When reading Aristotle I liked that he seem to strike a nice middle pass between the transcendental rhetoric of Plato and Socrates, and the pragmatic rhetoric of Isocrates, and others. He does not seem concerned with what happens in the after life, but how to be happy while you are here. He also adapts some of the Socratic philosophy of restraint, and self control.
Rick made a good point about his being a philosophy of "power over" and asked a good question, "Is there a reason why we see ourselves as teaching students to operate from the rhetorical stance of "power over"? Or, is this just a naive position on our part? I'm guessing it's the latter." I think there is nothing wrong with the "power over" teaching of rhetoric as long as teaches restraint, which Aristotle advocates, hand in hand. This goes back to Socrates and Gorgias in many ways.
A person can use rhetoric in many ways, but he should only use rhetoric in just and good ways. I think the important part of teaching "power over" rhetoric would be to reflective about your teaching practices, and advocate that with great power comes great responsibility. Language has power and as teachers it is one of our responsibilities to teach students to wield this power fairly and effectively, which, I think, we do.
I can see many connections between this discussion of "power over" versus "power with" as a means of making connections between the rhetoric of Aristotle and that of the Social Epistemic rhetoric of James Berlin. On page 52, Aristotle states, "as to whatever neccessarily exists or will exist or is impossible to be or to have come about...[as judges] we limit our consideration of to the point of what is possible or impossible for us to do." He goes onto state that, "the important subjects on which people deliberate and on which deliberative orators give advice in public are mostly five in number, and these are finances, war and peace, national defense, imports and exports, and framing of laws" (53).
It seems to Aristotle that deliberative rhetoric is a means of debating, dissecting, and discussing the social, political, and the cultural claims of the state. In many ways, Aristotle is discussing the many ways that rhetoric influences the ideology of the state. Rhetoric becomes a means for deciding what exists, what is possible, and what is just? Rhetoric is greek is very much a political act involving what Berlin describes as, "a dialectal interaction engaging the material (Aristotle-finances and imports and exports), and the social (Aristotle-laws, national defense, and war) with language as the mediator" (Berlin 48).
Rhetoric is a means of making power through the interaction of groups using language. We form the edoxa that Aristotle relies on through mediation between the orator, the discourse community (social group) and the material conditions existance. Language and ideology come together to form culture, and both Aristotle and Berlin seem to be arguing that we need to be aware of the consequences of the choices we make based on rhetoric, and to define what the scope of rhetoric should and should not be.