To begin my response for this week, I would like to return to Plato for a moment and the post I submitted regarding the Phaedrus. The reason I want to step back for a moment is based on something Dr. Blakesley said during class last week, and something I alluded to in my own post, which is the idea of Aristotle’s On Rhetoric being a response to the following passage:
First, you must know the truth concerning everything you are speaking or writing about; you must learn how to define each thing in itself; and, having defined it, you must know how to divide it into kinds until you reach something indivisible. Second, you must understand the nature of the soul, along the same lines; you must determine which kind of speech is appropriate to each kind of soul, prepare and arrange your speech accordingly, and offer a complex and elaborate speech to a complex soul and a simple speech to a simple one. Then, and only then, will you be able to use speech artfully, to the extent that its nature allows it to be used that way, either in order to teach or in order to persuade. (Plato 554).
What is interesting to note about the previous passage in relation to our reading for this week - Book 2 and Book 3 of On Rehtoric - is Socrates’ statement “you must understand the nature of the soul, along the same lines; you must determine which kind of speech is appropriate to each kind of soul.” In Book 2 Aristotle begins to answer by giving us six characterizations, as Kennedy points out on his notes before Chapter 12 (148): “the youth,” “the old,” “those in the prime of life,” “those of good birth,” “those of wealth,” and “those of power.” Latter, Theophrastus gives use 30 other characterizations in The Characters. Although all of the characterizations provided by the two men are descriptions of men, mostly because they would be historically confronted with a forum of men, I wonder if their distinctions still hold up today and what we would need to add to the list to include everyone we may need to persuade in our present culture.
For example, the youth are “prone to desires and inclined to do whatever they desire” (149). They are also fickle, impulsive, love victory, guileless, and full of hope to name a few other descriptions. Now does this sound like the younger students we have inside our freshman composition courses, or would we have to add even more character classifications to gain a fuller perspective of our students? And, how many other characters would we need to add to account for differences between young men and young women, or between young international students and those students born in the United States? The list goes on and on, but one has to question and speculate whether or not it is even possible to know all the characters, or souls, of people or if broad generalizations are enough to persuade and audience? Additionally, how can one persuade an entire audience of diversified individuals if we are unable to know the character of each and everyone one of them? And, finally, how long would it take to prepare a different speech intended for the soul of each and every one in the audience?