argumentação - aristotle's 'special topics' in rhetorical

8/8/2019 Argumentao - Aristotle's 'Special Topics' in Rhetorical

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A r i s t o t l e ' s " S p e c i a l T o p i c s " i n R h e t o r i c a lP r a c t i c e a n d P e d a g o g y

One feature of classical rhetoric that is enjoying a revivalis the concept of the topic, or topos. This revival has ledmany rhetoricians to re-examine Aristotle's discussion oftopics and to study their subsequent treatment in rhetoricalhistory. One question that even a cursory review of thehistory of topical theory raises is why the career of whatAristotle called the "special" or "particular" topics issuch a blank. Addressing this question raises many others,such as what are special topics, exactly? what makes themspecial? how special is "special"? special to what? WhileI can't answer all these questions here, I hope to providea perspective on them in pursuing the focal question of thisessay: what is the significance of the bleak history of thespecial topics?The answer I will propose has to do with the relationshipbetween rhetoric and the academy, between rhetoricalpractice and rhetorical pedagogy. The special topics arenot useful, or manageable, I suggest, in rhetoric conceivedof as an academic subject; instead, by serving as conceptualconnections between human reasoning and the particularitiesof practical situations, they lead our attention outside theacademy to rhetoric as it occurs naturally in human societies.As rhetoric became academicized, the topics became "academic"(that i s, they lost their relation to social situations),then scorned for being academic, and finally abandoned. Thistrend points to an unfortunate conflict between rhetoricalpedagogy and rhetorical practice. It would be beneficial totry to recover the spirit in which Aristotle first delineatedthe concept of special topics for what it can show us aboutthe relationship between rhetorical teaching, theory, andpractice.

A Brief HistoryWhat little does the history of rhetoric tell us about thespecial topics? This question can be addressed only byexamining the history of topical theory as a whole forevidence of the distinction between special and commontopics, and my brief treatment here is necessarily superficial.Aristotle initially made the distinction by suggesting thatsome mental "places" would be useful in finding arguments ofany sort and that others would have more restricted utility.Once made, this distinction had very little effect on


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subsequent developments in rhetorical theory. Until recently,topical theory as a whole has been in decline since lateantiquity: the scholarly consensus not very long ago was thattopics were deservedly dead. In his commentary on Aristotleof 1923, Sir W. D. Ross said that topics belong "to a by-gonemode of thought; [they are] one of the last efforts of thatmovement of the Greek spirit toward a general culture." Infact, he suggests, Aristotle's own treatises on logical method"made his Topics out of date." (1) In his history ofinvention of 191+8, Elbert Harrington concluded that the topicshave "proved to be a barren approach. . . . topics, insteadof an aid to good thinking, are often a substitute for goodthought."' (2)Topical theory, most vigorous soon after Aristotle, providedthe foundation (along with stasis theory) for the systems ofinvention of most Hellenistic and Roman rhetoricians. However,according to Michael Leff, Cicero abandoned Aristotle'sdistinction between common and special topics and focussed ontopics of the person and the act, which provided commonmaterials for all kinds of rhetorical arguments. (3) Thethorough liberal education that both Cicero and Quintiliandeemed essential to the orator effectively supplants thespecial topics; the materials of argument specific todifferent areas of knowledge and forums of discussion areplaced outside the province of rhetoric and within the othersubjects the orator must kn ow p ol it ics , history, literature,and so forth.

Medieval treatises seem to have adapted classical doctrineto meet the narrower needs of medieval rhetorical practice,quietly transforming the special topics into formulas. Themedieval handbooks of letter-writing and preaching oftenconnect rhetorical precepts to the rhetorical problems of thesecretary or preacher by giving lists of strategies orsuggestions for things to say in particular situations. Forexample, James J. Murphy describes the preaching manuals ofGregory the Great (591) and Alain de Lille (c. 1199) asliteral catalogues of doctrine: virtues and v ices , themesappropriate to various listeners, relevant authorities,scriptural quotations. In his Swrma de arte praedicande(c. 1210-15), Thomas of Salisbury makes this point explicit:"the sacred page," he says, "has its own special topicsbeyond those of dialectic and rhetoric." (4)The Renaissance revival of classical theory did not accordAristotle's Rhetoric an important p lace, (5) and theimplications for Renaissance rhetorical practice of thedistinction between common and special topics were leftundeveloped. The use of topics tended to be quite mechanical,for several reasons: the greater interest in style than ininvention, the elementary place of rhetoric in education, and


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the influence of such authorities as Cicero at the expense ofan empirical approach to practice. Special topics do appearas formulas for composing various genres, both oratoricaland poetic, but there is no corresponding development oftopical theory.Possibly the failure of recovered theory to engagecontemporary practice provoked the subsequent rationalistcriticism of theory. Peter Ramus assaulted rhetoricalinvention in general, and Bernard Lamy (identified with thePort Royalists) levelled an attack on the topics themselves(in L'Art de Parler, 1576), an attack that was so destructive,according to Wilbur Samuel Howell, that nearly a centurylater John Ward's conventional treatment of topics (in ASystem of Oratory, 17 59) required an "embarrassed apologyfor them as being useful to those without genius oropportunity to find stronger arguments by more directinvestigation." (6)The reorientation of rhetoric in the 18th century was thelast straw. Douglas Ehninger claims that George Campbell's"major revolution in . . . inventional theory . . . sweptaway the last remnants of an inventio that had constitutedthe supreme achievement of ancient rhetorical thought." (7)According to Ehninger, "the whole paraphernalia of statesand topicsthe very substance of classical inventiolosetheir importance" in Campbell's shift from subject-orientedanalysis to audience-oriented analysis: in such analysis "adetailed knowledge of substantive topics will be of lessimportance than a familiarity with the various habits ofmind" of the audience (p. 27i4). Hugh Blair also rejectedthe topics as an "artificial system of oratory" that might"produce very showy academical declamations [but] couldnever produce discourses on real business." (8) He viewedinvention as related to native genius and not subject toart or instruction. By this time, then, rhetorical topicsare understood as thoroughly "academic""remnants" as Rosscalled them. In the 19th century, the common topics becameformalized as modes of arrangement, and the special topicsremained outside rhetoric, as method, inquiry, andprerequisite knowledge of one's subject.Topical TheoryOne of the continuing issues in rhetorical theory, as Leffhas pointed out, is the tension between two perspectives onrhetoric, which he calls the inferential and the materialist.The inferential perspective treats rhetoric as a distinctart of persuasion, separate from the substantive issues itaddresses; the materialist perspective treats rhetoric as anart enmeshed in varying particular circumstances and issuesthat determine the nature of persuasion. Neither perspective.


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says Leff, is entirely satisfactory, and no one hassuccessfully integrated the two. Leff draws thisdistinction in the context of a discussion of the rhetoricaltopos, which he suggests is a "confused notion," one with"a bewildering diversity of meanings" (p. 23 ). Among theproblems he describes is the conflict between the need fortopical systems to be memorable (and thus compact and simple)and the need for them to be relevant (and thus detailed andcomplex). The need for simplicity reflects the inferentialperspective on rhetoric and leads us to the universal, orcommon, topics (the koinoi topoi); the need for relevancereflects the materialist perspective and leads us to thespecial, or particular, topics (the idioi topoi or eide).(9)When we examine the genesis of topical theory in thiscontext, we can understand better why Aristotle describedspecial topics the way he did. The burden of his argumentin historical context, as George Kennedy explains it(although he doesn't use Leff's terms), is to establishthe inferential perspective on rhetoric, in opposition tothe prevailing materialist perspective (p. 66; Grimaldi makesa similar point, p. 119 ). The first chapter of the Rhetoricargues against those who treated rhetoric as the art ofpolitical discourse alone and not as an art applicable toany contingent issue (a position most notably caricaturedby Plato in the Gorgias). But Aristotle gets caught betweenthe two perspectivesbetween his own clear desire tocharacterize rhetoric as an art based on universal principlesof persuasion and his empirical observations of persuasionas materially grounded in the resources of particularsituations. The special topics ar e, in essence, his attemptto solve this dilemma, but the solution turns out to be anixnstable one.

The system of the Rhetoric relies heavily on this solution;the bulk of Books I and II constitutes a discussion ofspecial topics. Aristotle defines the special topics asthose "derived from the propositions relative to a particularspecies or class of things" (I.2.1358a). But the exampleshe gives immediatelythat a proposition from physics cannotform arguments in ethics and vice versaconcern what heconsiders substantive disciplines rather than probablereasoning and thus tilt the system toward the materialistperspective. He goes on to warn that it is easy to slipfrom the special topics into the principles of specificdisc ipli nesalmost without knowing it: "As for theparticular topoi, the better our choice of propositions,the more we imperceptibly glide into some discipline otherthan Dialectic and Rhetoric: for if we light upon truescientific principles [.archai'], the art is no longerDialectic or Rhetoric but is the discipline based upon thoseprinciples" (1358a). (At two other places, he catches


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himself in this very act~"gliding" toward stabstantive issuesin politics [I.'+.1359b5-7 and I.'4.1360al3].) There is aninstability in this system: because it is weighted againstthe common topics (from which, he says, not many argumentsare actually formed) and towards disciplinary principles(which he clearly prefers), it weakens the very conceptionof rhetoric as a general faculty that Aristotle wasattempting to develop.The special topics are vulnerable: as Aristotle createsthem, they are squeezed between the common topics anddisciplinary principles, between the koinoi and the archai.In the tension between the materialist and inferentialperspectives at either end of this three-part system, thespecial topics tend to drop out , or simply move towarddisciplinary principles and become assimilated to them,outside the realm of rhetoric. In this way, the specialtopics become a sign of the strength of the materialistperspective in rhetorical theory. When the materialistperspective flourishes, there is room for and need forspecial topics within rhetoric. When the inferentialperspective flourishes, they recede or migrate outside.What I have been suggesting about the more rapid andcomplete decline of the special as opposed to the commontopics in rhetorical history as a whole further suggests ageneral historical movement from the materialist perspectiveto the inferential, from the situational foundation ofrhetoric in social practices to the elaboration of a coherentand systematic art.

We see in Aristotle's treatment a tension between his aimsas a systematizer and teacher and his typical methods asa careful observer, a tension analogous to that between theinferential and materialist perspectives. For the inferentialperspective is clearly advantageous to the teacher--itprovides convenience, coherence, and limitations; it permitsisolation and elaboration. The materialist perspective,in contrast, emphasizes the diversity and complexity ofrhetorical practice. To oversimplify a bit, the materialistperspective belongs to rhetorical practice, and the inferentialperspective belongs to rhetorical pedagogy.The Effect of PedagogyThe history of rhetorical education provides additional hintsabout the fate of special topics. Marrou's history ofeducation in antiquity shows that after the classical periodin Greece a separation developed between rhetorical educationand endemic rhetorical practice. He says about theHellenistic period that "the most characteristic thingabout teaching was that it gradually forgot all about itsoriginal aim, which was to prepare the would-be orator for


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real life by teaching him how to compose speeches that hewoiild actually need for serious occasions." (10) And indeedthe "serious occasions" for rhetoric had changed: delibera-tive and judicial rhetoric declined and epideictic flourished,in the form of the public lecture or set piece. Therhetorical exercises, or progyntnasmata, that provided thestudent with occasions for practice were usually designedfor imaginary situations and on improbable subjects. Romanrhetorical education used the same system, consideredartificial and absurd even then (Marrou cites Petronius,Quintilian, and Tacitus, p. 2 87 ); the exercises wereapparently designed to be more difficult and therefore moreprofitable than situations that emulated real life.These exercises were virtually indistinguishable from thelectures and oratorical displays that constituted the limitedrole of rhetoric in public life. Rhetoric became a form ofpxiblic entertainment, an art for its own sake rather than avital means of engaging in public affairs.There was thus a rift between the rhetorical practice oflate antiquity and the rhetorical theory derived from therhetorical practice of an earlier time. Rhetoric retreatedfrom the forum, where she was no longer welcome, into theacademy, retaining an outmoded theory and a pedagogy thatbecame its own justification. By the llth and 12thcenturies, the place of rhetoric even in the academy haddeclined, as logic came to dominate the trivium; rhetoriclost its "educational vitality," in the words of CharlesSears Baldwin. (11) As part of the academic setting, withor without vitality, rhetoric lost its empirical connectionwith rhetorical practice. As an academic subject, rhetorichas often neglected the natural functions of discourseoutside the academy, and it has been reluctant to examinethe discourse o the academy. My guess is that the specialtopicsthe points of connection between reasoning and theparticularities of practical situationsare the victims ofthe academicizing of rhetoric.Revival of Topical TheoryRecently, however, there has been a revival of interest intopical theory and (not coincidentally) a shift toward thematerialist perspective on rhetoric. Participants in the1970 National Developmental Project on rhetoric, for example,expressed concern about both the status of invention and theplace of siibject matter in rhetoric. (12) Lloyd Bitzerasked, "How can we engage rhetoric with subject matter?"(p. 20 2) . Karl Wallace said he was "appalled at theseparation of rhetoric from subject matter" (p. 1 9 ) . In alater essay, Wallace explored the problem of developing amodern set of topics and directed attention to the work ofChaim Perelman as just this kind of effort. (13) In 197 3,


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Ross Winterowd claimed that "everyone uses 'topics' . . .all the time; . . the concept of topics . . . is nottrivial. . . . it is time to revitalize the concept oftopics." (14) And more recently, Charles Kneupper andFloyd Anderson have claimed that "in specialized areas ofinquiry . . . features such as the methods in use, theprior knowledge, kind of issues . . . function as specialtopoi." (15)An art of invention based closely on contemporary rhetoricalpractice and involving explicitly the substance of discoursem i ^ t be revived by reconceiving the special topics.Elsewhere, I have proposed in some detail how this recon-ception might be achieved by following Aristotle's methodapplying the principles by which he distinguished the specialtopics in his rhetorical environment to our own rhetoricalenvironment, which is certainly different and probably morecomplex. (16) In brief, we find in our environment anindeterminate number and variety of recurrent rhetoricalsituat ionst hose arising, for example, not only in politicalaffairs, but also in business, industry, government, and themass media (as well as the academy). The principlesunderlying Aristotelian special topics suggest that suchtopics have three sources: conventional expectation inrhetorical situations, knowledge and issues available in theinstitutions and organizations in which those situationsoccur, and concepts available in specific networks ofknowledge (or disciplines). Any of these can serve asconceptual places that yield arguments possibly useful in arhetorical situation related to the g enre, institution, ordiscipline.

Academic rhetoric has not produced a system acknowledgingthe influence of situational particularities on argumentativeeffect; its pedagogy relies heavily on techniques that areindependent of situations outside the classroom; its theoryis just beginning to deal with ways of differentiating,rather than unifying, rhetorical practice. This situationreflects the influence of two versions of 20th-centuryformalism: neo-Aristotelianism in speech communication and themodes of discourse in English composition. Surveys ofcontemporary textbooks in public speaking show that in thosefew with any extended treatment of invention at all theemphasis is on common topi cs, research met hods, or on arepetition of the special topics from Aristotle. (17)Similarly, a recent review of best-selling compositiontextbooks foimd little attention to invention and most of thatpremised on general classroom contexts; such treatmentsinvolve common topics and prewriting procedures applicableto any situation. (18) Howe ver, the recent writing-across-the-curriculum movement has produced several textbooks thatdo treat the methods and goals of different disciplines as


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part of substantive rhetorical instruction; (19) And mostnotably, Toulmin, Rieke, and Janik's Introduction toReasoning attends closely to the differences in argumentativeresources and materials among forums and subjects. (20)Toulmin's method of analysis includes a place for specialto pi cs a s the "backing" that provides "assurance" that awarrant is applicable. Toulmin points out that backing isgenerally tied very closely to the conceptual structure ofa discotirse community; in his t erms, backing is "field-dependent." This is, of course, precisely the nature ofspecial topics. Toulmin's empirical approach to contemporaryrhetorical practice in nonacademic settings could provide away for academic rhetoric to reconnect classical theory andcontemporary practice.George Kennedy has also speculated about the relationshipbetween rhetorical practice and pedagogy. He begins with adistinction between "primary" and "secondary" rhetoric.Primary rhetoric is what I have characterized as endemic or"natural" rhetorical practice, and historically, Kennedysays, it has been oral, civic, persuasive, and enacted inspecific situations. Secondary rhetoric is "the apparatus ofrhetorical techniques clustering around discourse . . . whenthose techniques are not being used for their primary oralpurpose" (p. 5 ) . Kennedy claims that a persistent character-istic of classical rhetoric has been its tendency to movefrom primary to secondary forms, a phenomenon he labelsletteraturizzazione, or what in English would be rendered"literattirization." This movement, he suggests, is probablythe result of teaching rhetoric by rote to young childrenrather than making it a more demanding intellectual pursuit.What I have been claiming here about the weakening of thespecial topics and the materialist perspective on rhetoric bypedagogy is related to Kennedy's claim. I'd go further,however, and say that any attempt to teach, whether to yotingchildren or to graduate students, leads away from primaryrhetoric, from the situation-based materials of discourse,toward a secondary, systematic, self-contained art ofdiscipline. In order to give more room to the materialistperspective, rhetorical pedagogy needs to concentrate lessexclusively on techniques for producing discourse and moreon observation and interpretation of primary rhetoric, thediscourse by which society creates itself (I would contendthat today such rhetoric is not always oral and civic, asKennedy defines it, however). Perceptive observation andinterpretation are fostered by rhetorical criticism, whichshould help students understand the functions and effects ofthe discourse they create and the discourse they read andhear. The special topics, I believe, are keys to suchunderstanding, since they help explain the dependence ofargumentative force upon subject, audience, and circumstance.


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In promoting such understanding, criticism can. help mediatebetween the needs of pedagogy and the barnyard of rhetoricalpractice.

R. MillerNorth Carolina State University

Notes (1) W.. D.. Ross,, Aristotle {1^2Z', rp t. Barnes and Noble,,p. 59.

(.2) Elbert W. Harrington,, "Rhetoric and the ScientificMethod of Inquiry,," University of Colorado Studies inLanguage and Literature, 1 (1948),, 60.(3) Michael C. Leff, "The Topics of Argumentative Inventionin. Latin Rhetorical Theory from Cicero to Boethius,"Rhetorica, 1 (Spring 1983), 23-'+'+. In his De PartitioneOratoria, Cicero gives a list of common topics much likeAristotle's but does not mention the special topics (ii, 7 ) .('+) Quoted in James J. Mtarphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages:A History of Rhetorical Theory, from Saint Augustine to theRenaissance (Univ. of California Press, 1974), p., 323..Murphy also points; out the very slight influence thatAristotle's Rhetoric had on the medieval artes\.(5). George A. Kennedy,, Classical Rhetoric and- Its Christianand Secular Tradition from' Ancient to Modern Times (Univ., ofNorth Carolina Press, 1980),.. p. 20i+; also Wilbur Samuel.Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500-1700 (Russell andRussell., 1961), p. 64.

Wilbur' Samuel Howell Eighteenth Century British Logicand Rhetoric (Princeton Univ. Press, 1971), p. 93.

Douglas Ehninger, "George Campbell and the Revolutionill' Inventional Theory," Southern Speech Journal^ 15 (May1950),, 270.(8) Hugh Blair, Lecture 32 , Lectures on Rhetoric and BellesLettresy ed. Abraham Mills (New York: G C H Carvill,1829; rpt. 1833), p. 35'+.(9): This is not: to suggest, as Leff does not,, that commontopics are necessarily formal and special topics substantive,although some see this equivalence in Aristotle (mostnotably, William M. A. Grimaldi, S. J., Studies in thePhilosophy of Aristotle's Rhetoric [Franz Steiner VerlagGBMH, 1972]). In. fact, Leff reads the Ciceronian topics ofthe person and the act as substantive common topi cs; research


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in discipline-specific reasoning may yet lead us to positinferential special topics. My point is simply that theinferential perspective favors common topics for theiruniversal application, and the materialist perspectivefavors special topics for their differentiation.(10) H[enri] I[renee] Marrou, A History of Education inAntiquity (X956; rpt. Univ. of Wisconsin Pre ss, 1982), p. 202(11) Charles Sears Baldwin, Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic(Macmillan, 1928), p. 151.(12) Lloyd F. Bitzer and Edwin Black, ed s.. The Prospectof Rhetoric: Report of the National Development Project(Prentice-Hall, 1971).(13) Karl R. Wallace, "Topoi and the Problem of Invention,"(Quarterly Journal of Speech, 58 (1972), 387-95.

W. Ross Winterowd, '"Topics' and Levels in theComposing Process," College English^ 31+ (February 1973),707-708.(15) Charles W. Kneupper and Floyd D. Anderson, "UnitingWisdom and Eloquence: The Need for Rhetorical Invention,"Quarterly Journal of Speech^ 66 (1980), 325.(16) Carolyn R. Miller and Jack Selzer, "Special Topics ofArgument in Engineering Reports," in Writing in NonacaderrrtcSettings, ed. Lee Odell and Dixie Goswami (Guilford, 1985),pp. 309-'+l.(17) Kneupper and Anderson, page 320 ; Richard C. Huseman,"Modern Approaches to the Aristotelian Concept of the SpecialTopic," Central States Speech Journal, 15 (196'+), 21-26.(18) Donald C. Stewart, "Textbooks Revisited," in Researchin Composition and Rhetoric: A Bibliog raphic Sourcebook^ ed.Michael G. Moran and Ronald F. Lunsford (Greenwood Press,1984), pp. 1+53-68.(19) See, for example, Elaine P. Maimon et al. . Writing inthe Arts and Sciences (Winthrop, 1981), and Charles Bazerman,The Informed Writer: Using Sources in the Disciplinesj 2nd ed.(Houghton Mifflin, 1985).(20) Stephen Toulmin, Richard Rieke, and Allan Janik, AnIntroduction to Reasoning (Macmillan, 1979).


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argumentação - aristotle's 'special topics' in rhetorical

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