇丈人，以杖荷蓧子路問曰：「子見夫子乎？」丈人曰：「四禮 不勤，五穀不分，孰為夫子！」植其杖而芸。子路拱而立。止子路宿，殺雞為 黍而食之，見其二子焉。明日，子路行以告。子曰：「隱者也。」使子路反見 之。至，則行矣。子路曰：「不士無義。長幼之節，不可廢也；君臣之義，如 之何其廢之？欲潔其身，而亂大倫。君子之仕也，行其義也。道之不行，已知 之矣！」Zi Lu is traveling with the Master but falls behind and meets an elderly who is shouldering a cane that has his weeding hoe hanging at the end. Zi Lu asks, “Have you seen my Master?” The elderly replies, “You don’t work with your four limbs and cannot tell the five grains apart. Who knows your Master!” The elderly then starts weeding, helping himself with his cane. Zi Lu solutes to the elderly, respectfully holding his hands together in front of himself. The elderly then invites Zi Lu to his home, prepares some special millet with chicken, and introduces his two sons to Zi Lu. The next day, Zi Lu says goodbye, catches up to his Master, and tells him about the old man. The Master says, “He is a recluse,” and then sends Zi Lu back to look for the man. When Zi Lu arrives, the old man has left. Zi Lu says [to his sons], “Not serving the public is not right. The young have inescapable obligation to the older; how could the statesmen’s obligation to their rulers be ignored? Keeping yourself clean, you let the state go tainted. It’s only right for exemplary persons to do their duty and serve the state; as for dao’s not prevailing, that’s something we have known for a while.” (18.7). 30 子曰：「德之不修，學之不講，聞義不能徒，不善不能改，是吾憂也。」 The Master says, “I worry about those who do not try to cultivate excellence, not endeavor to practice the learning, not follow what’s yi-the-appropriate, or not have the courage to correct the wrong.” (7.3); 子張問「崇德，辨惑。」子曰：「主忠 信，徒義崇德也。愛之欲其生，惡之欲其死；既欲其生又欲其死，是惑也！」 （誠不以富，亦祇以異。 ）Zi Zhang asks about achieving excellence and sorting through confusion. The Master says, “Do your utmost; be trustworthy; follow the appropriate; and you will achieve excellence. To like others so much sometimes that you wish them longevity but then to dislike them so much some other times you wish them to die—wishing them to live and to die, you would be confused.” (12.10) Note that the last phrase in the parentheses is translated with 16.12 in Chapter Five (217). Commentators suspect this phrase is misplaced due to corruption of the text, and I observe Qian’s rendering and use this with 16.12. 孔子曰：「『見善如不 及，見不善而探湯；』吾見其人矣，吾聞其語矣！『隱居以求其志，行義以達 其道；』吾聞其語矣，未見其人也！」The Master says, “I have heard those who say ‘pursue goodness like you fear you would lose something and avoid the opposite like you fear you would be burnt by boiling soup,’ and I have met those who act accordingly. I have heard those who say ‘maintain your ideals by withdrawing [from chaos] but, when possible, carry out dao-the-way according to yi-the-appropriate’ but I am yet to meet those who act accordingly.” (16.11); 子曰：「群居終日，言 不及義，好行小慧；難矣哉！」The Master says, “Gather together all day long; speak inappropriately, and delight in petty cleverness—what to do about people like these!” (15.16).

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31 子曰：「君子喻於義，小人喻於利。」The Master says, “Exemplary persons inquire into yi-the-appropriate; petty persons quibble over personal gain.” (4.16); 子曰：「飯疏食飲水，曲肱而枕之，樂亦在其中矣。不義而富且貴，於我如浮 雲。」The Master says, “Eating coarse food, drinking plain water, sleeping with a bent arm as the pillow, I find pleasure in living like this. To me, riches gained through inappropriate means are like the floating clouds.” (7.15); 孔子曰：「君子有九思：視 思明，聽思聰，色思溫，貌思恭，言思忠，事思敬，疑思問，忿思難，見得思 義。」The Master says, “Exemplary persons consider nine things: Looking, they consider seeing perspicuously; listening, they consider hearing acutely; showing countenance, they consider kind expressions; conducting themselves, they consider honorable actions; speaking, they consider tolerant words; working, they consider conscientious effort; in doubt, they consider consulting with others; irritated, they consider the aftermath of anger; and gaining profit, they consider appropriateness.” (16.10). 32 子謂子產，「有君子之道四焉：其行己也恭，其事上也敬，其養民也惠，其使 民也義。」The Master comments on Zi Chan, saying, “He is an exemplary person in four respects: He conducts himself politely, serves his superior respectfully, provides for his people benevolently, and employs them appropriately.” (5.15); 樊遲問知。子曰： 「務民之義，敬鬼神而遠之，可謂知矣。」 問仁。曰：「仁者先難而後獲，可 謂仁矣。」Fan Chi asks about wisdom. The Master says, “Serve the people according to yi-the-appropriate and respect ghosts and spirits by keeping distance from them. That is wisdom.” Fan Chi asks about ren-the-equitable. The Master says, “Those of ren are first in facing difficulties and last in collecting awards.” (6.20); 樊遲請學稼，子曰： 「吾不如老農。」請學為圃，曰：「吾不如老圃。」樊遲出，子曰：「小人 哉，樊須也！上好禮，則民莫敢不敬；上好義，則民莫敢不服；上好信，則民 莫敢不用情。夫如是，則四方之民，襁負其子而至矣；焉用稼！」Fan Chi asks how to govern through learning to farm, and the Master replies, “I’m not as helpful to you as a farmer is.” Fan Chi asks how to govern through learning to grow vegetables, and the Master replies, “I’m not as helpful to you as a gardener is.” Fan Chi leaves, and the Master says, “Fan Chi is thinking as a commoner, not someone who has to run public affairs! If those above observe li-the-ritually-appropriate, ritual propriety, then people will not be disrespectful; if those above observe yi-the-appropriate, appropriateness, then people will not be defiant; if those above observe xin (信), trustworthiness, then people will not be deceitful. This way, people from everywhere will come to you carrying their children on their backs; what is the need of governing through learning to farm!” (13.4). 33 子游曰：「吾友張也，為難能也；然而未仁。」Zi You says, “My friend Zi Zhang is so ambitious that few can compare with him in that regard, but he has yet to cultivate ren.” (19.15); 曾子曰：「堂堂乎張也！難與並為仁矣。」Master Zeng says, “The unapproachable Zi Zhang! It’s hard for him to cultivate ren.” (19.16). 34 子張問：「士，何如斯可謂之達矣？」子曰：「何哉？爾所謂達者！」子張對 曰：「在邦必聞，在家必聞。」子曰：「是聞也，非達也。夫達也者：質直而 好義，察言而觀色，慮以下人；在邦必達，在家必達。夫聞也者：色取仁而行 違，居之不疑；在邦必聞，在家必聞。」Zi Zhang asks, “What kind of scholar is accomplished?” The Master asks, “What do you mean by accomplished?” Zi Zhang replies, “To be known throughout the state and among the state officials.” The Master says, “That is known, not accomplished. Those who are truly accomplished are unpretentious and yet pursue what’s yi-the-appropriate, listen when others speak, sense others’ reaction through observing their countenances, and are willing to promote others; they are truly accomplished in the states and at home. As for the known, they appear renly, act to the contrary, yet deem themselves infallible; they are known in the state and among people. (12.20). 35 子絕四，毋意，毋必，毋固，毋我。The Master does not do the following: he does not speculate based on nothing, is not stubborn, nor inflexible, and does not act with himself as the center. (9.4).

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36 微生畝謂孔子曰：「丘何為是栖栖者與？無乃為佞乎？」孔子曰：「非敢為佞 也，疾固也。」Wei Shengmu says to Confucius: “Why do you skip from tree to tree [like a bird]? Is it because you are a sophist?” Confucius replies, “Not a sophist, I do resent inflexibility.” (14.34). 37 For translation of 17.7, see Chapter Two (51). 38 Wisconsin Statues and Codes 905.05 Husband-Wife and Domestic Partner Privilege. Laws.com. Available online at http://statutes.laws.com/wisconsin/905/905.05 (accessed June 15, 2016). 39 Zhi (直) is used in the sense of uprightness, for example, in 2.19, 6.17, 12.20, 13.18, 14.36, 15.6, 17.24, and 18.2. 40 Zhi (直) is used in the sense of candor, for example, in 5.23, 8.2, 8.16, 17.8, 13.18, and 17.24. 子貢曰：「君子亦有惡乎？」子曰：「有惡。惡稱人之惡者，惡居 下流而訕上者，惡勇而無禮者，惡果敢而窒者。」曰：「賜也亦有惡乎？」 「惡徼以為知者，惡不係以為勇者，惡訐以為直者。」Zi Gong asks, “Do exemplary persons have strong dislikes?” The Master says, “They do. They detest gossiping about others’ imperfections, slandering the superiors, venturing with no sense of li-theritually-appropriate yet with much obstinacy.” The Master then asks, “Do you have strong dislikes?” Zi Gong replies, “I dislike mistaking luck for wisdom, immodesty for bravery, and gossiping for honesty.” (17.24). 41 子曰：「恭而無禮則勞；慎而無禮則葸；勇而無禮則亂；直而無禮則絞。君子 篤於親，則民興於仁。故舊不遺，則民不偷。」The Master says, “Respect without li-the-ritually-appropriate is distress; prudence without li is fear; bravery without li is strife; candor without li is wrangling; if exemplary persons are honest and kind to those near and dear, then people will rise up to ren. Nothing is amiss, and no one steals.” (8.2). See note 19 for 17.8. 42 子曰：「直哉史魚！邦有道，如矢；邦有道，如矢。君子哉蘧伯玉！邦有道， 則仕；邦無道，則可卷而懷之。」The Master says, “How true is Shiyu! When daothe-way prevails in the state, he is as straight as an arrow; when it doesn’t, he is still as straight as an arrow. Qu Boyu is indeed an exemplary person (junzi 君子)! When the way prevails in the state, he gives of his service, and when it does not, he rolls it up and tucks it away.” (15.6). 43 12.20. See note 34 for translation. 44 或曰：「以德報怨，何如？」子曰：「何以報德？以直報怨，以德報德。」 Someone asks, “What do you think of the saying ‘Repay ill-will with beneficence (de 德)’?” The Master replies, “Then how would one repay beneficence? Repay ill-will with zhi (直). Repay beneficence with beneficence (de 德).” (14.36). 45 I use Kennedy’s translation here because it is more concise and it makes more prominent the relevance of this passage to the discussion. The Bekker line numbers are 1372b1–18. 46 An example is passage 17.7 discussed in Chapter Two (51), where objecting to Confucius’ accepting the invitation from the official Fo Xi, Zi Lu quotes Confucius himself as using one saying and Confucius replies with another saying/premise. 47 Here are two more passages in addition to those quotes above. 子曰：「苟正其身 矣，於從政乎何有？不能正其身，如正人何？」The Master says, “How could it be hard for those who are exemplary themselves to govern effectively? How could it be easy for those who are the opposite to govern at all?” (13.13); 子路問君子。子曰： 「修己以敬。」曰：「如斯而已乎？」曰：「修己以安人。」曰：「如斯而已 乎？」曰：「修己以安百姓。修己以安百姓，堯舜其猶病諸。」Zi Lu asks about exemplary persons [in public office]. The Master says, “Improve oneself [according to li-the-ritually-appropriate].” Zi Lu asks again, “Is that enough?” The Master replies, “Improving oneself leads to contentment and happiness of all people. Even Yao and Yun would find it difficult to do sometimes.” (14.45). 48 See Chapter Three for the discussion and translation of 2.1 (107).

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Qian, Mu. （錢穆）Lun yu xin jie. 《論語新解》Taipei Shi: Lian jing, 1994. Rapheal, Sally. “Rhetoric, Dialectic, and Syllogistic Argument: Aristotle’s Position in Rhetoric I−II.” Phronesis. 19 (1974):153–67. Rapp, Christof. “Aristotle’s Rhetoric.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2010 Edition). Ed. Edward N. Alta. n.d. Available online at http://plato.stanford.edu/ entries/aristotle-rhetoric/ (accessed Apr. 4, 2011). Rorty, Amelie Oksenberg, ed. Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Schaberg, David. “The Logic of Signs in Early Chinese Rhetoric.” Early China/Ancient Greece: Thinking through Comparisons. Eds. Steven Shankman and Stephen W. Durrant. New York: SUNY, 2002. 155–86. ———. A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Severino, Carol. “The ‘Doodles’ in Context: Qualifying Claims about Contrastive Rhetoric.” The Writing Center Journal. 14.1 (Fall, 1993): 44–62. n.d. Available online at http:// writing2.richmond.edu/training/383/383restricted/severino.pdf (accessed May 5, 2005). Sim, May. Remastering Morals with Aristotle and Confucius. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Smith, Craig R. “Deducing a Rhetorical Theory from Confucius Using the Aristotelian Model.” World Communication: A Journal of the World Communication Association. 23 (1994): 35–41. Soles, David E. “Confucius and the Role of Reason.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy. 22 (1995): 249–61. Swimme, Brian Thomas and Mary Evelyn Tucker. Journey of the Universe. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011. Toulmin, Stephen. The Uses of Argument. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1958. Tu, Weiming (杜維明). Humanity and Self-Cultivation: Essays in Confucian Thought. Boston: Cheng & Tsui, 1998. Wardy, Robert. The Birth of Rhetoric: Gorgias, Plato and Their Successors. New York: Routledge, 1996. Warnick, Barbara. “Judgment, Probability, and Aristotle’s Rhetoric.” Quarterly Journal of Speech. 9 (1989): 299–311. Whitlock, Greg. “Concealing the Misconduct of One’s Own Father: Confucius and Plato on a Question of Filial Piety.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy. 21.2 (1994): 113–137. Wiley, Mark, Barbara Gleason, and Louis Wetherbee Phelps, eds. Composition in Four Keys: Inquiring into the Field. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1996. Williams, Jay G. “On Reading a Confucian Classic: The Rhetoric of the Lun Yu.” Journal of Chinese Religions. 19 (1991): 105–11. Wu, Hui. “The Enthymeme Examined from the Chinese Value System.” Making and Unmaking the Prospects for Rhetoric: Selected Papers from the 1996 Rhetoric Society of America Conference. Eds. Theresa Enos and Richard McNabb. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1997. 115–22. Yabuuti, Kiyosi. “Chinese Astronomy: Development and Limiting Factors.” Chinese Science: Explorations of an Ancient Tradition. Eds. Shigeru Nakayama and Nathan Sivin. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1973. 91–104. Yoke, Ho Peng and F. Peer Linsowski. A Brief History of Chinese Medicine. 2nd ed. Singapore: World Science, 1998. Yosida, Mitukuni. “The Chinese Concept of Nature.” Chinese Science: Explorations of an Ancient Tradition. Eds. Shigeru Nakayama and Nathan Sivin. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1973. 71–90. You, Xiaoye. “The Way, Multimodality of Ritual Symbols, and Social Change: Reading Confucius’s Analects as a Rhetoric.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly. 36.4 (2006): 425–48. Yu, Jiyuan. The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2007. Zulick, Margaret. “Generative Rhetoric and Public Argument: A Classical Approach.” Argumentation and Advocacy. 33 (1977): 109–19.

5

Rhetorical education Topoi, stases, li, and yue

I have discussed so far that, to both Aristotle and Confucius, rhetorical thinking functions mainly in the non-dualistic or relational realm between permanence and chance; furthermore, the differences between the two rhetorics are in emphasis but also important. Aristotle and Confucius both deem probable knowledge, eikos-dao, important to seeking the truths of things, noesis-tian. Both reason enthymematically, inductively as well as deductively, multi-directionally as well as linearly, with the characteristic of epieikeia-ren and in the kairic moments of yi. The differences between the two rhetorics are in emphasis but also important. Aristotle emphasizes progressive clarity and Confucius emphasizes deferential relations. While Aristotle highlights the deductive aspect of the rhetorical invention of probable knowledge in his description of the enthymeme, Confucius focuses on the inductive aspect of it in his teaching of ren-the-equitable. These differences shape the different cultural ethos of clarity or resilience, confidence or disequilibrium. Even though the ultimate metaphors of truths as the form and as the way are both relational, Aristotle and Confucius differ in the emphasis on the mean or on the yinyang, ideals that are a kind of intermediate that is an extreme and is simply right or that are a kind of movement that is closer now to one extreme, now to the other. In short, the similarities between Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking are profound, but the differences between the two are also meaningful. To help foster better understanding and communication between the two cultures informed by these two kinds of rhetorical thinking, comparative rhetoricians will do better by refraining from drawing hasty and overgeneralized conclusions and by attending to the multifaceted and significant nuances of detail within as well as between the two kinds of rhetorical thinking. In this chapter, I would like to show that close examinations of the methodological aspect of Confucius’ and Aristotle’s teachings regarding rhetorical inquiry yield similar insights. I will focus on topoi, stases, li-the-ritually-appropriate, and yue-the-music as concepts that exemplify Aristotle’s and Confucius’ teaching of how and why the art of rhetorical invention may lead to new probable knowledge. More specifically, even though methodology and education necessitate certain systematicity, neither Aristotle nor Confucius mistakes them as merely static or as obstructive to rhetorical invention. Rather, they teach topoi/topics, stases/issues, li/deference, and yue/harmony1 as integral to rhetorical creativity. To understand

Rhetorical education 179 these concepts, we continue to wrestle with two hurdles that are closely related. One is more familiar by now, the misconception that artificiality is devoid of authenticity or rhetoric is merely a conduit for ideas. This barrier to understanding Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical teaching has been the focus of the discussion so far. The other misconception is that ingenuity is devoid of artificiality. This final chapter focuses specifically on the ways and the reasons ingenuity can be assisted by the art of rhetoric in both Confucius’ and Aristotle’s teaching. The basic principle is, once again, that what are commonly conceived as opposites often relate inseparably in both Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking. How do artificiality and authenticity reconcile in rhetorical activities to coinvent probable knowledge according to the teachings of Aristotle and Confucius, and why? Although Aristotle and Confucius differ in their answers to these questions, their methodologies converge fundamentally in that both lead to novelty and both encourage spontaneity. In addition, Aristotle’s concepts of topoi and stases share two important characteristics with Confucius’ concepts of li and yue: systematicity and flexibility. Topoi and stases are clearly systematic and at times even mechanistic, and so are li and yue. Yet, all four concepts require flexibility as well. These methodological characteristics in rhetorical education combine generality with particularity and reflect the main objective of Aristotle’s and Confucius’ conception of the rhetorical art as inventing probable knowledge that is committed to truth, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to the necessary contingency in the world and in time. In other words, the differences between Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking are not in whether rhetorical methodology is at all inventive and spontaneous; rather, they lie in the kinds of new knowledge they emphasize and therefore in certain approaches they adopt. More specifically, while some scholars observe that rhetorical inventiveness to the Chinese is “the rearrangement of existing ideas and sayings” but it is to the West “the creation of entirely new ideas and expressions” (Swearingen W109), I take a moderate view that this is a difference in emphases and I limit this moderate view to Aristotle and Confucius, not implicating the entire West and China. Aristotle’s rhetorical teaching encourages less dazzling innovativeness and Confucius’ rhetorical teaching, more inventiveness, than they may first seem. All this reinforces the findings so far that the differences lie in emphasizing the metaphors of truth as the form or the way, as relationally formal or formally relational, but not in whether rhetorical activities are committed to realizing or actualizing the truths of things.

Rhetorical inventiveness of topoi and stases in Aristotle’s Rhetoric Explicit discussions of topoi or logos, as compared to those of ethos and pathos, occupy a rather significant portion of the 15 chapters of Book I (4–14) and the 26 chapters of Book II (12–26) of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, the two Books of the Rhetoric where Aristotle focuses the discussion on rhetorical invention. Yet, certain aspects of this concept remain somewhat elusive and also contentious.

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Therefore, I will first discuss the general concept of topoi and the three kinds of topoi in Aristotle’s Rhetoric—common topics, special topics, and the requisites— before I discuss the scholarship on topoi in relation to rhetorical invention. As for the scholarship on stases, it is more limited but also shows a clear connection, in fact an overlap, between topoi and stases. Therefore, I discuss topoi first and then stases in this section on Aristotle’s rhetorical teaching. Three kinds of topoi Aristotle explains that a topos “is a commonplace embracing a large number of particular kinds of enthymeme” (Rhetoric 1403a19). For example, one topos discussed in the Rhetoric (1397a6–19) is to consider the opposite qualities of opposite things in inventing probable knowledge. Aristotle illustrates this topos with one enthymeme: “Temperance is beneficial; for licentiousness is hurtful” (1397a10). Moderation and recklessness make one pair of opposites that guides orators and the audience as they negotiate decisions and form judgments regarding community affairs; and the topos of considering the opposites comprises similar enthymemes, lines of reasoning, based on pairs of opposites like this one. Topoi, therefore, are principal ways of thinking that can guide orators and the audiences as they enthymemize or deliberate probable knowledge or truths regarding the expediency or inexpediency of a decision, the justice or injustice of an action, and the honorableness or the dishonorableness of a person. In the Rhetoric, Aristotle draws a clear distinction between two kinds of topoi: special and common. Common topoi guide all three kinds of rhetorical discourse. The topos of the opposites shown above is common in the sense that it can operate in deliberative, forensic, and epideictic discourses. In fact, some of the common topoi are so general that Aristotle says they can be used in dialectic and rhetoric, syllogisms and enthymemes alike. Here is his discussion of another common topos, the topos of the more and the less: The proper subjects of dialectical and rhetorical syllogisms are the things with which we say the regular or universal Lines of Argument are concerned, that is to say those lines of argument that apply equally to questions of right conduct, natural science, politics, and many other things that have nothing to do with one another. Take, for instance, the line of argument with ‘the more or less’. On this line of argument it is equally easy to base a syllogism or enthymeme about any of what nevertheless are essentially disconnected subjects—right conduct, natural science, or anything else whatever. (Rhetoric 1358a12–17) Aristotle illustrates this common topos again later in the Rhetoric, “if even the gods are not omniscient, certainly human beings are not” (1397b12), illustrating how common lines of reasoning like this are applicable to all three rhetorical discourses. In contrast with this kind of common or “universal” topoi, special topoi

Rhetorical education 181 (Rhetoric 1.4–14) are “propositions proper to each subject” (2.19–26), the subject being the subject matter in political, judicial, and ceremonial discourses. Special topoi are necessary because they “have three distinct ends in view”: expediency, justice, and honor (1368b21–28). An example of a special topos for political oratory is that the country’s “sources of revenue” or expenditure must be considered (1359b23–32). An example of a special topos for judicial oratory is that the cause of action “chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite” must be considered (1369a5–6). An example of a special topos for epideictic or ceremonial oratory is that virtues and vices, “the objects of praise and blame,” must be considered (1366a24). Having both common and specific topoi at their disposal, orators and the audience can inquire more judiciously and thoroughly into what is considered expedient, just, and honorable through particular kinds of rhetorical discourse. There is a third kind of topoi in Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Although scholars vary in their views and most of them do not differentiate it from the common topoi, I find the scholarship for the distinction compelling and the distinction worth preserving. I will examine the debate later with the discussion of Caroline Miller’s work on topoi and novelty but limit my discussion here to the argument for this third kind of topoi. Grimaldi names them the requisites that discourses must meet in order to be rhetorical, and Kennedy describes this third kind of topoi similarly as that “Whether something is possible, actually true, or important are fundamental issues in any speech” (50). In the Rhetoric, Aristotle discusses these requisites first in the general introduction, Chapter Three of Book I, immediately following the first discussion of the common topoi: Since only possible actions and not impossible ones can ever have been done in the past or the present and since things which have not occurred, or will not occur, also cannot have been done or be going to be done, it is necessary for the political, the forensic, and the ceremonial speakers alike to be able to have at their command propositions about the possible and the impossible, and about whether a thing has or has not occurred, will or will not occur. Further … it is plain that we must also have at our command propositions about greatness or smallness and the greater or the lesser—propositions both universal and particular. (1359a12–24) The requisites, in other words, are more fundamental than common topoi in defining rhetorical discourse in general. Kennedy summarizes the arguments for and against the differentiation of the common topoi and the requisites clearly as follows: Since the koinon [“requisite”] “greater and smaller” discussed in section 9 seems similar to the [common] topic of “the more and the less” mentioned in 1.2.21, these koina [“requisites”] have often been called “topics” or “common topics.” Grimaldi (1980–88, 1:85–86) objects to this, with some reason. (50)

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Kennedy proceeds first to pointing out an area in the Rhetoric that Grimaldi’s argument needs to address, but in the end he concludes with Grimaldi, as shown below: Generally, however, Aristotle keeps them distinct: the topic of “the more and the less,” discussed separately in 2.23.4 is a strategy of argument, always involving some contrast, whereas “greater and smaller,” discussed in 1.7.14 and 2.19.26–27, are arguments about the degree of magnitude (that term occurs in 2.18.4) or importance of something and are analogous to such questions as whether something is possible or has actually been done. (50) I think the difference between the requisites and the common topoi in Aristotle’s rhetorical teaching observed by Grimaldi and Kennedy is worth preserving for several reasons. First, the structure of the Rhetoric seems to support this reading. Not only does Aristotle separate the requisites and the three kinds of topoi in the general introduction to the Rhetoric, but he also returns to them separately. In the midst of discussing the deliberative topoi (Chapters 4–8 of Book I), for example, Aristotle devotes Chapter Seven to the koinos or requisite of greatness and smallness. Grimaldi uses this structuring of the Rhetoric to support his argument for the requisites not being the same as common topoi, and Christof Rapp who does not use Grimaldi’s concept of requisites confirms this structural analysis by also separating Chapter Seven from Aristotle’s discussion of deliberative topoi in Chapters Four through Eight in Book I of the Rhetoric (¶ 5). Furthermore, no one has challenged the reading that in Chapters Eighteen and Nineteen of Book II and right before Aristotle discusses the 28 common topoi, he pauses one more time and examines the three requisites separately—another structural detail that Grimaldi uses to support his interpretation. Therefore, these two structural details seem to make a rather compelling case for the view that Aristotle differentiates the common topoi and the requisites. In addition, I agree with Grimaldi and Kennedy on this interpretation also because it is consistent with the evidence I have examined in support of the overall understanding of Aristotle’s rhetorical thinking that I propose in this study: rhetoric is the most useful in the area where certainty is unavailable and opinions are divided, and its main function is to relate, to connect, and to negotiate probable knowledge. While common topoi reflect the dialectical and universal dimension of rhetoric, while special topoi reflect the sophistical and particular dimension of it, what keeps Aristotle’s concept of rhetoric rhetorical, at once differing from and related to the dialectical and the sophistical thinking, is the three requisites, “whether something is possible, actually true, or important.” In this sense, the requisites are key to the probable nature of rhetorical inquiry or thinking and key in connecting, once again, the universal, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the technical, mechanical, or artificial characteristics of rhetorical thinking. Structurally and thematically, the Rhetoric could therefore very well contain three aspects of Aristotle’s teaching of topoi: the universal or common, the particular or special, and the intermediate or requisite.

Rhetorical education 183 Inventiveness of topoi To understand more specifically how topoi facilitate rhetorical invention and creativity, I start here with some scholarship on the nature of topoi in Aristotle’s teaching of rhetoric in general. Michael Leff argues that the concept of topoi is dynamic because it is shaped by the indeterminate nature of the material that rhetoric deals with. To Leff, this means that topoi will always have a certain ambiguity attached to it. Leff proposes that this ambiguous, elusive, or contentious aspect be approached historically, so that topoi—and therefore what they help to produce—are always understood as the products of historical times (23). Somewhat similarly, Barbara Warnick concludes, in her discussion of the differences between Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s The New Rhetoric, that Aristotle’s topical thinking is both cultural and cognitive but also defines “topical systems [as] … catalogs of the habits of mind endemic to a given culture” (111). Warnick uses Aristotle’s discussion of common topos 11, considering existing decisions, to illustrate this point. She explains that an assumption like that “the gods spared one who protected his parents” can lead to the conclusion that one should respect one’s parents; and these aphoristic or maxim-like premises and conclusions are mindsets or ways of thinking that vary from culture to culture and require both cultural familiarities and cognitive abilities (127). Within each culture, that is, basic principles or lines of thinking can help cultural groups to produce knowledge according to those principles. Presupposing that topoi are relatively systematic, Leff and Warnick emphasize the historical and cultural dimension of topoi, emphasizing the strategic (Kennedy 45) aspect of topoi, which are seen then as existing less for their own sake and more for other purposes. Leff and Warnick’s emphasis on the cultural side of topoi is important, but the question of whether Aristotle’s topos thinking is cultural or natural is in fact the same as the familiar questions I have been investigating in this study, for instance, whether probable knowledge is form or matter or whether xing-the-human-nature is being or becoming. The answer so far is that to both Aristotle and Confucius the invention of probable knowledge takes place in the space of or from the tension between the cultural and the natural, the flexible and the systematic, and the discussion of topoi and stases below, based also on studies by William Grimaldi, Nola Heidlebaugh, and Carolyn Miller, leads to similar conclusions. Topoi and imagination Grimaldi maintains that topoi are creative and, through the invention of eikos or probable knowledge, they contribute to the attaining of episteme. Although not offering specific analysis of the processes themselves, as do other scholars I will discuss below, Grimaldi’s argument is reinforced by his thorough explication of the Rhetoric2. Using a historical approach and quoting literary studies by R. Tuve, Grimaldi also points out, “it was in the area of the topics that the faculty of imagination was thought to be most active” (117). Discussing Vico’s On the Study

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Method of Our Times, Grimaldi illustrates how Vico offers similar ideas as Tuve, despite the fact that Vico is “more concerned with the possible exclusion of the whole area of probable knowledge” (117) from rhetoric. While Tuve examined poetic or creative imagination in relation to topoi, Vico developed a science of imagination when he was Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Naples, Italy, from 1699 to1741 (Verene). Despite Vico’s issues with probable knowledge, in other words, both Tuve and Vico provide support for the argument that the use of rhetorical topoi can lead to imaginative and new knowledge. In fact and as mentioned before, not only does Grimaldi point out that “topoi as … an integrated methodology … have enjoyed a dominant, and … a frequently creative, role in the literature of the West” (116–17), he also argues that rhetoricians can use topoi to “enlarge where possible the subject of scientific knowledge” (116). In other words, topical inventiveness entails more than the orators’ mechanically memorizing and then selecting from memory the topics endemic to given cultures, more than backtracking from the orators’ existing conclusions to the convenient topoi. The use of topoi to develop their own arguments also prepares the orators to consider other topoi that the rhetorical audience is cognizant of, that support the audience’s argument not the orators’, and that are thus inconvenient to the orators. Through the analysis of topoi, therefore, Tuve, Vico, and Grimaldi are making strong claims for the complex relation between logos and nous or episteme that I have discussed in this study. At the same time, the specifics of how the process takes place are still to be explored further and some important factors need to be accounted for. As pointed out by Rapp, for instance, many of the 28 common topoi in the Rhetoric entail more matter or less form than those in the Topics. In fact, as Rapp indicates, the common topoi in the Rhetoric include the topos “by which the orator should be enabled to arouse certain emotions in different contexts” and which, from a philosophical perspective, “do not contribute to argumentation in the strictest sense” (Rapp ¶ 5). In other words, given that Aristotle insists that ethos and pathos are part of the artistic proof, or artificially invented probable knowledge, the rhetorical topoi or logoi in the Rhetoric cannot just discover truths. They help both discover new knowledge truthfully—the dialectic side of Aristotle’s view of rhetoric—and invent new knowledge kairically—the sophistical side of it. The latter requires further exploration. Topoi and transformation Nola Heidlebaugh, in Judgment, Rhetoric, and the Problem of Incommensurability, continues this endeavor. She argues that, according to Aristotle, topoi contribute to the rhetorical inventiveness by paving the way for further studies, such as Heidegger’s detailing of how truths unveil themselves to the rhetorically prepared minds and human communities. Heidlebaugh bases her argument for the topos-invention relation on the predicables that Aristotle discusses in the Topics. Predicables are categorizations of predications; they are ways subjects and predicates relate; or they are ways we understand and speak about things. They are

Rhetorical education 185 important to understanding not only Heidlebaugh’s argument but also the concept of stases. Aristotle states, Every proposition and every problem indicates either a genus or a property or an accident—for the differentia too, being generic, should be ranked together with the genus. Since, however, of what is proper to anything part signifies its essence, while part does not, let us divide the proper into the aforesaid parts, and call that part which indicates the essence a definition, while of the remainder let us adopt the terminology which is generally current about these things, and speak of it as property. What we have said, then, makes it clear that according to our present division, the elements turn out to be four, all told, namely either property or definition or genus or accident. (Topics 101b16–25) In other words, the way we understand the truths of things and speak about them can be characterized as four or five in kinds, which are also known as four or five in predicables. This concept is illustrated in Table 5.1. A classic example that illustrates this idea is the human being. To Aristotle, we can speak about human beings (1) as rational animals in essence; (2) as in the genus of animals, which is the part of human essence that humans share with other animals; (3) as animals that are rational, which is the part of human essence that differentiates humans from other animals; (4) as animals that can learn grammar, an attribute or property that is not part of human essence; and (5) as brunettes or blonds, an accidental attribute that is unrelated to human essence. Table 5.1 Predictables: an example Type of Predicables

Explanation

Example

1. Definition

Essential quality

2. Genus

Part of essence shared among same kind Part of essence not shared with those of same kind Nonessential attributes shared by all of same kind Nonessential and accidental attributes

Humans are rational animals. Humans are beings in the genus of animals. Humans are animals that are rational. Humans are beings who can learn grammar. Humans are beings with hair colors like black.

3. Differentia 4. Property 5. Accident

According to Aristotle, predicables can be either four or five in number because genus (humans belong to the genus of animals) and differentia (humans differ from other animals) can be considered one and the same. Heidlebaugh’s point is that rhetorical topoi are developed and organized under these four or five headings or predicables and stand for a way of thinking. Given that predicables are categories of the ways subjects and predicates relate and are about the nature or the truths of things, rhetorical topoi are organized similarly and ultimately have

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the same function. With the help of topoi, orators can see the enthymemes clearly and therefore use them easily, rather than being debilitated by having to memorize an “embarrassment of riches” (92). Therefore, the predicables or topoi are more than mere assistance to memory; they are also a habit of the mind or an attitude in that they can help human communities understand the basic ways they can move beyond impasses as they work towards finding the truths of things. More specifically, Heidlebaugh argues that this systematic habit of organizing topoi according to the predicables helps with the “discovery of truth” (92) because the categories of the predicables not only differentiate or separate but also relate and transform. Heidlebaugh explains that the intertwining of ideas and ordinary language in Aristotle’s rhetorical thinking invites orators to use topoi as a systematic guide and reminds them constantly that subject matters are transformable because “terms may be moved in and out of categories [of predicables] so that similarities and differences may be created” (93). “Within a particular debate, the multifaceted terms permitted the disclosing of some truths as others were enclosed within” (92–93), allowing “an infinity of potential truths” to reveal themselves. In short, the habit of the mind or the attitude cultivated under the guidance of topoi is to view human understanding as dynamic or changing but not changing completely randomly or arbitrarily. Quoting Heidegger who states that “To create is to let something emerge as a thing that has been brought forth” (quoted in Heidlebaugh 96), Heidlebaugh argues that this modern thinking is a development based on Aristotle’s view that “the human thinker [is] the being whose essence is in seeking self-truth” (96). Therefore, the freedom to seek truth is given to and thus possesses, as opposed to being possessed by, human beings in the sense that this “freedom grants itself to human beings and, in so doing, permits the possibility of the emergence of truth” (96). In relation to rhetorical invention, Heidelbaugh concludes, “Freedom, not human power, permits creation” (96). She explains, “techne [e.g. here the topos] has no power of its own to produce truth. The most that techne can do, this implies, is to enhance that human freedom that permits disclosure” (96). This interpretation of Aristotle’s view of topoi is consistent with an important dimension of Aristotle’s rhetorical thinking that I discuss in Chapter Three. Human beings are endowed with the freedom to seek truth because the soul is the potentiality to actualize and to be “what it was.” In this sense, seeking truth is freedom in the sense that seeking truth is in the nature of the soul, and topoi help to “enhance” this process by systematically reminding interlocutors that they have but limited perspectives on the truths of things and by methodically guiding human communities, again orators and audiences alike, as they let different perspectives engage and interact with each other meaningfully. Quoting Nothstine’s study of Heidegger, Heidlebaugh also explores the metaphor of place, a common translation for the word topos. Topos as place, Heidlebaugh argues, is “not simply location of objects separate and independent from the self, but rather the situation of the self within a world of things and possibilities”; therefore, the place is “a position affording a particular point of view, a perspective,” or one’s worldview (96). As a result, truth “unconceals” itself to the person who forms a habit of seeking “a vantage-point which allows what is hidden to be seen” (97).

Rhetorical education 187 In other words, the transformation of the subject matter is in fact the transformation of the human vision from the familiar perspective to a less familiar one, with the older view subverted, subtracted, or revised; for the familiar perspective is no longer sound (96). Heidlebaugh argues that such unconcealment—subversion, subtraction, revision—is how topoi in Aristotle’s rhetorical thinking assist the rhetorical discovery of truths. Like Grimaldi, Heidlebaugh both advances the understanding of the topical invention process and leaves room for further inquiry. Heidlebaugh takes on the question of how Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric is transformative and explores how the use of topoi contributes to new probable knowledge in a way few have done before her. Topoi help to remove the constraints in the soul by constantly reminding the orators of the dynamic and multiple ways human beings both see and miss the truths of things, resulting in “an infinity of potential truths,” or probable, partial truths. Heidlebaugh’s vision of rhetorical invention assisted by the art of topoi is also resolutely grounded in human communities and in public discourse, and she describes the forces that goad the community of people to let the soul do what it is meant to do as “the conflicting voices that are taken seriously because of the demand for action as a community” (99). At the same time, while shedding light on the connection among the art of topical invention, probable knowledge, and truth or form, Heidlebaugh’s analysis still needs to confront even more directly the connection between probable knowledge and opinion or matter, the sophistical side of Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric. More specifically, while referring to multiple potential truths, Heidlebaugh opens the discussion of topoi more to the tension between form and matter, truth and opinion than Tuve, Vico, and Grimaldi do, the question remains: what is the nature and thus function of the multiple truths? Do opinions have a positive role or are they merely waiting to be discarded in Aristotle’s view of rhetoric? As seen in Lear’s discussion in Chapter Three, the infinite numbers of potential truths are indispensable to the understanding of truth and, therefore, the positive role of this process of subtraction or subversion needs to be examined further. This need for further examination may be seen more clearly when Heidlebaugh’s view is contrasted with Margaret Zulick’s interpretation that the difference between rhetorical and dialectical inquiries is their ends. Rhetorical inquiries, states Zulick, lead to “an ambidextrous wealth of arguments” or opinions while dialectical inquiries lead to “knowledge” (113). Both Heidlebaugh and Zulick acknowledge that rhetorical invention produces large quantities of something, but to Zulick that something is only argument or opinion and to Heidlebaugh, only truth. Throughout her study, Heidlebaugh emphasizes the need for human beings to adjust continually their views with each other’s, but at least in theory she values, more than Aristotle does, rhetorical inquiry’s ultimate goal over its process. Recall that, as discussed in Chapter Three, knowledge of certainty is indeed the truth, the prime mover and tian-the-cosmos, but it is also only part of eikos and the anthropocosmic dao, both of which are mixed with products of human techne. But the idea that opinions are merely to be purged is a Platonic one. With Aristotelian hylomorphic substances and topoi, opinions have a certain positive or

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active value for the invention of probable knowledge. It is interesting to note that in quoting Aristotle, Heidlebaugh at one point characterizes the rhetorical process as “to turn a thing over in our mind” (99). To turn things over in one’s mind suggests more activity than to let things, categories, or perspectives clash with each other on their own and turn themselves. In short, while unconcealment is a part of the topical invention process, something more dynamic or sophistical in Aristotle’s view of rhetorical invention remains elusive. While the specifics of the imaginative invention are not yet addressed in Grimaldi’s discussion, the active role of probable truths, the product of the rhetorical art, is discussed only halfway in Heidlebaugh’s discussion. Topoi and novelty In “The Aristotelian Topos: Hunting for Novelty,” Carolyn Miller takes the exploration of the inventive role of topoi in a direction different from that of Grimaldi and Heidlebaugh and similar to that of Carter and Warnick, emphasizing the literal meaning of topoi as places or locations like empty vessels or hunting fields. Miller is indeed as explicit as Heidlebaugh about her argument that hunters in the field or place of hunting do not “create their quarry” (141), but unlike Heidlebaugh, Miller argues that while orators do not invent the “quarry,” rhetorical topoi do help to invent the genuinely new rather than merely discovering or unconcealing the existing truths. But how does it work, or what is the genuinely new if not the “quarry”? The answer seems to be subject to interpretation, and I would suggest that the genuinely new in Miller’s view refers to the mixtures of the syllogistic or enthymematic form, the true or essential matter—neither of which is rhetorically or discursively invented as pointed out by Miller—and other factors such as human emotions. I base this reading on the focus of Miller’s discussion: the role of the rhetorical art, here the topos in particular, in the process of rhetorical invention. Miller starts the discussion of the genuinely new in relation to topoi with Aristotle’s Physics, where the change of place is studied for the purpose of understanding change in general and of understanding the relation between form and matter in particular. Miller argues compellingly that the Physics is relevant to Aristotle’s rhetorical topical thinking because, for instance, Aristotle describes special and common topoi with the same terms idios and koinos, respectively, in the Physics and in the Rhetoric (135). In the Physics, Miller explains, Aristotle differentiates special and common places by using examples. An example Aristotle uses for special topoi is the air that contains a person who is an object in the special “place” of air, and an example Aristotle uses for common topoi is the universe that contains the air that contains the person (Aristotle Physics 209a34). In other words, the special container or place for the object person is the air, and the common container or place for the object air is the universe, common in the sense that the air shares the place with the person and many other objects in the universe (209a32). In the context of the discussion above, the topos of the air is special in the way the topic of a country’s sources of revenue is specific to deliberative discourse, and the topos of the universe is common in the way the topic of the

Rhetorical education 189 more and the less is applicable to all three discourses. The special topoi are more particular, while the common topoi are more general. Moving then from the Physics to the Rhetoric, Miller surveys several interpretations of Aristotle’s conception of topoi, focusing on the issue of the nature of topoi. Namely, are they form, matter, both, or neither? She introduces this issue with Henry Mendell’s observation that Aristotle in the Physics intends but “fails to maintain topos as a concept distinct from both matter and form” (135). In other words, Aristotle claims in the Physics that topoi are neither form nor matter and yet at times he treats topoi as one or the other. Miller then introduces Grimaldi’s division of common topics (koinoi) as “forms of inference” (Grimaldi 119) and special topics (idia) as “material propositions” (Grimaldi 124), taking Aristotle’s discussion of topoi in the Rhetoric as sometimes form and sometimes matter. Miller also introduces the interpretation by Otto Bird and Thomas Conley, who interpret topoi as both form and matter, although they do not divide form and matter between common and special topoi as does Grimaldi; rather, they see topoi in the sense of the Toulminian warrants, which are only the major premises of the enthymematic inference, not the entire inferential process. Michael Leff, as Miller points out, shares this view and further differentiates between warrants in dialectic and those in rhetoric. Finishing the survey, Miller introduces Marc Cogan’s challenge to Bird, Conley, and Leff, arguing that topoi are neither form nor matter. Cogan argues that the enthymeme as the major premise is only a Medieval development and the classical, including Aristotelian, use of topics is that they are “empty residences” (Cogan 276). In the end, Miller concludes with Cogan and proposes to use the metaphor of a cauldron to describe the topos, a cauldron “where hylê (matter) and eidos (form) interact to create material shaped for argument and persuasion” (136). In other words, topoi are places where form and matter give rise to or invent the new but topoi themselves are neither form nor matter. The cauldron analogy as an interpretation of Aristotle’s rhetorical topical thinking reveals both insights into the inventive process and new challenges. The analogy makes it clear that what is concocted in the cauldron can be new to the cook but may not always be truths unconcealed. This interpretation is consistent with Miller’s quarry analogy—that hunters’ art does not produce their quarry of either form or matter, just like cooking does not produce vegetables but rather the new “relation” among them. This interpretation also resonates with a number of other interpretations. It can be related to Rapp’s observation, as pointed out earlier, that rhetorical topoi simply mix the form and matter of emotion and credibility, and the mixed result can include the numerous arguments and opinions in Zulick’s interpretation of rhetorical topoi. Furthermore, the image of things being mixed in the cauldron parallels better with Aristotle’s more active metaphor of turning things over in one’s mind than does Heidlebaugh’s Heiddeggerian image of unconcealment. Therefore, Miller’s view is more explicit in explaining how probable knowledge, the mixing of form and matter—and other elements such as emotion—is artistically invented, concocted, and is new. The emphasis is not on freedom, something of the human soul that possesses human beings, but on an instrument, the art that is external to the human soul.

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At the same time, however, the externality seems too absolute, severing topoi from, say, the soul more than do Aristotle’s own metaphors for topoi as the air and the universe. The metaphor of the cauldron, in other words, differs from Aristotle’s view of the hylomorphic substances. Heidlebaugh clearly asserts that the topos, contrary to the metaphor of the cauldron, is “not simply location of objects separate and independent from the self, but rather the situation of the self within a world of things and possibilities” (96). Indeed, Miller is right to point out Mendell’s argument that in the Physics Aristotle states that topoi are neither form nor matter yet treats them as one or the other; however, accepting uncritically that this apparent inconsistency is due to confusion on Aristotle’s part, Miller uses a metaphor that captures an important aspect of Aristotle’s topos thinking but is also too literal and therefore incomplete. Recall Aristotle’s explanation of the mean that I discussed in Chapter Four. In essence, a mean is an intermediate point but, in relation to right and wrong, it is also an extreme: virtue is simply right; vice is simply wrong; and there is not a mean that is more or less of a mean—a mean simply is. Similarly, a mean that is a middle point is at the same time an extreme; topoi that are in essence neither form nor matter are also both form and matter in relation to Aristotle’s hylomorphic substances where form and matter are inseparable in the world of the human. Looked at this way, the apparent discrepancy in the Physics between Aristotle’s definition of topoi as neither form nor matter and his actual discussions of them as sometimes one and sometimes the other is both real and not necessarily problematic. It is the metaphor of the cauldron that, in dismissing the discrepancy, creates a difficulty in interpreting Aristotle’s topical thinking. For while topoi as the cauldron do not become part of what they contain, Aristotle’s examples of topoi in the Physics do. The universe and air as topoi are both part of the things—air and person—they contain, while the cauldron is not. In addition, the cauldron metaphor is inconsistent with Miller’s much clearer insights into Aristotle’s concepts of ethos, tekmerion or the infallible sign, and the semantic space. Quoting other studies, Miller points out that Aristotle’s use of ethos etymologically refers to the place or “the arena where someone is most truly at home” (Chamberlain 99). Note that “at home” as an expression differs from “in the house” precisely in that home as a place suggests a much deeper connection to the “someone” than does house. Similarly, Miller points out that Aristotle’s use of tekmerion refers to “a journey’s destination or a celestial sign by which one steers” (Detienne and Vernant 148), the journey that happens in places—much like how the northern star guides Confucian communities that are always functioning in places. The point here again is that the stars do not just contain or guide the mixing of the form and matter of our ideas in places like a cauldron; they relate to our actual locations as ideas that are both up there and down here among us. Miller also points out correctly that the “semantic space” is where “topical arguments … depend for their validity upon a semantic relation between their significant terms” (Bird 322). It is true that ethos and tekmerion differ from topoi, but without substantive relations with concepts like these, many of the rhetorical topoi according to Aristotle’s thinking would not just be empty; they cannot exist. In these rhetorical topoi, the place participates in and is in fact inseparable from what it

Rhetorical education 191 contains. Miller acknowledges this important difficulty with the non-participatory conduit metaphor for Aristotle’s rhetorical topical thinking but then dismisses it quickly on the grounds that words as the cauldron can be problematic, but topoi are somehow not. One wonders whether words and topoi, in relation to the meaning and argument they embody, differ as clearly to Aristotle. It is indeed true that, in the translation by Woclsteed that Miller uses, Aristotle regards the “now of matter and now of form” feature of places as “illusive” (212a8–10), illusive in the sense that the topos just looks like form or matter from time to time; it actually is neither. However, not only do other translators render the text differently (e.g. by Hardie and Gaye3), Aristotle himself also states, as Miller acknowledges, that even though place is not form or content, it is not independent from them either (135). Aristotle illustrates this dependence, in fact inseparability, best with the examples of the air and the universe as the places of, respectively, person and air, examples that are much more consistent with Aristotle’s view of the hylomorphic substances than is the cauldron. Looked at this way, Aristotle does not necessarily make a mistake when in the Physics he claims that place is neither form nor matter but in the end does not maintain that claim (209a21–22, 209b18–25). An alternative view can be, as explained by Aristotle, that “a certain degree of precision,” rather than the demonstrative accuracy (1094n25–26), is sometimes the only way in dealing with probable knowledge. This reading is also consistent with Aristotle’s view of rhetorical thinking in general: now one, now another, rhetorical thinking is partly like dialectic and partly like sophistical reasoning. In other words, this reading reflects once again the inherently delicate line the topical, enthymematic, or rhetorical invention walks, the delicate line between the extremes of taking topoi as either form in the sense of the ultimate truth or matter in the sense of the fundamental uncertainty as do, respectively, Plato and the Sophists. To Aristotle, rhetoric is identical with neither and yet entails both. Finally, this complex situation may explain also why the word topos, literally translatable as place or location, does not go away in rhetorical studies in English. Neither place nor location connotes the sense that is now of form, now of matter as clearly as the word topos does. The rhetorical topos in Aristotle’s teaching is, therefore, a hylomorphic substance that is both method and content; it is like the universe and the air that participate in but are not identical with the air and the person, what they help to discover and invent. Topoi, opinions, probable truths What then is the participatory or meaningful role, in rhetorical invention, of human emotions and opinions if they are not merely waiting to be discarded and of the art of topoi if it is not merely assisting as a conduit? More specifically, what are the consequences of Aristotle’s view of rhetoric as partly like sophistical reasoning? I have discussed emotion in Chapter Three and will focus on opinions and topoi below, and their role actually emerges from the discussions by Grimaldi, Heidlebaugh, and Miller. While the rhetorical art of topoi helps to reveal truths as discussed by Heidlebaugh, genuinely new probable knowledge is also invented

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as discussed by Miller. In both cases, however, topoi participate in the probable truth-revealing and knowledge-inventing process as now form, now matter, now neither, and now both, as discussed by Grimaldi or Bird, Conley, and Warnick. Aristotle’s own examples and explanations of topoi help bring these interpretations together and show more concretely how the both systematic and flexible topoi guide and help to invent and to discover. Topoi are as relational, dynamic, and stable as lifestyles are, lifestyles that are our “places” in the world. How we live, whom we relate to, and how we relate to them—are both given and contingent. At the same time, lifestyle participates in shaping who we are, what we come to see as truths, and how our beings and visions sustain good community lives that evolve continuously. We choose these places but, in the end, do not do so entirely. That is, we place ourselves but also are placed in the world and in time; we shape our place and time but are also shaped by them. We do not choose to be born in a certain place any more than we choose to be born on this earth or in this galaxy, but we still make important choices to place ourselves so as both to maintain and to shape the places where we find ourselves. These places, both determined and chosen, are like Aristotle’s metaphor of the air as a place in that both contain us and become part of us who live in them, but both are also organized, maintained, and improved by us according to the best of our abilities. More specifically, topoi work by being as well as juxtaposing different types of enthymemes, and they guide interlocutors to enter the habit of remembering other “places” and perspectives. As such, topoi are as well as combine form and matter, are intuitive and mechanical, are truthful and arguable. Numerous examples in the Rhetoric and the Nicomachean Ethics support this reading, and I will point to one for each type of rhetorical discourse. Perusing these passages, note how topoi do more than sift out the impurities or act as a conduit: Now it is plain, from all that has been said, that one thing may be shown to be more important than another from two opposite points of view [emphasis mine]: it may appear the more important (1) because it is a beginning and the other thing is not, and also (2) because it is not a beginning and the other thing is—on the ground that the end is more important and is not a beginning. So Leodamas, when accusing Callistratus, said that the man who prompted the deed was more guilty than the doer, since it would not have been done if he had not planned it. On the other hand, when accusing Chabrias he said that the doer was worse than the prompter, since there would have been no deed without some one to do it; men, said he, plot a thing only in order to carry it out. (1364a15–22) Topoi help us get in the habit of remembering that there are probable truths to be said for the beginning and then also probable truths to be said for the ending. For the forensic deliberation: Further, the worse deed is that which involves the doer in special shame; that whereby a man wrongs his benefactors—for he does more than one wrong,

Rhetorical education 193 by not merely doing them harm but failing to do them good; that which breaks the unwritten laws of justice—the better sort of man will be just without being forced to be so, and the written laws depend on force while the unwritten ones do not. It may however be argued otherwise [emphasis mine], that the crime is worse which breaks the written Laws: for the man who commits crimes for which terrible penalties are provided will not hesitate over crimes for which no penalty is provided at all. (1375a13–20) Topoi help us maintain a measured or nuanced attitude towards human actions, an attitude that approaches human actions as having the potential to be more innocent or more guilty, less innocent or less guilty, and even more and less innocent and guilty at the same time in relation to different situations. For the ceremonial performance: We are also to assume, when we wish either to praise a man or blame him, that qualities closely allied to those which he actually has are identical with them; for instance, that the cautious man is cold-blooded and treacherous, and that the stupid man is an honest fellow or the thick-skinned man a good-tempered one. We can always idealize any given man by drawing on the virtues akin to his actual qualities; thus we may say that the passionate and excitable man is ‘outspoken’; or that the arrogant man is ‘superb’ or ‘impressive’ [emphasis mine]. Those who run to extremes will be said to possess the corresponding good qualities; rashness will be called courage, and extravagance generosity. That will be what most people think; and at the same time this method enables an advocate to draw a misleading inference [emphasis mine] from the motive, arguing that if a man runs into danger needlessly, much more will he do so in a noble cause; and if a man is open-handed to any one and every one, he will be so to his friends also, since it is the extreme form of goodness to be good to everybody. (1367a31–1367b7) Topoi help us stay aware of the fact that we can talk about the virtue of people, yet there are no foolproof ways to guarantee that we are not speaking about only probable virtues. As impure as probable truth, innocence, and virtue can be, they still contain truth, innocence, and virtue. Imperfection as a human reality is a reason for Aristotle’s communal and dynamic understanding of truth as discussed in Chapter Three and one of the most important reasons for the rhetorical project as I have tried to show throughout this study. Human imperfection is also why in consulting each other’s perspectives we use as guides the somewhat artificial devices like topoi that are now instrumental like a cauldron, now formal and substantive like the “air,” now cultural, now natural. What we invent can be new discoveries, but they can also be new opinions. Yet, because to Aristotle rhetoric is committed to understanding truth in the human realm and human understanding is never complete, invented arguments and opinions play an indispensable role in forming good human lives for the time being as well as in goading the continued

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search for the good. This view of the crucial role of rhetoric explains why, in the Rhetoric, Aristotle defends the role of the sophistical part in his rhetorical thinking as indispensable to good human lives, stating that sophistical reasoning encourages the human ability to “make” and to “discern” (1355b11–21) when we often truly do not know for sure. This view also explains why to Aristotle the function of the rhetorical art is “not to persuade, but to see the available means of persuasion in each case4“ (1355b10). As an ability, the sophistical art of argument- or opinion-making is not necessarily based on the complete truths of things but is immensely useful for the human effort to find them. What the sophistical ability or art discerns and makes may or may not turn out to be true in the end, but it makes human life not just more livable but also possible for the time being—because, once again, it is simply a human reality that often “exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided” (1356a7–8). As Miller says, rhetorical invention de-radicalizes novelty (143), to which I would add, because the probable truth that rhetoric invents is de-radicalized. Yet rhetoric in this Aristotelian view is still inexorably committed to seeking the truths of things. It chooses truths whenever possible. Inventiveness of stases Like topoi, stases are a rhetorical or artistic strategy that is at once systematic and flexible. Guided by topoi, orators construct arguments; guided by stases, they identify questions at issue. As a strategy, therefore, stases play an important role in rhetorical invention and reinforce the fundamental commitment to probable knowledge in Aristotle’s view of rhetoric. In this section, I explore the function and importance of stases in Aristotle’s rhetorical thinking by using works on stases by Ray Nadeau, Wayne Thompson, and Otto Alvin Loeb Dieter in conjunction with discussions of the requisites by Grimaldi and of predicables by Heidlebaugh. Most modern studies of the stasis system associate it with Hermagoras of Temnos, an ancient Greek rhetorician who taught in Rome in the late 2nd century BCE, whose writings on stases are more systematically developed than Aristotle’s. Here, therefore, I first turn to Hermagoras who clarifies the basics of the stasis thinking and to Ray Nadeau who explains the types of stases according to Hermagoras: Arguments pro and con on whether an act has taken place result in stasis of conjecture; arguments about its essential qualities (e.g., felony or misdemeanor) result in stasis of definition; arguments about its nonessential attributes (e.g., extenuating circumstances, etc.) result in stasis of quality; and procedural arguments result in stasis of objection (e.g., “You cannot charge me with murder for secretly killing a man who was later tried in absentia and sentenced to death by the courts”). (370) Nadeau’s explanations of stases are illustrated in Table 5.2.

Rhetorical education 195 Table 5.2 Five types of stases according to Hermagoras Types of Issue

Explanations

Examples

Conjecture

Pro and con: whether an act has taken place Essential quality: what really happened Nonessential attributes: what other factors are Procedure: whether the case was handled legally

Did it happen?

Definition Quality Objection

Is it felony or misdemeanor? What are extenuating circumstances? I did it, but how can you charge me when the law is on my side?

As seen here, with the help of the stasis system, orators can identify where the different views engage or what the issues are. But to what extent is this system already in Aristotle’s rhetorical teaching? Tracing the concept of stases in Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Wayne Thompson argues that Aristotle’s understanding of it develops gradually. In Books I and II of the Rhetoric, Thompson points out, only two passages relate to stases and at neither time is Aristotle trying to articulate a theory of it. The first of these two passages appears in the general introduction of the Rhetoric, Chapter Three of Book I: “The litigant will sometimes not deny that a thing has happened or that he has done harm. But that he is guilty of injustice he will never admit” (1358b31). From the point of view of the litigant, in other words, the issue is not one of conjecture or definition but rather of quality or extent. The second passage appears in the special topics for judicial discourse, where Aristotle explains how a defendant can admit to taking something but not stealing it (1374a1–7). From the point of view of the defendant, the issue is not one of conjecture of facts but once again quality or extent of the characteristics of the facts. Thompson argues that Aristotle does not yet have “a clear and well-developed theory of stasis” (136) in writing Books I and II, because both passages are about judicial discourse and neither attempts to be systematic. In contrast, six passages appear in three consecutive chapters, 15 through 17, in Book III. Aristotle explains (1) the kinds of “questions on which the dispute hinges” (1316a9), (2) the “quality or their extent” of actions (1416b21), and (3) possible issues of whether “the thing has happened, or that the man has caused injury or wrong to someone, or that the facts are really as important as one wishes them to be thought: or the opposite facts to establish the opposite argument” (1417a1–2). In a fourth passage, Aristotle explains (4) the defendant’s argument to the contrary (14177–12). Finally, Aristotle explains how the four stases can be used in (5) both judicial (1417b21–27) and (6) deliberative discourses (1417b35–37). Thompson sees these passages as reflecting a stasis theory in development and concludes that overall Aristotle’s discussion of stases in the Rhetoric is “brief and not always highly structured” (139) but is a systematic guide for orators. Importantly, Thompson points out that the

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discussions of the stasis in the Rhetoric show that among the different kinds of stases, Aristotle emphasizes the stasis of quality, the “extent or seriousness as a potential issue” (138) and the “degree of harm [and] justice” (140), emphasizing that “in dealing with the quality of an act one can examine both its aspects and their degrees” somewhat systematically (139–40). Thompson’s observation is important because the stasis of quality, “extent and seriousness” and “degree of harm [and] justice,” connects the more universal issues of definition and the more particular issues of procedure; thus, Aristotle’s emphasis on the stasis of quality once again reflects the emphasis of his rhetorical thinking on “probabilities” (Thompson 140) or probable knowledge. Thompson’s summative review of Aristotle discussion of stases strengthens the theme of probability also by connecting koina and topoi with stases. There are three koina or requisites for rhetorical discourse of any kind, and I have focused on the koinos of “greater and smaller,” the other two being the “questions of possibility and the reverse, of past or future fact” (Rhetoric 1393a10–11). I will continue to focus on the one koinos because of its more explicit connection with probability. Recall that Aristotle introduces koina first in Chapter Three of Book I (1358a36–1359a26), and this is where he also introduces stases. As Thompson points out, Aristotle discusses stases here as follows: “The litigant will sometimes not deny that a thing has happened or that he has done harm. But that he is guilty of injustice he will never admit” (1358b31). Following the overall discussion of probability as a main subject area for rhetorical thinking (1356a35–1358a35), Chapter Three therefore positions both koina and stases in the beginning of the rhetorical discourse. While koina like the one of “greater and smaller” must be in place “before the whole rhetorical process can begin” (Grimaldi 38), stases like the one of quality, extent, or degree guide the rhetorical inquiry by clarifying questions at issue in the beginning of that process. This connection between koina and stases is further reinforced when Aristotle devotes Chapter Seven of Book I to the koinos of the “greater and smaller” to set up “the grounds on which we must base our arguments” in deliberation, reinforcing the theme of probability. He explains, for example, “If the largest number of one class surpasses the largest member of another, then the one class surpasses the other; and if one class surpasses another, then the largest member of the one surpasses the largest member of the other” (1363b21–23). And, the superiority of class over class is proportionate to the superiority possessed by their largest specimens. Again, where one good is always accompanied by another, but does not always accompany it, it is greater than the other, for the use of the second thing is implied in the use of the first. (1363b26–30) And, “things that are productive of greater good are greater” (1363b34–35 Trans. Kennedy). Not only do stases work in partnership with koinos to reinforce the theme of probability, but stases work with topoi in a similar way. Grimaldi specifies two passages where Aristotle focuses on special topoi for deliberative (1363b5–1365b21) and judicial (1374a1–17) discourse, and this latter passage on

Rhetorical education 197 judicial discourse is what Thompson identifies as the second of the two passages on stases in the first two books of the Rhetoric, as shown below: He will admit that he took a thing but not that he ‘stole’ it; that he struck some one first, but not that he committed ‘outrage’; that he had intercourse with a woman, but not that he committed ‘adultery’; that he is guilty of theft, but not that he is guilty of ‘sacrilege’, the object stolen not being consecrated; that he has encroached, but not that he has ‘encroached on State lands’; that he has been in communication with the enemy, but not that he has been guilty of ‘treason.’ (1374a1–17) The fact that Thompson’s discussions of stases and Grimaldi’s discussions of koina and topoi point to the same passages shows Aristotle’s systematic effort to guide the rhetorical inquiry into probable knowledge from the koinos of “greater and smaller,” through the stasis of quality, extent, and degree, and to the topos of “the more and the less.” Ray Nadeau contributes to the same argument by contrasting Aristotle’s and Hermogenes’ stasis-thinking. In the introduction to the translation of On Stases by Hermogenes of Tarsus (2nd century AD), the Greek rhetorician who further developed the stasis theory, Nadeau starts with Hermagoras’ “fourfold system” (370) of stases of conjecture, definition, quality, and objection (stochasmos, horos, poiotēs, and metaplēpsis). Nadeau then traces one of the “antecedents” (370) of stases to Aristotle’s concept of the predicables, similar to what Heidlebaugh does with topoi. To Aristotle, Nadeau explains, “a category, predicate, or judgment must be either the definition, or the genus or the differentia, or a property, or a coincident of the subject to which it applies. These predicables … constitute a plan of inquiry” (370). Furthermore, characterizing stasis of conjecture in Aristotle as “weighing matter” (372), Nadeau concludes that the contrast between Aristotle’s and Hermogene’s stasis theories lies precisely in Aristotle’s emphasis on probability as the main objective of rhetoric. In Hermogenes, that is, stases display consistently a “dichotomous pattern of division” (Nadeau 382), but to Aristotle conjecture of facts relates directly to eikos or probable thinking because rhetoric is largely an inexact art of speculation. By far the most extensive and systematic study of Aristotle’s stasis thinking is by Otto Alvin Loeb Dieter, even though he refers to only three passages in the Rhetoric. Two of these passages are also focused on by Thompson and Grimaldi as discussed above. The third passage Dieter refers to is the opening sentence of Chapter Seven of Book I where Aristotle discusses the requisites: “Since, however, it often happens that people agree that two things are both useful but do not agree about which is the more so, the next step will be to treat of relative goodness and relative utility” (1363b6). All three passages, therefore, reinforce the systematic guide Aristotle provides for the rhetorical invention of probable knowledge from koina, to stases, to topoi, consistent with the readings by Thompson and Grimaldi. However, drawing upon the Aristotelian corpus, especially the Physics, Dieter contributes to the discussion by focusing on the kinesis of stases, the movements

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within stases, in relation to invention and creativity. He begins the discussion of the rhetorical stases by contextualizing them within the stases of “the wind,” “the water,” “the air,” the “bowel,” “politics” (348), and the stases of the moon and of the monē kai stasis—“a melodic pitch, or a vocal tone” (346). Characterizing kinesis in Aristotle’s teaching as actualization or change, Dieter first illustrates actualization as follows: “air changes into water and water back into air, an animal comes to be, a child grows, stones are made into an altar and bricks into a house, a white thing gets black, a body falls, a man forgets or acquires knowledge, and he walks from Athens to Thebes” (Barrett5 qtd. in Dieter 348). Dieter explains then that “associated with each such actualization is a corresponding stasis” (348), a turning point. Since there is amhisbētēsis, which is “Aristotle’s standard expression for argument” or the actualization of a disputation, there is also the stasis of argument (348), the turning point at issue of the argument. Dieter describes the nature of this turning point at issue as a dynamic standstill: It is immobility, or station, which disrupts continuity, divides motion into two movements, and separates the two from one another; it is both an end and a beginning of motion, both a stop and a start, the turning, or the transitional standing at the moment of reversal of movement, single in number, but dual in function and in definition. (350–51) He also reiterates this description towards the end of his study: [It] is neither a kinesis, nor an eremēsis, but both, or the opposite, or contrary, of both, namely, the ambivalent, bi-functional stasis, station, or standing still, which necessarily must occur momentarily in-between opposite “changes” and in-between contrary motions, movements, processes, functions, or forces in action. (369) Even though stases denote a standstill, they contain within themselves motion and change for the invention of the new. To explain further how stases relate to rhetorical invention according to Aristotle, Dieter introduces two important concepts, both of which reinforce the notion of motion in stability and stability in motion, consistent with Aristotle’s view of the hylomorphic substances. First, “progressions from A to B and from B to A” take place only when A and B are “spatially contrary” to each other such as up and down, but are not of “different genera” such as vertical and horizontal (349). Only the former contains the potential for progression, and progression is invention. Dieter describes the “spatially contrary” motion as a “rectilinear motion, or movements ‘on a straight line,’” and argues that this kind of motion differentiates Aristotelian rhetoric from Sophistical rhetoric. Dieter explains that the rectilinear or spatially contrary motion moves towards a telo or a completion that is the function of the motion all along, while the motion of “different genera” contains no such telo and is the “philosophy of eternal change” (353). I discuss in Chapter One two different interpretations of sophistical rhetoric, and here

Rhetorical education 199 Dieter refers to the interpretation that rejects the essences of things. As Waterfield explains, for example, Protagoras “would have resisted the very idea of a windin-itself” and accepted only “wind perceived as warm,” “wind perceived as cold,” because to him “all impressions are equally true” (207) ultimately, and it is justified to deny “the possibility of falsehood” (211) and withhold “assenting to the moral superiority of one side of the case over another” (208). This radical refusal of dichotomizing truth and falsity, superiority and inferiority, is what Dieter sees as the nonlinear “philosophy of eternal change” in the sense that if there is no difference between polarities, then there is not any goal-oriented progression but only random, aimless, or unending, circular motions. Dieter is alluding to a familiar point, the complexity of which I have been tracing through this study: is Aristotle’s teaching of rhetoric Platonic, Sophistical, or partly of each? Had Dieter emphasized the “rectilinear motion, or movements ‘on a straight line’” alone, he would have interpreted Aristotle’s stasis thinking as merely Platonic: truth exists, and the rhetorical point at issue, the stasis, has the single purpose of progressing towards the truth and devaluing everything else on the way. But Dieter also stresses a second idea, which minimizes the absoluteness of the clear-cut picture. This is the idea that the stasis is “the intermediate between contraries” (349): The stasis does not indeed terminate motion though it is the terminal point of the first movement, for it is disturbed and counter motion begins before it has attained duration. Likewise, stasis is not a motion, though in a sense it is the point, or moment of change. (350) As well, “every stasis is an individual event” (351). Stases are both stable and dynamic; they are both disrupted movements and imminent change; in short, they are indispensable in the rhetorical invention of probable knowledge. Similarly, Dieter identifies, on the one hand, the middle position of this dynamic point of standstill with the middle term in syllogistic reasoning, stating, “In all our inquiries, we are asking whether there is a middle (ei esti meson) or what the middle is (ti esti to meson)” (90a5). Quoting Aristotle, Dieter argues that seeking the middle term is ultimately the characteristic of stases. The comparison with the middle term associates the rhetorical stases with syllogistic reasoning, and the well-known logical fallacies like the undistributed and ambiguous middle associate rhetorical stases with the dialectical part of rhetoric according to Aristotle. On the other hand, however, Dieter argues also that just as there is no separation between kinesis and the moving thing, rhetoric is “in part Noesis and in part Poiesis (1032b15)” (351), in part theoretical and in part productive, making stases both a movement and a standstill. Clearly, this argument emphasizes once again the hylomorphic substances and therefore rhetoric’s function to invent probable knowledge as well as to discover the truths of things, making unambiguous the partly like dialectic and partly like sophistical reasoning characteristic of Aristotle’s teaching of stases. Maintaining this twofold characteristic in Aristotle’s teaching of rhetoric, Dieter clarifies further that not all matters are suitable for rhetorical inquiry. Pursuing the

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stasis or the stasiastic, Dieter explains, the amphistētein must first avoid asystatic matters that are “incomplete, irrational, alogical, unrelated and disassociated accumulations merely of useless materials or phlegmata, i.e. ‘unconstituted’ excretions (539a18) of a body” (354). Dieter then turns to the other extreme, the synestotic matters, stating that amphisbētein should avoid matters that are “essentially complete, cohesive, coherent, and unified … all merg[ing] and blend[ing] with one another so that there is no difference between them but all become one” (34–55). Having set up these extremes to avoid, Dieter points out that while the irrational matter is to be avoided, the coherent matter is more complex: the professional investigator will recognize certain synestotic matters which in truth and in fact are stasiastic: the peristaseis [difficulties] in these matters essentially are complete and adequate and the movements involving the circumstances are either diametrically opposite or at least ‘anakeamptically’ contrary one to the other. (355) The issue of extent is therefore being reintroduced into the discussion of Aristotle’s stasis-thinking. These somewhat coherent and opposing subject matters, Dieter explains, are what people debate about and they contain the kind of issues the stasis system can help to identify. In short, most issues that Aristotle’s amphisbētein faces are stasiastic or debatable, and they are debatable because of the fitting levels of difficulty solvable through rhetorical discussion and the appropriate kinds of knowledge inventable through rhetorical deliberations. Dieter divides this kind of stasiastic matters into four kinds, corresponding to the four categories in which kinesis takes place: being, quantity, quality, and place (225b5–226a25). These are the same four stases Thompson discusses, only differently named. As Dieter explains, the category of being refers to “the diametrically opposite ‘notions,’ or ‘changes’” (355), living or dying, for example. Here, rhetoricians work with the stasis of conjecture “between contradictory allegations of factuality” (355), the stasis that is the most dichotomous. Following the category of being are the stases in quantity, quality, and place. Using the charge “you stole my car,” Dieter illustrates the ways the charge can be stasiated or controverted (357–58). These ways are illustrated in Table 5.3. Table 5.3 Stases and questions at issue Stasis in being Stasis in quantity Stasis in quality Stasis in place

That I stole your car is not a fact: I did not. That I stole your car is not a fact, for I merely borrowed it. That I stole your car is a fact but under the circumstances, it is a good thing. That I stole your car is not a charge for you to bring in the place, court, or manner.

As seen here in Dieter’s analysis, stases can guide the orator step by step to see what good questions are and how they are found in rhetorical inquiries.

Rhetorical education 201 From the perspective of kinesis within stasis, motion within standstill, Dieter’s study reinforces the argument that inventing probable knowledge is the main purpose of rhetoric for Aristotle. Dieter shows that the stasis thinking is both systematic like dialectic and flexible like sophistical reasoning. It is true that Dieter makes an explicit effort to differentiate Aristotle’s stasis thinking from sophistical thinking, as seen above, but when he describes the movement as “either diametrically opposite or at least ‘anakeamptically’ contrary one to the other,” he also opens up rhetorical inquiries to matters beyond the spatial contrary or the dichotomized opposites. He states explicitly that rhetorical inquiry requires “a criterion other than words” because rhetoricians “say of a self-same thing that it is both so and not so” (335), and this interpretation opens rhetorical inquiries again to sophistical reasoning. In addition, of the four stases, Dieter sees only the stasis of being as dealing with the most certain and dichotomous and he characterizes the other three kinds of stases as dealing with differences that are increasingly less diametrical. None of the stases of quantity, quality, or place is strictly speaking about spatially contrary, rectilinear motion; all of them position Aristotle’s teaching of rhetorical inquiry between “spatially contrary” motions and motions of “different genera,” i.e. between dichotomized motions that are focused on dialectical inquiries and sophistical reasoning, respectively. According to this reading, the four stases together guide the search for both absolute and probable truths, therefore confirming the complex relation between matter and form in probable knowledge by offering an analysis of how stases, part of the rhetorical techne, assist in the invention of probable knowledge according to Aristotle. Knowledge of certainty may be discovered, but human beings, on their way to these discoveries, must concoct also—with the help of the form in the matter, the soul in the body, that which they have access to, however moderately and modestly. Finally, Dieter also attempts a reading specifically of how the rhetorical process invents or produces the new. Quoting Aristotle (766a25), Dieter points out that change, however seemingly slight or superficial, could affect the characteristics of the changed. Dieter starts with Aristotle’s view that real change happens through stases because the “constitution of contrary information … has (26[0]a26–261a26 and 336a20) innately inherent within it an originative source of kinesis as well as of stasis, or an impulse to change” (360). In connection with Cicero’s word constitutio for stases, Dieter explains further that the newness of the evolutionarily, subtly, but unmistakably new knowledge is similar to Aristotle’s discussion of how animals’ body parts are generated through a process that has three phases. First is the “mechanical mixture of elements.” This is followed by the “chemical combination in which the qualities of the components are transformed and a new, wholly homogeneous body is created.” Finally, it is the bringing, or coming together and the resulting “standing together” of contrary information of a homogeneous matter to constitute a functional member, or an instrumental organ of the body, as for example, a femur and a tibia are articulated to form a leg. (359–60)

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Similarly, in the rhetorical invention of new probable knowledge, different views first come together “mechanically,” then exchange with and influence each other “chemically,” and finally evolve into new ideas “functionally.” On the one hand, rhetorically invented probable knowledge operates with a given homogeneous form like a leg. On the other hand, such rhetorically invented probable knowledge, like the leg, contributes somewhat substantively to who we are and shapes our understanding of that identity. The process and the instruments are not either organically or artificially related; it is not a matter of either form or matter; rather, the two work together inseparably in the realm of the probable, the rhetorical, and the human. This both systematic and flexible teaching of stasis according to Aristotle shows how, as a rhetorical techne, stasis can be learned, taught, and practiced as the kind of strategy that forms an integral part of the strategized. At many “intervals of conflict” (359) or at each “melodic pitch, or a vocal tone,” are the possibilities to generate genuinely new movement and knowledge with the assistance and participation of the rhetorical art of stases.

Rhetorical inventiveness of li (樂) and yue (樂) in The Analects of Confucius The similarity and difference between Aristotle and Confucius regarding rhetorical education are again complex. It is well known that Confucius does not discuss the biology or physics of creation or production, a fact that makes conspicuous an important difference between Aristotle’s and Confucius’ teachings of probable knowledge invention. As we have seen, Aristotle analyzes the process of interacting contraries and provides systematic and flexible guides from koina, topoi, to stases for the rhetorical invention of probable knowledge. In contrast, Confucius models the process of interacting contraries in action, more than analyzes enthymematic thinking. As seen in Chapter Four, to Confucius, a person who cannot infer three corners of a room from the one given is yet to be readied for the learning of tian-the-cosmic, ren-the-equitable, yi-the-appropriate (7.8)—but not necessarily through abstract lessons as seen in Aristotle’s explanation of topoi or Dieter’s analysis of Aristotle’s teaching of stases. However, this noticeable difference is also intricate. As vivid as the corners of a room in the example are, the concept of the analogical thinking it illustrates is abstract, just as practical examples frequently accompany theoretical analyses in Aristotle. The difference between Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical teaching is complex also in the sense that the two teachings do not differ fundamentally regarding whether the truths of things exist, whether the paths to the truths of things can be inferential or discursive, and therefore whether rhetorical strategies, even tactics, play an indispensable and integral role in that process. As a result, Aristotle emphasizes the stasis of extent rather than of dichotomy, together with the koinos of greater and smaller and the topos of the more and the less; similarly, Confucius emphasizes the importance of inquiry, frequents the issues of stability as well as change, and deems probable knowledge inventable and such inventive processes teachable. The difference is again one of emphasis: two visions of the truths of

Rhetorical education 203 things that accentuate the form or the way, the analyzable or the itinerant. In this final section, therefore, I will continue to explore the complex similarities and differences between Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical teachings by discussing how li-the-deferential and yue-the-harmonious contribute to the invention of probable knowledge, how observing the form and the matter of ritual propriety assists cultivation or rhetorical education, and how the stases and harmony of songs and music guide invention. Inventiveness of li Ames and Rosemont provide a rather complete summary of the various translations of li: “Li has been translated as ‘ritual,’ ‘rites,’ ‘customs,’ ‘etiquette,’ ‘propriety,’ ‘morals,’ ‘rules of proper behavior,’ and ‘worship’” (51). Consistent with their interpretation of Confucius’ thinking as dynamic, Ames and Rosemont add to the collection their gerund translation of it as “observing ritual propriety,” highlighting the partly like sophistical reasoning aspect of Confucius’ thinking in general and of Confucius’ teaching of li in particular. Note that, as all these translations indicate, ritual rites are a significant but also only an implicit part of the concept of li according to most translators. Similarly, ritual rites are expressed in modern Chinese as phrases such as ritual ceremony (liyi禮儀), but most modern translators of the Analects do not use the phrasal expressions to translate the concept of li; rather, they stay with the one word li. This unwillingness to interpret li merely as attached to ritual rites suggests that Confucius’ teaching of li includes observing ritual propriety but also symbolizes something broader. One of the embodied broader concepts that some Chinese translators underscore and that I would like to help draw attention to through the ensuing discussion is deference. As Qian Mu states repeatedly, the tenet of li is deference (「禮主敬」e.g. 73), deference to others. This dimension of li is important because when Confucius urges his students to reflect in order to realize (wu 悟), he emphasizes that they engage others both socio-culturally and renly or deferentially through li. Just as ren is both being and becoming, li is both innate and artistic, constant and changing, systematic and kairic, characteristics that allow li to be integral to generating new probable ideas both intuitively and socio-historically. Like topoi, more specifically, li has a clear appearance or shape, the kind of appearance that, like lifestyles discussed above, mediates both who we are and who we become, shapes and is shaped by us, and is both intuitive and acquired activities of the everyday. To retain the dynamics within the concept of li, therefore, even though I agree fully with the translations of li as ritual propriety itself and the observance of it, I also alternately use the interpretation of li as deference, depending on the context in the Analects. Chapter 10 of the Analects illustrates li concretely as deference and as observing ritual propriety. Here is an example: 執圭，鞠躬如也；如不勝。上如揖，下如授，勃如戰色，足蹜蹜如有 循。享禮，有容色；私覿，愉愉如也。Holding the jade tablet [at a state ceremony], [Confucius] forwards his upper body slightly, as if he could not

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Similarly, the Analects records that when Confucius is in the village, he is so deferential that it seems that he could not quite talk, but when he is at the ancestral temple or the court, he speaks clearly, even though he does not speak often 「 ( 孔子於 鄉黨，恂恂如也，似不能言者。其在宗廟朝廷，便便然；唯謹爾。」10.1). He is affable with lower officials, candid with higher officials, and stately in the presence of his lord 「 ( 朝與下大夫言，侃侃如也；與上大夫言，誾誾如也。 君在，踧踖如也，與與如也。」10.2). In court, he sometimes walks with quickened steps, while other times he seems to be coasting gracefully like a swallow with its wings spread out 「 ( 趨進，翼如也。」10.3); sometimes he appears fearful (e.g. 「勃如戰色」10.5), while other times relaxed (10.2–5). Other passages in Chapter Ten also detail how to dress appropriately at home and at work (10.6–7); how to dine, sleep, but in general how to conduct oneself properly in private, in public, with friends, in the presence of the sovereign, in temples, in nature, and on chariots (10.9–17). Significantly, the chapter ends with the passage in which Confucius marvels at the pheasant’s exquisite sense of timing, highlighting the relation of li-the-deferential and yi-the-appropriate, the kairic nature of deference and of observing ritualistic proprieties, the kairic nature that underlines the entire chapter. Other chapters in the Analects reinforce this both normative and kairic characteristic of observing the ritually appropriate and deferential li. In doing so, they also continue to illustrate the complex similarities and differences between Aristotle’s and Confucius’ teaching. For example, once Zi Xia inquires about a line from the Book of Songs that describes how the beautiful and affectionate smile is enhanced by the use of cosmetics. When Confucius reminds Zi Xia that the makeup only follows the smile, Zi Xia impresses Confucius by adding, “Is it like li that comes after?” 「 ( 禮後乎？」3.86). This passage helps to explain why li is both deference to others and observing ritual propriety, both innate and learned, and both similar to and different from Aristotle’s teaching of topoi. Li is cosmetic and observable in that the ways Confucius walks, talks, and breathes are ceremonial, routine, and somewhat formalized; it is “after” the person like Aristotle’s examples of the topos of the universe that is “after” the air or the topos of the air that is “after” the person—the kind of “after” that participates in or becomes what it contains or adorns. In other words, both topoi and li are integral to the human process of knowing, understanding, and seeking the truths of things as they assist the rhetorical invention of probable knowledge and participate in the knowledge invented. But while this artistic aspect of li resonates with Aristotle’s teaching that the learning follows the way things naturally are, the way Confucius teaches li—emphasizing modeling more than analyzing—also differs from Aristotle’s effort to reveal through topoi the

Rhetorical education 205 predicables, the essences of things, and to abstract the lines of reasoning operating in dynamic human discourse. Confucius seems to say, “do like this and wu-to-realize (悟) as you go” while Aristotle seems to say, “think like this and apply this way of thinking.” Yet, we must be careful not to overgeneralize this difference. On the one hand, as theoretical as Aristotle is, he is in fact very practical, for example, differentiating those who know and those who don’t but have experience. “If a man knew that light meats are digestible and wholesome,” states Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, “but did not know what sorts of meat are light, he would not produce health, but the man who knows that chicken is wholesome is more likely to produce health” (1141b18–10). On the other hand, as practical as Confucius is, he is also theoretical, even though he may not be so by systematically meta-analyzing and explaining the theories. Confucius’ instructions may be less precise than Aristotle’s, but this could be due to the fact that Confucius’ insights into the truths of things are more like the dao than like the form. In that case, Confucius’ teaching is less precise because his very theory emphasizes more the ongoing way and less the completed form—not because he has no theory. As mundane and practical as the deferential proprieties recorded in Chapter Ten are, li is taught by Confucius as topoi are taught by Aristotle in that both are taught as embodying form and matter, authenticity and artificiality, theory and practice. Confucius is clear that the use of li can gradually lead to more congruent relations with tian, just as Aristotle is clear that the use of topoi can progressively lead to higher levels of actuality. The dynamic inventive characteristic, both theoretical and practical, in both Confucius’ li-thinking and Aristotle’s topos-thinking is also seen in how li-thedeferential, ren-the-equitable, and dao-the-way relate. Qian describes the intertwining of li (禮) and ren (仁) in a way that is reminiscent of Aristotle’s view of the hylomorphic form. As Qian explains, li as a whole encompasses two aspects: li as the “external appearance” 「 ( 外表」65), the “expression” 「 ( 表達」73), the “traces” or “manifestation” 「 ( 跡顯」715) of its content ren, on the one hand, and, on the other, li as fundamentally the stable, “respectful, and deferential ways or patterns (dao) of acting, thinking, and speaking” 「 ( 恭敬辭讓」Qian 289 and 419). Li is both a characteristic of observing ritual propriety and the shape of ren, the shape that offsets extremes. 顏淵問仁。子曰：「克己復禮，為仁。一日克己復禮，天下歸仁焉。 為仁由己，而由仁乎哉？」顏淵曰：「請問其目？」子曰：「非禮勿 視，非禮勿聽，非禮勿言，非禮勿動。」顏淵曰：「回雖不敏，請事 斯語矣！」Yan Hui asks about ren-the-equitable. The Master replies, “Be in accordance with li-the-ritually-appropriate, the deferential, and that is ren-the-equitable. Every day you can do so, your heart connects with those in all the people under heaven. Acting equitably comes from your own effort to refrain from acting inequitably; it does not come from other people.” Yan Hui asks, “Would you explain in more detail?” Confucius says, “Do not look at what is not li-the-ritually-appropriate; do not listen to what is not li-theritually-appropriate; do not speak about what is not li-the-ritually-appropriate; and do not act on what is not li-the-ritually-appropriate.” (12.1)

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Qian explains further, li “originates from the human heart and is intertwined with the dao of shen-the-spirit” 「 ( 禮本乎人心，又綰神道」87). The human heart here refers to ren-the-equitable or “loving people” that begins with one’s natural love and deference for one’s parents. Qian describes the connection between the changing appearances of li and the constant ren, between individual persons and communities, and between constraints and freedom as follows: 於約束抑制中得見己心之自由廣大，於恭敬辭讓中得見己心之惻怛 高明，循此以往，將見己心充塞於天地，流行於萬類。天下之大，凡有 所觸，全與此心痛癢相關，血脈相通，而”天下歸仁”之境界，即由 此而達。It is in restraining the self’s acts by li that one finds the freedom and the grandeur that ren-the-equitable possesses within one’s heart/mind; it is in being unassuming and deferential towards others that one feels the empathy and the brilliance that ren within one’s heart/mind is capable of. This way, one’s heart/mind of ren fills everything between heaven and earth and runs through myriads of things with which it comes in contact. Everything under heaven that ren-the-equitable, in the form of li-the-deferential, touches connects with the interest of one’s heart/mind, like everything in one’s body is connected by the blood that runs in the arteries and vessels, and this is how ren is realized everywhere under heaven. (420) This explanation is similar to Heidlebaugh’s interpretation of topoi’s power to discover. Allow the freedom to possess you, the soul to actualize itself, and the truths to unconceal themselves—with the help of the use of the artful topoi. It also resonates with Kennedy’s interpretation of Aristotle’s view of rhetoric as energeia, both energeia itself and a medium of it. In addition, Qian’s metaphor of the blood that carries the constantly renewed oxygen from one’s natural environment is like Aristotle’s example of the topos of the air, the lifeline with its impurities providing room for flexibility, probability, and invention. Form and matter together enable Confucius’ idea of li, the appearance people put on and the discourse they use, to be both an impetus for change and a guide for discovery and invention. The training in the patterns of breathing or the manners of handshakes is different from that in conceptualizing predicables and types of stases but is also similar in that both are assisted by the kind of systematic and artistic guides that are constitutive of the dao realized and the form actualized in the realm of the contingent. Like topoi that

Rhetorical education 207 are based on the at once linear and bidirectional form of the enthymeme, li-thedeferential is based on the at once octagonal and linear gua-pattern of ren-theequitable and dao-the-way. Just as topoi assist the development of the enthymeme with both form and matter in ways inseparable from truths and apparent truths, li guides the cultivation of ren and wu-the-realizing-of-tian (悟) by both setting perimeters and necessitating flexibility in ways of both the cosmic and human dao. We can conclude, first, that li-the-deferential is similar to topoi in that it is a probable or kairic mode of thinking. It gathers together different ritual proprieties to help us realize a certain attitude or habit of thinking. This attitude is to interact with others, be deferential to them, and invent new probable knowledge with them in given circumstances. Confucius himself chooses to accept the change to the ceremonial cap that officials wear but rejects the change to the way they salute: 子曰：「麻冕，禮也。今也，純儉，吾從眾。拜下，禮也。今拜乎 上，泰也，雖遠眾，吾從下。」The Master says, “Burlap caps used to be ritually appropriate to wear but have been replaced by black silk ones. The changed practice is more economical, so I follow how it is done today. Saluting before ascending the hall used to be the ritually appropriate way but has been displaced by saluting only after having ascended the hall. This is supercilious. Even though it means going against how it is done today, I still salute before ascending the hall.” (9.3) Similarly, Confucius states once that “Exemplary persons are no vessels” (子曰： 「君子不器。」3.12) but says on another occasion that they can be of the most sacred kind of vessels for li7. Li is to be thought of as now instrumental, now constitutive because the meaning of our transforming selves, as we know it, will always have a probable dimension that is in the process of being invented and reinvented and with a sense of uncertainty. When Lin Fang, who is self-conscious of his own tendency to be preoccupied with appearances, asks about the fundamentals of li, Confucius replies that neither extravagance nor tightfistedness is li, but simplicity errs less between the two (3.48). That is, neither the fixation on the ritualistic funeral details nor the unbridled expression of extreme grief— breast-beating and foot stomping—at the funeral is li-the-ritually-appropriate, but the latter errs less between the two. The comparative emphasis is reminiscent of the koinos of greater and smaller, the stasis of extent, and the topos of the more and the less emphasized by Aristotle. At the same time, we must note that the conspicuous difference between teachings by modeling and by analysis takes us again back to the emphasis on the form or the way. The difference is real and has important consequences for rhetoric, even though it is one of emphasis. Confucius’ way more forcefully encourages deferential interaction with others. To realize (wu) our relation with tian-thecosmos, Confucius teaches, more emphatically than Aristotle, that both deferring and advancing are walking dao-the-way, emphasizing the advancements that reside in deferring. For example, Confucius allows himself the daoist moments of deferring it all to others, rafting away 「 ( 乘桴浮于海」5.6), enjoying nature

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「 ( 吾與點也！」11.25), and letting it all be (「無可無不可」18.8). Far from being a mere tactic, deference or yielding is truly one of Confucius’ highest ideals (lirang「禮讓」). To Confucius, for example, the li of governing—much of which entails improvising or inventing through discoursing—is, in essence, deference: 子曰：「能以禮讓為國乎，何有！不能以禮讓為國，如禮何！」The Maser says, “When one governs deferentially, what difficulty will there be? When one does not govern deferentially, what would be the point of following the ritualistic rites!” (4.13) In short, “Deferring is the nature of li” (「讓者禮之質」Qian 131). While li as deference relates to Aristotle’s view of modesty and friendliness as virtues, it goes beyond them and entails sometimes giving up on (shanrang-to-abdicate 禪讓) what is rightfully one’s own. Recall the story of Bo Yi and Shu Qi who ultimately die of hunger rather than insist on their rights of inheritance. Confucius deems a lack of this kind of deference, or yielding, the reason Zi Lu could not govern well (11.259), and praises those like Bo Yi and Shu Qi throughout the Analects. 子曰：「太伯其可謂至德也已矣。三以天下讓，民無得而稱焉。」The Master says, “Tai Bo is most excellent. Three times he deferred [讓 rang] to others the power to rule everyone under heaven, and people do not know how to praise him enough.” (8.1) This concept of deferring (讓 rang), of sometimes relinquishing or “abdicating” (Allan 2016) what is legitimately one’s own, suggests a rather sharp contrast between Confucius’ and Aristotle’s emphases in their rhetorical teachings because this characteristic of governing and discoursing, highly valued and repeatedly emphasized by Confucius10, is more or less absent from Aristotle. As real as this difference is, again, we want to take care not to reify this difference as the dichotomized belligerent individualism and irenic conformism. Even Irwin’s somewhat provocative proposition that Aristotle deems benefiting the other virtuous only in his Rhetoric, not in his philosophical treatises, does not dispute that Aristotle’s rhetorical thinking is relational, communal, and in that sense deferential. Recall also that in his sixties and seventies when Confucius is in tune with the patterns of the wind and acts in sync with the order of the cosmos, he does not say that he is with or defers to other people either11 but rather he is with and defers to the cosmic others. All this prompts us to be careful with what the differences and therefore similarities are in the first place. In the end, Aristotle’s teachings of topoi and Confucius’ teaching of li are both systematic, and both require some memorization although their students memorize similar teachings with different emphases. Li is systematized and concrete ritual practices, discursive or otherwise, for different times, but topoi are systematized and abstract lines of reasoning. Both teachings are also kairic, having within them elements that reach beyond and are endemic to cultural contexts and historical times. Confucius’ teaching may indeed not be as technical as Aristotle’s is and emphasize more deference to others, but it is systematic and

Rhetorical education 209 meticulous in its own way and can lead to new probable knowledge12. Aristotle’s effort to categorize rhetorical topoi indeed attempts to be more precise than Confucius’ and does not emphasize the other as extensively, but it is far from being merely technical or static. These similarities and differences are intricate and intertwined because, fundamentally, form and matter are not separable in Aristotle’s rhetorical thinking, as they are not in Confucius’. Inventiveness of yue As seen in the Analects, music is highly appreciated by Confucius. In addition, poetry in ancient China was often chanted as songs. The two differ but also connect in their creative or inventive dimension. In this section, therefore, I discuss both music and songs, emphasizing their rhetorical inventiveness. Research in Chinese music has a long history, and in recent years more Western scholar-musicians have also contributed significantly to the study of ancient Chinese music and to comparative studies. Interestingly, for example, it has been argued that theories of Chinese music predated writing. According to Fritz A. Kuttner, “the earliest concept of music in China has been essentially theoretical and acoustical” and writing arrived much later to amplify the concept of music (17). Many of these theories of ancient Chinese music share a common theme: songs and music are inherently creative, and they form connections between human beings and cosmic harmony. The theme of inventiveness is similar to the findings from studies of Aristotle’s concept of stases. For instance, Tse-Tsung Chow traces the etymology of the word poet (shiren 詩人) and concludes that it is the human instinct to “create things” that ultimately prompts ancient poets to create the “image of things” (208). As for music, there are three ancient treatises in Chinese history: Yuelun, Discourse on Music 《 ( 樂論》) by Xun Zi (313–238 BCE), Yueshu, Book on Music 《 ( 樂書》) in the Record of History 《 ( 史記》) by Sima Qian (145–86 BCE), and Yueji, Account of Music 《 ( 樂記》) in the book Liji (compiled during the Western Han Dynasty 202 BCE−9 AD). Most scholars agree that the three are similar in theory, all with the theme of ritual and music in relation to the creative cosmic harmony, as can be seen in the following two sections from the Account of Music, translated by Scott Cook: 樂者謂同，禮者為易。同則相親，易則相敬。樂勝則流，禮勝則離 2.1。Music (yue) serves to unite (tong 同); ritual serves to differentiate (易). With uniting there is mutual closeness; with differentiation there is mutual respect. When music gains the upper hand there is reckless abandon (liu 流). When ritual gains the upper hand there is estrangement (li 离). (42) 樂者，天地之和也；禮者，天地之序也 2.5。Music is the harmony of Heaven and Earth. Ritual is the order of Heaven and Earth. (46) Li, observing ritual proprieties and being deferential, entails maintaining order, but when there is too much of it, there is conflict. Yue, songs and music, entails transcending rules, but when there is too much of it, there is chaos. In 2.5, the

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second passage above, the best li is associated with “the order of Heaven and Earth” and the best yue, with “the harmony of Heaven and Earth.” Harmony refers to movements, interactions, as well as patterns, and this musical harmony includes the kind of movements and interactions between the existent and innovative ideas, knowledge, and practices because, as said in The Account of Music or Yueji, “music dwells in the great beginning, and ritual resides in the matured things” (3.7 Trans. Cook 55), the beginning that is often the position of the new. Other scholars have noted similarly, ritual is “continuity aesthetically patterned” (Kern 200) and “music helps create” (Wang 100). Erica Fox Brindley agrees but argues also that the creative dimension of ancient Chinese music resulted from an adjustment that took place during the late Warring States Period (475–221 BCE) and early Han Dynasty (206 BCE−220 AD). Prior to this period, Brindley argues, music was “a tool for attaining a state of heart/ mind” (Music 108); after it, music became also “a vehicle for attaining [a cosmic] order” of harmony (“Music” 18). More specifically, Brindley argues, to Confucius music is “a tool for cultivation” (Music 109) and it “exploit[s] the known value of the rites and music” (99). However, we should be careful not to overstate this difference despite the fact that all three treatises on music indeed dated after the Analects. For the Analects suggests explicitly that the inventiveness or creativity of songs and music takes human inquiry beyond the known. This view can be seen first in Confucius’ emphasis on the importance of asking appropriate questions in general and then in his discussions of songs and music as well. As seen in passage 3.4 above, when Lin Fang asks the question about li, the ritually appropriate and deferential, he clearly singles out two, in Dieter’s words, rectilinear opposites: indulgent in one’s grief or consumed by ritualistic correctness. Yet, instead of pursuing the clash between the opposites, Confucius inquires into them as they are related, a characteristic approach on his part that I trace throughout this study. When Confucius says that neither of the extremes is li but the latter errs less, he is approaching the matter as an issue of quality or extent. Like the similar emphasis on extent in Aristotle’s rhetorical thinking, Confucius’ emphasis not only encourages but also requires rhetorical inquiry into and invention of the new. To be appropriate in each situation, one must carefully consider and execute each act according to the situation with a certain level of intuition and spontaneity, a reason Confucius stresses the importance of continual inquiry and constant asking of questions. He says, “With those who do not ask ‘What to do?’ ‘What to do?’ I do not know what to do about them.” (子曰：「不曰『如之何，如之何』者，吾 末如之何也已矣？」 15.15). In the Analects, the students are seen asking questions frequently, and the expression “what to do?” or “what is the way?” is used in more than ten passages. Not only is asking questions important, but, as we have seen, Confucius is also good at avoiding what Dieter describes as synestotic matters, repeatedly refraining from discussing questions regarding, for example, how to attend to the needs of ghosts (11.1113) and at consistently keeping a respectful distance from the specifics of tian-the-cosmos. It is this distance and this level of ambiguity that make the inventiveness of inquiries more transformative than revolutionary, again reminiscent of Aristotle’s emphasis on the stasis of extent and of

Rhetorical education 211 Miller’s reading of Aristotle’s rhetorical topoi as leading to de-radicalized novelty. For instance, even though Confucius emphasizes relations among things, he is far from being unaware of the importance of rectilinear opposites. 子曰：「吾有知乎哉？無知也。有鄙夫問於我，空空如也；我叩其兩 端而竭焉。」The Master says, “Do I already have all the answers? I do not. When a simple person brings to me a dilemma that I do not already have an answer to, I let the opposites that caused the dilemma knock on each other until there is no more question left.” (9.7) At the same time, even though Confucius does argue about contraries, he focuses on the stasis of extent or quality just like Aristotle, who does not focus on dichotomies, or even stasis, as much as later Greek and Roman rhetoricians like Hermogenes. It is possible that this potentially dichotomizing characteristic is an important reason stasis thinking is not theorized thoroughly, not just by Confucius but also by Aristotle, both of whom, again, value inventing probable thinking in rhetorical activities. Confucius’ teaching of the creativity of songs and music is embedded in this broader context where inquiry, especially the probable kind, is emphasized, and this broader context helps to reveal a certain connection between songs and music taught by Confucius and the stases of “a melodic pitch, or a vocal tone,” the “intervals of conflicts” (Dieter 346), taught by Aristotle. In the Analects, the power of dissonance, questioning, and resonance is reflected in both songs and music, and music to Confucius has a direct bearing on governing where flexibility and inventiveness are essential. He teaches how to govern wisely (2.3, 3.14, 8.1914) by drawing upon past experiences (2.23, 3.915) and by engaging songs and music. In the Analects, songs, history, rites, and music (shi-shu-li-yue 「詩書禮樂」) are all grouped under wenzhang (writings「文章」5.1216), wenxue (literature文 學11.217), and sometimes simply wen (classics「文」6.2518) (Qian 223). Confucius and his students frequently reference the Book of Songs (1.15, 2.2, 3.2, 3.8, 8.3, 9.26, 9.30, 11.5, 7.17, 12.10/16.12, 13.5, 17.1019) and discuss music (3.20, 3.25, 7.13, 8.15, 15.10, 9.1420). Why does he emphasize songs and music so frequently for governing, given that too much of either can lead to chaos— the opposite of the function and goal of governing? The Analects offers at least two reasons: inventiveness and relationality. Confucius says, “One is initiated with poetry, established by li, and completed in music” (子曰：「興於詩。立 於禮。成於樂。」8.8). Songs and music are inventive by resonating myriad perspectives into harmony in a way that “Heaven and Earth” do: cosmically. Confucius says that not knowing the Songs, one does not know how to converse with others (16.1321), and he urges his students to study the Songs because they inspire and teach how to voice grievances and dissonances, that is, potentials for change: 子曰：「小子！何莫學夫詩？詩：可以興，可以觀，可以群，可以 怨；邇之事父，遠之事君；多識於鳥、獸、草、木之名。」The Master

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The Book of Songs contains fundamental lessons of life, and one of the most important to Confucius is that they inspire us to think about what the complaints or issues are with the existing situation. While songs initiate inquiries, music continues and completes them, one at a time. Commenting on passage 9.7, quoted above, where Confucius speaks about kou-ing (「叩」) or knocking the opposites against each other to solve problems, Qian explains that it is like when a bell is tolled, the vibration from the “knocking” is the process through which the contraries, stases, or disharmonies interact with each other and blend into the sound of music (「叩鐘使自鳴」317). In other words, intervals of conflict do not only lead to winning or losing but can also harmonize the stases at the beginning into music in the end, just as three of the four stases in Aristotle’s teaching can. In the description of music itself, we see that Confucius indeed focuses on the movements from dissonance to harmony: 子語魯大師樂，曰：「樂其可知也：始作，翕如也；從之，純如也， 繳如也，繹如也，以成。」The Master says to the grand music master of Lu, “Music can be understood this way. It opens with the rousing sound, becomes pure and harmonious, then clear and bright, and ends with a continuous flow.” (3.23) It is “rousing” in the beginning because xi (「翕」) means closing up in the sense of tensing up. As Qian explains, ancient Chinese music often opens with the sound of the metal drum, the sound that awakens something inside the audience’s mind and makes the audience attentive and alert (「始作，翕如也：古者樂始作，先 奏金，鼓鐘。翕，合義。翕如，謂鐘聲即起，聞者皆翕然振奮，是為樂之 始。」107). As seen here, what is closed up in the beginning is gradually opened up as the dissonances evolve or regroup to invent harmony with a sense of both change and continuity throughout the musical experience. The initial closing up is the stasis symbolized by the sound of the drum, and the sound of the ancient Chinese metal drum resonates like the stasis of quality or extent more than the stasis of diametrical opposites. In singing, similarly, Confucius emphasizes listening carefully before joining in: 子與人歌而善，必使反之，而後和之。When the Maser joins others in singing, he kindly asks them to sing again [and listens carefully] before he joins them in harmony. (7.31) Confucius’ effort to harmonize, or discourse, is an effort to engage creatively with the other and to preserve differences, just as rhetoric is to prevent creatively

Rhetorical education 213 the dissonance within human communities from breaking down into the violent elimination of the opposites when irreconcilable or rectilinear contraries prevail. Even though the impulse to change is indeed the strongest or the most revolutionary of the rectilinear contraries, the stasis of extent still contains within itself “an impulse to change” (Dieter 360), to move on, and to continue, just as the sound of the drum and others’ singing are still rousing. Change is “innately inherent” (Dieter 360) not just in confrontational conflicts but also in peaceable encounters. When Confucius encourages his students to sing songs and to listen to music, he is therefore teaching them to engage the multidimensionality of the stasis, like Aristotle who emphasizes the stasis of extent. Here, as elsewhere, Confucius’ teaching of rhetorical creativity is not as different from Aristotle’s as it first seems. We see the complexity of these similarities and differences more clearly when we read Confucius more carefully but also when, as pointed out by both Thompson and Dieter, we take special care not to overlook Aristotle’s emphasis on the extent. Music as seen in the Analects, therefore, can help lead to knowledge and value beyond the known. As put by Mu-Chou Poo, through performing ritual rites, the powerful sound of the drums heralds a “solution” to our problems (312). In Chapter Two, we see that Confucius and Zi Lu disagree over Zi Lu’s decision about Zi Gao. We can say now that Confucius refuses to argue with Zi Lu because Zi Lu confuses stases: whether Zi Gao is ready and whether education has absolute value over practice in relation to holding public office. This reading is reinforced by Confucius’ comments on Zi Lu’s need for refinement in the art of music: Zi Lu is adequate in playing the zither but needs further development22. When Zi Lu learns from Confucius’ silence, like from a piece of music that takes a turn unexpected to Zi Lu, the stasis of music provides a tool for Zi Lu to continue selfcultivation and self-improvement. When we recall Confucius’ teachings that we are to become tian-like and walk the way of yinyang, that we are to enthymemize at each kairic moment of yi, and that we can complain through songs, are to be roused by the dissonance, and reach new harmony with both continuity and change through music, then we see why to Confucius music can inspire us to invent new values.

Conclusions A conspicuous difference between Confucius’ and Aristotle’s rhetorical teaching is that Confucius models wu-the-realization more than Aristotle because the dao that Confucius teaches emphasizes deference for others more than does the form that Aristotle teaches. This finding reiterates Confucius’ emphasis on the harmonious dao, the emerging persona of the orators and Aristotle’s emphasis on the progressive form, the poised image of the orators. Despite the difference, both topoi and li emphasize the inseparableness of form and matter. Like topoi that are both form and matter, li is connected to tian-the-cosmos that provides stability and di-the-earth that provides variability. To learn and practice li then is similar to learning and practicing topoi: to participate in the invention of multiple ways

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through which continuity and change interact with the help of tian-the-cosmos, di-the-earth, and generations of people before and after. Similarly, yue is like stases in that it shows Confucius’ emphasis on questioning established ideas, deliberating probable ideas, and discovering and inventing new ideas. Topoi, stases and li, yue show how Aristotle and Confucius teach the hylomorphic nature—form and matter—of topoi and li; how they stress the at once harmonious and dissonant, the reconcilable, stases and yue over the antagonistic ones; and how they teach the value of the rhetorical art to our understanding of the truths and the daos of things.

Notes 1 Literally, li and yue denote ritual and music. I will explain my translation below in the discussion. 2 See works cited for two extensive studies and commentaries by Grimaldi on Aristotle’s Rhetoric. 3 R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye (in the Oxford Translation) do not use the word illusive in their translation of topoi in relation to form and matter. Their translation of the Physics is in the Oxford collection of Aristotle’s works. 4 Here I use Kennedy’s translation because it offers a reading that is between Modern Library’s and Oxford’s versions of Roberts’ translation—the two diverge rather substantially. Modern Library: “not simply to succeed in persuading, but rather to discover the means of coming as near such success as the circumstances of each particular case allow.” Oxford: “not simply to succeed in persuading, but rather to discover the persuasive facts in each case.” 5 William Barrett Aristotle’s Analysis of Movement. New York: Columbia University Press, 1938. 6 子夏問曰：「巧笑倩兮，美目盼兮，素以為絢兮。何為也？」子曰：「繪事後 素。」曰：「禮後乎？」子曰：「起予者商也！始可與言詩矣。」Zi Xia asks, “‘the beautiful smiling cheeks, the longing pupils of the eyes, and the addition of the rouge.’ What does this all mean?” The Master says, “The white lines follow the five colors.” Zi Xia asks again, “Is it like li-the-ritually-appropriate that comes after?” The Master says, “You have helped me make connections! Now I can talk with you about the Book of Songs.” (3.8). 7 子貢問曰：「賜也何如？」 子曰：「女，器也。」 曰：「何器也？」 曰： 「瑚璉也。」Zi Gong asks, “What do you think of me?” The Master says, “You are a vessel.” “What kind of a vessel?” inquires Zi Gong. The Master replies, “The most precious kind of hu-lian.” (5.3). 8 林放問禮之本。子曰：「大哉問！禮，與齊奢也，寧儉；喪，與其易也， 寧戚。」 Lin Fang asks about the roots of li-the-ritually-appropriate. The Master says, “A significant question indeed! According to li-the-ritually-appropriate, between being wasteful and miserly, one would rather err on the side of the latter; and between ritual details and extreme grief regarding funeral ceremonies, one would rather err on the side of the latter.” (3.4). 9 子路、曾皙、冉有、公西華侍坐。子曰：「以吾一日長乎爾，毋吾以也。居則 曰：『不吾知也！』如或知爾，則何以哉？」 子路率爾而對，曰：「千乘之 國，攝乎大國之間閒，加之以師旅，因之以饑饉，由也為之，比及三年，可使 有勇，且知方也。」 夫子哂之。「求，爾何如？」 對曰：「方六七十，如五 六十，求也為之，比及三年，可使足民；如其禮樂，以俟君子。」「赤，爾何 如？」對曰：「非曰能之，願學焉！宗廟之事，如會同，端章甫，願為小相 焉。」「點，爾何如？」鼓瑟希，鏗爾，舍瑟而作。對曰：「異乎三子者之 撰。」子曰：「何傷乎？赤各言其志也。」 曰：「莫春者，春服既成；冠者五

Rhetorical education 215 六人，童子六七人，浴乎沂，風乎舞雩，詠而歸。」 夫子喟然歎曰：「吾與點 也！」三子者出，曾皙後。曾皙曰：「夫三子者之言何如？」 子曰：「亦各言 其志也已矣！」 曰：「夫子何哂由也？」 曰：「為國以禮，其言不讓，是故 哂之。」「唯求則非邦也與？」「安見方六七十，如五六十，而非邦也者。」 「唯赤非邦也與？」「宗廟會同，非諸侯而何？赤也為之小，孰能為之大！」 Zi Lu, Zeng Xi, Ran You, and Gong Xihua are sitting with the Master. The Master says, “Although I am older than you, do speak your mind. You often say, ‘no one knows me.’ If someone does know you [and would employ you to assist in governing], what would you do?” Zi Lu says right away, “Give me a state with one thousand chariots, surrounded by larger states, with invasion from outside and famine from inside. I could turn it around in three years’ time, everyone then having courage and direction.” The Master smiles and then asks, “Ran You, what would you do?” Ran You replies, “Give me a small state of 60–70 or even 50–60 square miles. Within three years, I could make everyone live comfortably. As for understanding li-the-ritually-appropriate and music, I will have to defer to exemplary persons.” The Master then asks, “Gong Xihua, what would you do?” Gong Xihua replies, “I am not saying that I am already fully capable, and I will continue studying, but I would like to conduct ceremonies in the ancestral temple, greet and meet with diplomats from other states, wear the ceremonial robe and cap, and be a minor protocol official.” The Master then asks, “Zeng Xi, how about you?” Finishing playing the music, Zeng Xi puts down the zither, stands up, and says, “My goal differs from theirs.” The Master says, “That is okay; everyone is just speaking his mind.” Zeng Xi says then, “On a late spring day in March, dressed in spring attires, I will accompany five to six adults and six to seven children to bathe in the Yi River, play around the Wuling Altar, and then return home singing.” The Master sighs and then says, “I agree with Zeng Xi.” After Zi Lu, Ran You, and Gong Xihua have left, Zeng Xi asks, “What do you think of what the other three had to say?” The Master says, “They were just speaking their minds.” Zen Xi asks, “Why did you smile at what Zi Lu had to say?” The Master says, “Managing a state well requires deference according to li-the-ritually-appropriate, but he speaks with anything but that attitude, and that’s why.” “Is Ran You talking about governing a state?” The Master says, “Why cannot a state be of 60–70 or 50–60 square miles?” “Is Gong Xihua talking about a state?” The Master says, “With temples and meetings of different states, if that is not a state, what is? If Gong Xihua can only be a minor official, who can be a major one?” (11.25). 10 The word appears several times in the Analects: 1.10, 3.7, 4.13, 8.1, 11.26, and 15.36. In addition to 1.10 and 4.13 above, here is another example where Zi Gong describes Confucius as deferential. 子禽問於子貢曰：「夫子至於是邦也，必聞其政，求 之與？抑與之與？」子貢曰：「夫子溫﹑良﹑恭﹑儉﹑讓以得之。夫子之求之 也，其諸異乎人之求之與？」Zi Qin asks Zi Gong, “On arriving at each State, the Master must ask about the state affairs. Does he request the information or is it offered to him?” Zi Gong says, “The Master obtains what he receives by being cordial, kind, proper, modest, and deferential. The way the Master requests must be different from other ways.” (1.10). 11 Refer to the following passages discussed in Chapter Three: 子曰：「吾十有五而 志於學，三十而立，四十而不惑，五十而知天命，六十而耳順，七十而從心 所欲，不踰矩。」 The Master says, “By the age of 15, I set my goal at learning earnestly. By 30, I established myself firmly. By 40, I removed doubts and clarified confusion. By 50, I realized what tianming-the-cosmic-order is. By 60, I was able to comprehend everything I heard in connection with each other. And by 70, I can act according to my heart/mind’s desire without transgression.” (2.4). 12 This point is taken further, and compellingly, by Mu-Chuo Poo. There is an attitude among ancient Chinese, Poo says, that can be described as lacking “a sense of awe and mystery” in the sense that “the world and every being in it [is] somehow accessible to the human mind and therefore manageable” (312). This is a very methodical and, in that

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sense, technical aspect of ancient Chinese culture. Poo argues that to understand ancient Chinese religion, one must understand this aspect of that ancient culture. See detailed discussions of gui-the-ghost in Chapter Three. Passage 11.11 is translated in footnote 10 of Chapter 3 (123). 子曰：「道之以政，齊之以刑，民免而無恥；道之以德，齊之以禮，有恥且 格。」The Master says, “Governing by policy and regulating by punishment, one may control people who do not have a sense of shame; governing by excellence and regulating by li-the-ritually-appropriate, people have a sense of shame and order themselves according to li-the-ritually-appropriate.” (2.3); 子曰：「 監於二代，郁郁乎文哉！ 吾從周。」The Master says, “the Zhou Dynasty studied the development of the Xia and Yin Dynasties, and its rituals and music system are so rich. I follow Zhou.” (3.14); 子曰：「大哉堯之為軍也，巍巍乎，唯天為大，唯堯則之，蕩蕩乎，民無能名 焉。巍巍乎，其有成功也，煥乎，其有文章。」The Master says, “Great is Yao the ruler. Greatest is heaven, and only Yao can be compared to it. So majestic is he that people have no words to praise him. So magnificent are his accomplishments, and so bright is his ritual and musical system!” (8.19). 子張問：「十世可知也？」 子曰：「殷因於夏禮，所損益，可知也；周因於 殷禮，所損益，可知也。其或繼周者，雖百世，可知也。」Zi Zhang asks, “Can one foresee ten generations ahead?” The Master replies, “Li-the-ritually-appropriate of the Yin Dynasty is inherited from the Xia Dynasty, and the changes of li can be known. Li-the-ritually-appropriate of the Zhou Dynasty is inherited from the Yin Dynasty, and the changes of li also can be known. What follows the Zhou Dynasty can be known, too, even if it is a hundred generations ahead.” (2.23); 子曰：「夏禮，吾能言之，杞不 足微也；殷禮，吾能言之，宋不足微也。文獻不足故也。足，則吾能微之矣。 」 The Master says, “I can speak about li-the-ritually-appropriate of the Xia Dynasty even though its descendent state Qi did not leave us with much evidence; I can speak about li-the-ritually-appropriate of the Yin Dynasty, even though its descendent state Song did not leave us with much evidence. It’s because neither of these states had men of letters produce sufficient documents; if they did, then I could cite support for what I say.” (3.9). 子貢曰：「夫子之文章，可得而聞也；夫子之言性與天道，不可得而聞也。」 Zi Gong says, “We hear the Master’s teaching of songs, history, ritual, and music yet not that of xing-the-human-nature and tiandao-the-way-of-thecosmos.” (5.12). 子曰：「從我於陳蔡者，皆不及門也。」德行：顏淵、閔子騫、冉伯牛、仲 弓；言語：宰我、子貢；政事：冉有、李路；文學：子游、子夏。The Master says, “Those who were with me in the States of Chen and Cai have all left me by now. Conducting themselves excellently were Yan Hui, Min Ziqian, Ran Boniu, and Zhong Gong; the most eloquent were Zai Wo and Zi Gong; the best at governing were Ran You and Zi Lu; and the most knowledgeable in songs, history, ritual, and music were Zi You and Zi Xia.” (11.2). 子曰：「君子博學於文，約之以禮，亦可以弗畔矣夫！」The Master says, “Exemplary persons study broadly in songs, history, ritual propriety, and music and they discipline their learning with ritual propriety, so that they do not go astray.” (6.25). For the translation of 1.15, see Chapter Four (151); 子曰：「詩三百，一言以蔽之， 曰：『思無邪』。」The Master says, “There are three hundred poems in the Songs, but one of its lines sums up it all: ‘think not deviously.’” (2.2); 三家者以雍徹。子曰： 「『相維辟公，天子穆穆』，奚取於三家之堂？」The Three Families [Meng, Shu, Ji] of Lu use Ode Yong from Chapter Zhousong in the Songs when they conduct ancestor sacrifice. The Master says, “It is said in Yong, ‘The lords assist and the Son of Heaven presides, solemn and deferential.’ Is there any meaning when this is sung in the Three Families’ ceremony?” (3.2); for the translation of 3.8, see Endnote 6 above; 曾子有疾，召門弟子曰：「啟予足！啟予手！詩云：『戰戰兢兢，如臨 深淵，如履薄冰。』而今而後，吾知免夫！小子！」Zeng Zi is ill and he calls his

Rhetorical education 217 students, saying, “Look at my hands and at my feet. It is said in the Songs, ‘Be careful; be careful—as if standing by deep waters or on thin ice.’ Now I know that I have protected my body from punishment, my students!” (8.3); 子曰：「衣敝縕，與衣孤 貉者立，而不恥者，其由也與！『不忮不求，何用不臧？』」子路終身誦之。 子曰：「是道也，何足以臧！」The Master says, “Only Zi Lu can wear threadbare robes, stand by those in the fur of fox and badges, and do not feel ashamed. It is said in the Songs, ‘Not jealous and not greedy, how can a person like this not be good?’” Zi Lu starts to recite this line all the time, and the Master says, “That’s not the most helpful.” (9.26); 「唐棣之華，偏其反而；豈不爾思？室是遠而。」子曰：「未之思也， 未何遠之有？」The Songs says, “The flowers on the kang-di tree, with their backs to each other, swaying and rocking towards each other. How can I not think of you? We live too far apart.” The Master says, “He cannot be really thinking of her; if he did, how can she be far away?” (9.30); 南容三復白圭，孔子以其兄之子妻之。Nan Rong recites a verse from the Songs three times a day, [the blemish in jade can be polished, but not the wrong words we say to others]. Confucius marries his own niece to Nan Rong. (11.5); 子所雅言，詩﹑書﹑執禮，皆雅言也。The Master uses standard dialect when he reads from the Songs, from the History, and when he conducts ritual ceremonies. He uses standard dialect for all these. (7.17);「齊景公有馬千駟，死之 日，民無德而稱焉；伯夷、叔齊餓於首陽之下，民到于今稱之。其斯之謂與？ 」（誠不以富，亦祇以異）The Master says, “Duke Jing of Qi had four thousand horses, but till the day he died people had little praise of excellence for him; Bo Yi and Shu Qi died of hunger at the foot of Mount Shouyang, and people have praised them till today. This is what it means when in the Songs it says, ‘The good memory of people is not of their wealth. Wealth only marks difference among the living.’” (16.12/12.10), 子 曰：「誦詩三百；授之以政，不達；使於四方，不能專對；雖多，亦奚以為？ 」The Master says, “If one can recite all three hundred poems in the Songs but cannot work out difficulties in the office or negotiate diplomatic affairs, then even though three hundred is a big number, what is the use of it?” (13.5); 子謂伯魚曰：「女為周南召南 矣乎？人而不為周南，召南，其猶正牆面而立也與？」 The Master says to Bo Yu, “Have you studied Chapters Zhou Nan and Zhao Nan in the Songs? One who has not done so is like standing and facing a wall [seeing nothing and going nowhere].” (17.10). 20 子曰：「『關雎』樂而不淫，哀而不傷。」The Master says, “The Music of Guan Ju is joyous without indulgence and sorrowful without distress.” (3.20); 子謂韶，「 盡美矣，又盡善也。」謂武，「盡美矣，未盡善也。」The Master comments on the music of Shao, “It is the most beautiful and also the most apt,” and he comments on the music of King Wu, “It is the most beautiful but not yet the most apt.” (3.25); 子在齊聞韶，三月不知肉味，曰：「不圖為樂之至於斯也。」In the State of Qi, the Master listened to the music of Shao and did not know the taste of meat for three months, saying, “It is hard to imagine that music can be so uplifting.” (7.13); 子曰： 「師摯之始，關雎之亂，洋洋乎盈耳哉。」The Master says, “From the time Master Zhi begins till the time the chorus of Guan Ju finishes the coda, the music fills and resonates in my ear.” (8.15); 顏淵問為邦。子曰：「行夏之時，乘殷之輅。服周之 冕。樂則韶舞。放鄭聲，遠佞人；鄭聲淫，佞人殆。」Yan Yuan asks about governing effectively. The Master says, “Promote the calendar of the Xia Dynasty; ride the chariot of the Yin Dynasty; wear the ceremonial cap of the Zhou Dynasty, and play the music of Shao from Yao’s and King Wu’s times. Abandon the sound of Zheng and distance yourself from the glib-tongued speakers: the sound of Zheng corrupts and the glib speakers are dangerous.” (15.10); 子曰：「吾自衞反魯，然後樂正，雅頌，各得其 所。」』樂而不淫，哀而不傷。」The Master says, “Since I have returned from the State of Wei to the State of Lu, I have organized the Book of Music, and Ya and Song are now in their places.” (9.14). 21 陳亢問於伯魚曰：「子亦有異聞乎？」對曰：「未也。嘗獨立，鯉趨而過庭。 曰：『學詩乎？』對曰：『未也。』『不學詩，無以言！』鯉退而學詩。他 日，又獨立，鯉趨而過庭。曰：『學禮乎？』對曰：『未也。』『不學禮，無以

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立！』鯉退而學禮。聞斯二者。」陳亢退而喜曰：「問一得三：聞詩，聞禮。 又聞君子遠其子也。」Chen Gang asks Bo Yu, “Do you receive some special instruction [from your father Confucius]?” Bo Yu replies, “No. Once my father was standing alone in the hall when I was walking by deferentially through the middle of the hall. He asked me, ‘Have you studied the Songs?’ I replied, ‘Not yet.’ ‘Having not studied the Songs, you do not know how to speak to others.’ I then started to study the Songs. Another time he was standing alone in the hall when I was walking by. He asked, ‘Have you studied li?’ ‘Not yet,’ I replied. ‘Having not studied li-the-ritually-appropriate, you cannot establish yourself within the community.’ I then started to study li-the-rituallyappropriate.” On hearing this, Chen Keng is happy, saying, “Asking for one and receiving three, I learned about the Songs, li-the-ritually-appropriate, and that exemplary persons do not treat their own sons with partiality.” (16.13). 22 子曰：「由之瑟，奚為於丘之門？」門人不敬子路。子曰，「由也升堂矣，未 入室也。」 The Master asks, “Why is Zi Lu playing the zither here in my house?” On hearing this comment, other students of the Master become less respectful to Zi Lu. The Master says, “Actually, he has passed through the hallway and can govern but needs to deepen his learning and govern ingeniously.” (11.14).

Works Cited Allan, Sarah. Buried Ideas: Legends of Abdication and Ideal Government in Early Chinese Bamboo-Slip Manuscripts. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2016. Aristotle. The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation. Ed. Jonathan Barnes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984. ———. On Rhetoric. Trans. George A. Kennedy. New York: Oxford UP, 1991. ———. Rhetoric. Trans. W. Rhys Roberts. New York: The Modern Library, 1954. Bird, Otto. “The Tradition of the Logical Topics: Aristotle to Ockham.” Journal of the History of Ideas. 23 (1962): 307–23. Brindley, Erica. “Music, Cosmos, and the Development of Psychology in Early China.” T’oung Pao. 92 (2006): 1–49. ———. Music, Cosmology, and the Politics of Harmony in Early China. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2012. Chamberlain, Charles. “From ‘Haunts’ to ‘Character’: The Meaning of Ethos and Its Relation to Ethics.” Helios. 11.2 (1984): 97–108. Chow, Tse-Tsung. “The Early History of the Chinese Word Shih (Poetry).” Wen-lin: Studies in the Chinese Humanities. Ed. Chow Tse-tsung. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968). 151–209. Cogan, Marc. “Rodolphus Agricola and the Semantic Revolutions of the History of Invention.” Rhetorica. 2 (1984): 163–94. Confucius. The Analects of Confucius. Trans. and Anno. Arthur Waley. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. ———. The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation. Trans. Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr. New York: Ballantine Books, 1998. ———. The Analects of Confucius: A Translation with Annotations.《論語譯注》 Anno. Yang Bojun (楊伯峻). Beijing: Zhonghua shuju (中華書局), 1980. ———. Confucius Analects: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries. Trans. Edward Slingerland. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.2003. ———. Lun yu xin jie.《論語新解》Anno. Qian Mu (錢穆). Taipei Shi: Lian jing, 1994. Cook, Scott. “Yue Ji—Record of Music: Introduction, Translation, Notes, and Commentary.” Asian Music. 26.2 (1995): 1–96. Detienner, Marcel and Jean-Pierre Vernant. Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society. Trans. Janet Lloyd. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1978. Dieter, Otto Alvin Loeb. “Stasis.” Communication Monographs. 17.4 (1950): 345–69.

Rhetorical education 219 Grimaldi, William M. A. Studies in the Philosophy of Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GMBH, 1972. Gross, Alan G. and Arthur E. Walzer, eds. Reading Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000. Heidlebaugh, Nola J. Judgment, Rhetoric, and the Problem of Incommensurability: Recalling Practical Wisdom. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2001. Kennedy, George. Trans. On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Kern, Martin. “Bronze Inscriptions, the Shijing and the Shangshu: The Evolution of the Ancestral Sacrifice during the Western Zhou.” Early Chinese Religion. Eds. John Lagerwey and Marc Kalinowski. Boston: Brill, 2009. 143–200. Kuttner, Fritz A. “The Development of the Concept of Music in China’s Early History.” Asian Music. 1.2 (1969): 12–21. Lagerwey, John and Marc Kalinowski, eds. Early Chinese Religion. Boston: Brill, 2009. Leff, Michael C. “The Topics of Argumentative Invention in Latin Rhetorical Theory from Cicero to Boethius.” Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric. 1.1 (1983): 23–44. Miller, Carolyn R. “The Aristotelian Topos: Hunting for Novelty.” Reading Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Eds. Alan G. Gross and Arthur E. Walzer. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000. 130–46. Nadeau, Ray. “Hermogene’s On Stases.” Speech Monographs. 31.4 (1964): 361–424. Poo, Mu-Chou. “Ritual and Ritual Texts in Early China.” Early Chinese Religion. Eds. John Lagerwey and Marc Kalinowski. Boston: Brill, 2009. 281–314. Qian, Mu. （錢穆）Lun yu xin jie. 《論語新解》Taipei Shi: Lian jing, 1994. Rapp, Christof, “The Topoi of the Rhetoric.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2010 Edition). Ed. Edward N. Zalta. n.d. Available online at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-rhetoric/supplement2.html (accessed April 4, 2011). Swearingen, C. Jan. “Ren, Wen, and Baguwen: The Eight-Legged Essay in Rhetorical Perspective.” “Symposium: Comparative Rhetorical Studies in the New Contact Zone: Chinese Rhetoric Reimagined.” College Composition and Communication. 60.4 (2009): W32−W121. Eds. C. Jan Swearingen and LuMing Mao. W106−W114. n.d. Available online at www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/CCC/0604june09/CCC0604Symposium.pdf (accessed June 8, 2009). Thompson, Wayne N. “Stasis in Aristotle’s Rhetroic.” Quarterly Journal of Speech. 58.2 (1972): 134–41. Verene, Donald Phillip. Vico’s Science of Imagination. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981. Wang, Yuhwen. “The Ethical Power of Music: Ancient Greek and Chinese Thoughts.” Journal of Aesthetic Education. 38.1 (2004): 89–104. Warnick, Barbara. “Two Systems of Invention: The Topics in the Rhetoric and The New Rhetoric.” Reading Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Eds. Alan G. Gross and Arthur E. Walzer. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000. 107–29. Waterfield, Robin. The First Philosophers: The Presocratics and the Sophists. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Zulick, Margaret. “Generative Rhetoric and Public Argument: A Classical Approach.” Argumentation and Advocacy. 33 (1977): 109–19.

Epilogue Crossing disciplinary and cultural boundaries

To understand cross-cultural differences, comparative rhetoricians must deepen their understanding of the similarities at the same time. In shedding light on the common needs and goals that unite us as peoples, such endeavors can also help preserve differences of emphasis among us. As part of these endeavors, comparative rhetoricians must face the challenge of crossing disciplinary boundaries, a formidable but familiar challenge for all who are committed to the idea that “every one says something true about the nature of things, and while individually we contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed” (Aristotle Metaphysics 993a30−b4). Both Confucius and Aristotle are committed to this idea, and so should comparative rhetoricians of Aristotle’s and Confucius’ rhetorical thinking in order to further cross-cultural communication in the globalized 21st century. There is no question, as this study has shown, that Aristotle’s eikos, epieikeia, kairos, topoi, stasis and Confucius’ tian, dao, ren, yi, li, yue differ not only in meaningful ways but also in ways that are worth preserving. Aristotle’s rhetorical thinking is relationally formal and Confucius’, formally relational; Aristotle’s rhetorical thinking is bi-directionally enthymematic and Confucius’, inferentially gua-like; Aristotle’s teaching is systematic but with flexibility and Confucius’, flexible with systematicity. These differences in emphasis shape different discursive practices in their respective cultures: more definite or open-ended discourses; expectations for the more explicitness of the orator’s reasoning or for the more self-reflectiveness of the orators and audience alike; more appreciation of the ethos of self-assuredness and confidence or that of disequilibrium and deference; more instruction or modeling in rhetorical training. Not only can these differences of emphasis help Aristotelian and Confucian cultures understand and communicate more meaningfully, they can also help ensure our well-being as peoples to be more diverse and resourceful. To understand these differences, however, comparative rhetoricians must engage the larger context that contains similarities and in which the differences unfold. To understand the larger context, comparative rhetoricians must brave disciplinary boundaries. As this study has shown, I hope, both Confucius and Aristotle approach rhetoric in the larger context of the truths of things as form and as dao. For it is only in the interdisciplinary contexts does it become clear that Aristotle’s and Confucius’

Epilogue 221 rhetorical thinking is similarly relational, dialogic, and inventive, characteristics that make rhetorical invention a powerful means of facilitating interactions among peoples in the globalized world today. More specifically, in the larger context of the form and the dao taught by Aristotle and Confucius, Aristotle’s eikos is seen as relational and Confucius’ way is seen as formal; Aristotle’s enthymeme overlaps with the appetitive and Confucius’ ren entails inferential thinking; Aristotle’s topoi and stasis generate innovations and Confucius’ li and yue produce harmony. Even though it is indeed true that a high level of flexibility is the focus of Confucius’ concept of yi-the-appropriate, it is important to remember that flexibility is an essential part of Aristotle’s conception of rhetoric: “questions as to whether something has happened or has not happened, will be or will not be, is or is not, must of necessity be left to the judge, since the lawgiver cannot foresee them” (1354b13–14). If we do not see the changing but nonetheless continual thinking that both Confucius’ and Aristotle’s discursive practices are committed to, we may lose sight of the larger context in which we have reasons to believe that different cultural legacies can benefit from diversity. Crossing disciplinary boundaries has its risks, risks of partiality, equivocation, and even abuse; as pointed out by Aristotle, “Any argument based upon what usually happens is always open to objection: otherwise it would not be a probability but an invariable and necessary truth” (1402b28–30). However, ultimately these risks come from the inevitable uncertainty of our lives as well as from our efforts to engage that uncertainty. Both Confucius in the East and Aristotle in the West see clearly not only that we cannot avoid uncertainty but also that rhetorical thinking and probable knowledge provide a space for conversation so that together we can engage that uncertainty across disciplinary, cultural, and generational boundaries. Comparative rhetoricians must be team members who never give up on working in partnership with their aspiring ideals, the human situations, and their community members; in Confucius’ terms, they must work in partnership with tian-the-cosmos, di-the-earth, and ren-the-people—so as to participate in the invention of human reality in given social, cultural, and political situations. In this regard, I truly hope that the current preliminary inquiry will be complemented by many studies to come. Finally, these risks are worth taking because, as taught by Confucius and Aristotle, we can understand the truths of things, to live the form and walk the way, once we open our minds to others by constantly communicating, reexamining, and improving the probable beliefs and practices of our own.

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Index

actualization 34, 42, 78, 87, 91–92, 95, 98–99–101, 108, 114–15, 120–21, 122, 150, 154–59, 179, 186, 198, 206 Ames, Roger and Henry Rosemont 16, 19, 48–49, 64, 106, 108, 118, 147, 163, 165, 203 Anton, John P. 96, 138–39, 158, 165 appearance: of li-the-ritually-appropriate 204–07; of things 63, 91–93, 97, 121–22, 125; of truths 144 appetitive see soul Aquinas, Thomas 39 Arnhart, Larry 134–35, 141 Atwill, Janet 14, 33, 39 audience: active role of 23, 36, 57–58, 122, 132–36, 180–81, 184, 186, 212, 220; Confucian 164; East and West 147, 163; ensouled 143–45; and pathos 102–03; vs. philosophical audience 97; rhetorical audience 129–130, 139, 141, 158; self-interested 144 Augustine 37–38 Bakhtin, M. M. 41–42 Barns, Jonathan 129 Berlin, James 66 Bitzer, Lloyd 133, 136 Bo Yi (伯夷) and Shu Qi (叔齊) 82, 104–05, 121, 152–53, 155, 157, 161, 208, 217 boundaries: Aristotelian 23, 39–42; disciplinary 1, 86–88, 220–21; interpretive 66; of rhetoric 2–3, 6, 9 Brindley, Erica Fox 18, 210 Brunschwig, Jacques 31, 33 Burke, Kenneth 3, 5, 35, 41 Burnyeat, M. F. 14, 130, 132, 134, 141–42

Cahill, David 148 certainty: in Aristotle 118–19, 132; in Confucius 162; and the enthymeme 134; levels of 103–04, 135–36; and probability 36, 55, 77, 101, 130, 143, 182, 194, 201, 207; as tiandao-theway-of-cosmos 114; and truth 88; and uncertainty 23–26, 32, 102, 221; vs. uncertainty 29, 188, 191 Chang, Kwang-Chih 12 Chen, Tongsheng 148 Ciceronian rhetoric see rhetorical invention Cole, Thomas 40, 115, 118 common topoi see topoi Cook, Scott 209–10 creativity 2, 11, 33, 58, 73, 75, 90, 100–01, 113, 139, 144, 179, 201; as novelty 189–91; as transformation 184–88; and yue-the-music 209–13; see also rhetorical invention Crivelli, Paolo 11 dao-the-way: anthropocosmic 110, 187, 123, 187; different interpretations 14–15, 61, 67; and eikos 178; and form 117–22, 157, 161, 167–68, 205, 213–14, 220–21; and inference 150; as intertwined ren and li 205–07; rendaothe-way-of-people 104, 108–09, 114–15, 118, 122; and tianming-the-cosmic-order 105–06, 110; as yingyang 158, 161–62, 167, 207 deconstruction 41 deference see li dialectic 7: partly dialectic 33–34, 81, 101, 136, 140–41, 156–58, 191, 199–201; Platonic vs Aristotelian 30–32, 40–41, 75; vs rhetoric 129, 188–89; strong vs. pure 62–63, 94, 97; and topoi 180–84

224 Index Dieter, Otto Alvin Loeb 194–202, 210, 211, 213; see also stasis discovery: through analogizing 151; and li-the-ritually-appropriate 184–86, 206; as transformation 144; of truth 9–15, 186–87; see also creativity, four causes, rhetorical invention disequilibrium 15, 168, 178, 220: ren as self-revising 157 Donovan, Brain R. 28, 30 eikos: and rendao-the way-of-people 105–08; and tian-the-cosmos 110; and truths 88, 97; see also probability energeia 75–79: rhetoric as 87, 206, 150; as final cause 99, 167 Engberg-Pedersen, Troels 14, 31, 97, enmattered 35–36, 90–91, 93, 104, 114–15, 128, 132–33, 137–39, 143, 145, 168; see also hylomorphism enthymeme: always refutable 7; in ancient China 69–71, 78, 128, 146–48; audience 142–45, 192; Confucian 147, 150–52; Confucian and Aristotelian 157–62, 168, 178, 221; bidirectional 15, 40, 220; and education 43; epieikeia 136; as inductive and deductive 128–30, 134–35, 145; inference 137; and justice 138; kinds of premises and conclusions 131–33, 138, 140; and li-the-ritually appropriate 207; and ren-the-equitable 152–57; and rhetoric 139; 148–50; and search for truth 135–36, 142; substance of rhetoric 73, 80, 82, 186, 188–89; and syllogism 129, 133, 141, 145, 180, 191; and yi-the-appropriate 166–68; see also topoi epieikeia 136: Aristotelian and Confucian 128, 157–62, 178, 220; and the just 165–66; and ren-the-equitable (仁) 147–48, 154–57; and time 140, 142; twofold characteristic 136–139; see also Kennedy episteme: in Aristotle 34–36, 40; in Augustine 38; in contemporary studies 40–42; and imagination 183; and logos and nous 184; Platonic and Aristotelian 31–32; and Sophistical thinking 29–30; and techne 23–27, 42–43; as truth 9, 88, 97, 137 equivocation: in Aristotle 32; and interdisciplinary studies 221; in interpreting Confucius 64; and rhetoric 86, 133

essentialism 8, 30, 31, 41, 70, 123, 186, 188, 194–95; fuzzy 123 expediency: political discourse 23, 57, 180–81; as sumpheron 166–67 fabrication 34, 41, 67, 101; lying 78–79, 101 fallacies: question begging 86; red herring 54–55 Farrell, Thomas 42, 101–03, 122 Fine, Gail 11 Fingarette, Herbert 60–66, 148 form, the: and dao-the-way 1, 4, 15, 87, 157; deductive form 40, 68–70, 78, 80, 168; as discursive and noetic 93–96; as dynamic 14; of energy 75, 150; enthymematic 129–30, 132, 135–39, 140–42, 188; and gua 145–46, 148–49; as hylomorphic 87, 88, 90–93, 110, 115, 128, 168, 184, 187, 209; and li-the-ritually-appropriate 206–07; and matter 22, 189–93; and the mean 158, 167; and pathos 98–103; and rhetoric 97; and stasis 201–02; and tianmingthe-cosmic-order 104–05, 108, 110–15, 117–19, 121–23, 140, 160, 180, 183, 203, 205, 213–14; as truths 8–10, 159, 167, 178, 187 four causes, the: and discovery 33–36, 99 Fu Xi (伏羲 ) 131 Gage, John 136 Garrett, Mary 6, 8, 11, 70 Garver, Eugene 40 Ge, Zhaoguang 148 ghosts, see gui-the-ghost 148 Gottlieb, Paula 107, 123, 147, 157 Green, Lawrence 40 Grimaldi, William: the enthymematic form 136–37, 142, 168; koina or requisites 133, 181–82, 189, 191–92, 194, 196–97; rhetoric and literature 183–84, 187–88; rhetoric and truth 14, 88, 97 gua (卦) 131, 145–47, 156–57, 168, 207, 220 Guang, Zhong (管仲) 155–57, 164, 169 gui-the-ghost 86, 107–10, 123, 163, 170, 173, 210 Halliwell, Stephen 14, 144, 166 Halloran, Michael 16, 73 Hamburger, Max 136, 138

Index Harbsmeier, Christoph 4–5, 12, 15, 59, 110, 104, 148 harmony: cosmic 7, 112, 209–10, 221; as disequilibrium 2, 52, 118, 125; and dissonance 37, 49–50, 212–13 Heidlebaugh, Nola 36–37, 42, 144, 183, 184–88, 189, 190, 191, 194, 197, 206 Hermogenes 197, 211 heuristics 77, 139, 158 historiography 80–81, 86 Hum and Lyon 3, 6 Hussey, Edward 27, 28 hylomorphism 1, 9–11, 13, 25, 36, 90–91, 93, 99, 104, 123, 141, 168–69, 187, 190–91, 198, 199, 205 Immortality: limited 99, 100–01, 108, 117–18, 167 indeterminacy 33, 114, 183 induction and deduction see enthymeme inflexibility 23: as rigidity (必信) 74, 164; as uncompromising (固) 58, 173, 174 Irwin, T. H. 7, 62–63, 94–95, 97, 143–44, 158–59, 162, 208 judicial discourse as song-the-lawsuits (訟) 16, 49 kairos 7, 9, 37, 69, 71, 128, 140; in Aristotle 139–41, 220; as knowing when (時中) 122; as quan (權) 165; as timing (時命) 120; as yi (義) 163–65 Kaplan, Robert 69, 148 Kennedy, George 3, 13, 14; on Chinese rhetoric 68–74, 82, 100, 148–50; on koina 133, 181; on pathos 98; Platonic interpretive partiality 75–80; on Renaissance rhetoric 40; rhetoric as energeia 87, 206; on stasis 196; on topoi 181–83; translation and interpretation of the Rhetoric 17, 43, 82, 167, 168–69, 174, 197, 214 kinesis: cf energeia 76–78; cf stasis 197–201 King Wen or King Wu 105, 110, 121, 131 Kinneavey, James 42, 139–40 knowing when (時中) see kairos koina 182, 196, 202; as requisites 13, 133, 142, 181–82, 196–97, 207; as topoi 133, 189; see also topoi and requisites Laërtius, Diogenes 28 Lauer, Janice 33, 42, 136

225

Lear, Jonathan: Aristotle on knowing 10, 76–78, 82, 87, 91–95, 98–99, 116, 159, 187; Aristotle on limit to knowing 99–100, 167 Lee and Long 10, 39, 94–98, 123, 134, 169 Leff, Michael 183, 189 li: as deference 203–05; as deferring or yielding (讓) 56, 104, 207–09, 215; definitions 56; and discourse 80; to others 121–22; cf progression 1, 15; 115–18; as resilience 119–20; as ritual propriety 60, 63, 66–67, 111–13, 124–25, 132, 152–58, 162, 168–69, 171, 173–74, 178, 203; as the shape of ren-the-equitable 205–07; and tianthe-cosmos 106–07; to tianming-thecosmic-order or dao-the-way 120–121, 157; 162; cf to yue-the-music 209–10, 213–18 linearity: in Aristotle and Confucius 2, 14–15, 69, 136, 210–11, 213; as continuous discourse 128–30; 133; in enthymeme 134, 168, 179, 207; in guathinking: 145–46; in ren-the-equitable 155–57; in stasis 198–99, 201 Liu, Yameng 5, 71, 75 Lloyd, G. E. R. 6, 63, 69, 97, 103, 132 logos: and Asian reasoning 148–49; as logical proof 42, 82, 88, 102–03, 128; 134, 180, 184; as mere words 30; and nous 23; as truth and words 10, 29, 37–39, 90–97, 99, 101, 123, 132, 168, 184 Long, Christopher: on the four causes 34; on logos/words and truths 31, 90–93, 100–01, 103, 119, 138, 169; on similarities and differences 4; on substance 9–10; see also Lee and Long Lu, Xing 7, 68–70, 74–75, 169 Lyon, Arabella 13, 16, 69–72, 115, 118; see also Hum and Lyon Mao, LuMing 17, 68, 69, 73–75 Matalene, Carolyn 69, 148 maxims 50–51, 129, 132, 140, 143, 183 McComiskey, Bruce 30 McKeon, Richard 33, 34, 36, 41, 42, 133 mean, doctrine of the 94: as different from zhongxing (中行) 159–62; as extreme 157–59, 167–68, 190 mediation 66–67, 77–78, 95–96, 103, 114, 204 Medieval rhetoric see rhetorical invention

226 Index middle term, the 135, 199, Miller, Caroline 181, 183, 188–94, 211 Modrak, Deborah 11 Mote, Fredrick 12 Munro, Donald 12 Murphy, James 36–39 Myers, James 148 Nadeau, Ray 194–95, 197 narrative reversal 102–03 necessary signs (tekmeria) 131; superstition and science 131–32 Ng, Rita Mei-Ching 7 ning (佞) 15, 17–18, 47, 50, 54, 58, 81, 174, 217 nous 23, 82, 88–89, 93–98, 101, 134, 137, 184 Nussbaum, Martha 55, 64, 97, 103 Ochs, Donovan 37 Oedipus 103 ontological skepticism see sophistical reasoning originality 32, 41, 73, 104, 114, 168, 201, 206; see also creativity, rhetorical invention ousia see substance Parry, Richard 24–25 pathos: and logos 101–03 Pellegrin, Pierre 31, 33, 96 Perelman, Chaim 41, 183 Plato: cf Aristotle 30–36, 72, 74, 79, 90–91, 98–99, 141, 143, 199; interpretive partiality 60, 61–65, 66–67, 74–78, 118; and self-interestedness 166; cf Sophistical reasoning 27, 115, 169, 192; view of rhetoric 13, 14, 187 predicables 113, 184–86, 194, 197, 205, 206 probability: argument-by-probability in ancient Greece 78; and dao-the-way 161, 178; and li-the-appropriate or deferential 203–04, 207, 209; reasoning and knowledge of 5–11, 122–23, 130, 172; and ren-the-equitable 156–57; and rhetoric 22, 24–27, 29, 33–35, 42–42, 53–54, 57–58–60, 62, 64, 66, 72, 74, 77–79, 221; and stases 196–98, 199, 201–02; and tianming-the-cosmic-order 104–06, 108, 110, 112–15; and topoi 180, 182–84, 187–89, 191–94; and truth 13–16, 36–40, 88–89, 97–98, 102–03, 117, 130–37,

139–40, 142–43, 178–79; and yi-theappropriate 167; yue-the-music 211 progression 1, 15, 115, 117, 120–22, 157, 178, 198–99, 205, 213 Protagoras 27–29, 34, 199 Puett, Michael 12, 104 Qian, Mu 16–18, 49, 53–54, 58–59, 81, 105, 108–10, 118, 120, 122, 147, 152, 154, 156, 160, 162, 165–66, 170, 172, 203, 205–06, 208, 211–12 quan (權) 165; see also kairos rang (讓) 48, 205, 206, 208, 215; see also li-the-deferential Raphael, Sally 134–35, 140–41 Rapp, Christof 129, 141, 143, 182, 184, 189 realization: as actualization 8, 99, 10–02, 114, 118, 179; as da (達) 7, 105, 108, 112, 116, 150, 152–53, 170, 206; as wu (悟) 203, 207 relationality: in Aristotle and Confucius 49, 59–60, 65, 179, 220–21; between dialectic and sophistical reasoning 33–34, 36–37, 87, 135, 137, 221; among disciplines of study 5, 80; between episteme and techne 25, 30; ren-the-equitable as 154–55, 158; between similarities and differences 2, 90, 121; thinking as 23; topoi as 192; truth as 11, 17, 62; yue-the-music as 211 ren-the-equitable (仁): 16, 54, 66, 73, 125, 126, 145, 166, 169, 171, 173–74, 179, 202–03, 205–07, 220–21; definitions of 147–48, 150; as different from the mean or as disequilibrium 158–62, 165–67, 170; as enthymematic premises and conclusions 149, 152–57 Renaissance rhetoric see rhetorical invention renxing-the-human-nature (人性) 113–15, 116, 123, 147, 152 requisites 133, 143, 166, 180–83, 194, 196–97 rhetoric: as antistrophe to dialectic 33; Aristotelian and Confucian 14–16; as conduit 75; as counterpart of dialectic 61, 94; as finding means of persuasion 194; and imagination 184; as interdisciplinary 7–8, 22–23, 27, 33, 42, 43, 60, 65, 80, 86–87, 97, 220–21;

Index plausibility 141, 157; scope 2–8; Sophistical 13–14; spectacle 143; and truth 8–12, 22, 89, 97–99 rhetorical invention: Ciceronian: 36–37; to Confucius 57–59; as “de-radicalized” 194; Medieval 37–39; of probable truths 15, 23–27, 97; Renaissance 39–40 ritual propriety see li Roberts, W. Rhys 17, 43, 77, 82, 168, 214 Rorty, Amelie Oksenberg 14 Schaberg, David 80–81, 86, 128, 134, 157 Schiappa, Edward 27 Schwartz, Benjamin 65–68, 86 Seaton, William 30 self-interestedness 42, 144, 166 Severino and Kubota 148 Sextus 28–29 Sim, May 86, 131–32 Slingerland, Edward 16, 51, 54, 59, 81, 118, 163 Sloan, Thomas 40 Soles, David 148 song-the-lawsuits (訟) see judicial discourse sophistical reasoning in Aristotle’s view of rhetoric 7, 13–14, 32–33, 36, 38, 58, 81, 100–01, 118, 128, 140–42, 156–57, 184, 187–88, 191, 194, 198–99, 201, 203 sophistical teaching 8, 27–30, 41, 60, 66–67, 77–78, 118 soul, the: cf Confucian 113–15, 117, 120; elements of 23–24; and logos 11, 35, 37–38, 76–78, 82, 90–91, 95–96, 98–103, 116, 129, 137, 143–44, 168, 186–87, 189–90, 201, 206; Platonic and Aristotelian 31 stases 7, 15, 37, 178, 180, 183: Aristotelian and Confucian 179, 206, 209, 211–14; Ciceronian 36; as motion in stability 197–98; and the new 201–03; and predicables 185; as searching for the middle term 199; as spatially contrary motions 198–99; as stressing probability 194–97; various kinds 200–01 Stichler, Richard 34, 62, 96, 99, 114 Stone, Mark 31–32, 96 substance 8–10, 32, 33, 35–36, 62, 73, 80, 82, 90, 93, 96–97, 99, 104, 114, 122, 128, 132–33, 150, 157, 168–69, 187, 190–91, 198–99

227

Swearingen 68, 69, 73, 75, 179 syllogism 129–30: in Chinese thinking 145, 148; quasi-syllogism 73; in rhetoric 7, 43, 133–35, 141, 157, 180; sullogismos 135 Thompson, Wayne 194–97, tianming-the-cosmic-order (天命) 8, 15, 74–75, 88: in Chinese history 103–06; knowing and learning 112–16, 167, 215; as signs 131–32; transcendent 106–11, 140; cf truth 115–22 timing (時命) see kairos Tinerney, Richard 8, 103 topoi 4, 15, 70, 113, 133, 136, 144, 178, 220: common topoi 179–80; as form and matter 221; as habit of mind 184–87; and li-the-ritual-propriety 202–09, 213; as a place 188–91; as reminder of other perspectives 191–94; special topoi 181; and stasis 196–97, 211; see also requisites Toulmin, Stephen 39, 73, 132, 133, 135 truths: as absolute 7–9, 27, 31, 35, 37, 40, 60, 63, 68, 75, 77, 79, 80, 191, 199–200, 221; and ancient Chinese 12, 106, 110, 204–07; Aristotelian and Confucian 14–15, 115, 117–19, 122, 157–61, 167–68, 203–04, 214, 220; and logos 90–93; and nous 93–98; and pathos 98–103; as relational 9–11, 17, 25–27, 35–36, 38, 63, 80, 87, 128–30, 136, 138–44, 172, 178–80, 191–94, 199–200, 220; and rhetoric 22, 24, 27, 55, 88–90, 184–89; and sophistry 13–14, 80, 191 Tu, Weiming 18, 59, 64, 110, 159 universals 10, 59, 91, 92, 94, 103, 115, 133, 149, 182 Untersteiner, Mario 28, 30 Waley, Arthur 16, 49–51, 148, 163 Wang, Mei-Ling 7 Wardy, Robert 13, 31, 32, 34, 140, 142 Warnick, Barbara 23, 42, 88–89, 97–98, 129, 183, 188, 192 Waterfield, Robin 28–29, 199 White, Hayden 5 Whitlock, Greg 165–66 Wu, Hui 146–47, 153

228

Index

Yang, Bojun 16, 18, 49, 118, 147 yi-the-appropriate (義) 16, 162–67, 172–73, 203–04, 221; see also kairos yinyang (陰陽) 15, 145–46, 156–57, 158, 161–62, 167–68, 178, 213 Yoke and Linsowski 132 You and Liu 69, 118, 150 You, Xiaoye 149

Yu, Jiyuan 2, 12, 65, 86, 104, 159 yuan (怨) 211–12 yue-the-music (樂): and creativity 210–13 Zhang, Longxi 4, zhen (爭) 16, 48–49, Zulick, Margaret 133, 187, 189