Pistis and Apodeixis: On the Disputed Interpretation of Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.1, 1355a5-6

Abstract

‘We are convinced most of all whenever we take something to have been demonstrated’ (1355a5-6). The meaning and significance of this claim is a key point of dispute between those who take Aristotle’s project in the Rhetoric to be defending his distinctively argument-centred kind of rhetoric on the grounds that it is most persuasively effective, and those for whom he does so on the more normatively-charged grounds that this is the most valuable kind of rhetoric, and best delivers rhetoric’s distinctive benefits to civic communities. On the interpretation defended, the claim links being convinced (πιστεύειν) and the things that get us convinced (πίστεις) to the kind of epistemic merits possessed above all by demonstrations. This saves Aristotle from an implausible generalisation about the persuasive supremacy of deductive arguments. Since πίστεις are clearly central to Aristotelian rhetoric, this interpretation also lends support to the more normative understanding of Aristotle’s project overall.