Lexicon

Although this class deals only in translations, much of the scholarship you might read on classical rhetoric will use Greek terms. Some of these terms cannot be accurately translated; some can be readily translated but with misleading results. Thus you should develop a bit of a vocabulary. Below are some common Greek words transliterated into English. If in your reading you find one not listed below, look for Liddell Scott's Greek/English Lexicon. (link)
Gk alphabet chart

Agatha -- good

Agon -- struggle (as between two opposing beliefs).

Agora -- the market square, center of Athenian public life.

Aidos -- shame, decency

Akropolis -- stronghold on the height : "often a fortified hill with the royal residence and the principal shirens ... the center of defence, governmment and cult" (Hansen,56)

Aletheia -- truth.

Amphisbetesis -- issue, the point being debated.

Anoetic -- unable to concentrate.

Apatheia -- indifference to suffering.

Aretê -- excellence, perfection in the art of living. What the sophist Protagoras claimed to teach. The Latin equivalent is virtue.

Askesis -- purification through suffering

Asty -- city

Autarkeia -- self-sufficiency, rejection of communal values

Boule -- council of five hundred, Athens' house of representatives. Members of the boule were chosen by lot from the demos. Any male citizen could serve but only for one year at a time and only twice in his life. See also ekklesia, strategoi, and areopagus.

Boulia -- advice, council. The opposite aboulia means an inability to make up one's mind and suggests how socially oriented the Athenian men were, as though one could not make a decision without consulting one's peers. Similarly, the Athenians, indeed most if not all people of this era and region, did not have a clearly defined concept of private property. Most things were held in common, and the line between theft and sharing (war and trade) was indistinct. With the rise of a trade-based economy and the decline of an agrarian economy, a trend concomitant with the rise of democracy and the decline of oligarchy, both property and trade became much more clearly defined; the notion of private council, however, remained a ways off. See idiotes.

Contentious reasoning -- according to Aristotle, arguing from premises that you take to be accepted but that are not in fact accepted. This may be either a mistake or an intentional activity. If a mistake it is usually caused by a lack of audience awareness.

Deliberative rhetoric (Aristotle -- political debate concerned with the future and establishing the proper course of action to be taken by the polis. Relevant topics might be expedience, possibility, honor.

Demagogous -- Literally, leader of the people.

Demonstration -- Argumentation from primary premises (unquestionable, self-evident truths) to necessary truths via syllogism. This is the method of scientific reasoning, according to Aristotle.

Demos -- Tribe, neighborhood, the basic unit of Athenian social organization. Each demos was often held together by a religious (ritualistic rather than doctrinal) affiliation.

Dialectic -- Like rhetoric, dialectic is an overdetermined word; that is, a word with so many definitions as to be almost meaningless unless qualified by at least one adjective, if not by reference to an entire tradition. It refers to a genre of written discourse (question and answer), a pattern of thought, holding two opposite ideas simultaneously, a (supposed) phenomenon of history whereby two opposite realms produce a third, superior, transcendent realm (aufgebung). It also refers to a form of verbal fencing which is also a form of philosophy that is said to produce necessarily true conclusions. These then can form the basis of syllogistic reasoning which is itself productive of certain knowledge. Or so Aristotle would have it (Topica).

According to Aristotle, it is a principle of dialectic that if the same nonaccidental thing can be said of two different things, then they belong to the same class of objects. And vice versa. That is, if the same nonaccidental thing cannot be said of two different things, then they do not belong to the same class of objects. Let's take an example from Gorgias:

Hidden premise which will be presented as a conclusion: philosophy is superior to rhetoric.

Ostensible question: Are knowledge and belief of the same order?

Are there true and false beliefs?

Yes.

Are there true and false knowledges?

No.

Therefore, knowledge and belief are different things?

Yes.

Is one superior to the other?

Perhaps.

If what remains constant is superior to what changes, because what changes may be deceptive, then knowledge is superior to belief. Do you agree?

Yes.

Moreover, that which produces knowledge will be superior to that which produces belief, since knowledge is superior to belief. Is this not so?

It is indeed Socrates.

Then, because rhetoric produces belief, and philosophy produces knowledge, philosophy is superior to rhetoric.

Dialectic, Aristotelian -- a form argumentation from generally accepted premises, or those accepted by the few or by the wise, leading to necessary truths. Used for conversation, for mental training and for obtaining the primary premises upon which demonstration rests. For more on Aristotle's understanding of dialectic, especially in relation to rhetoric and syllogism, see separate handout "Aristotle's Organon."

Dialectic, Hegelian -- thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Conceptualization of Platonic question and answer which necessarily leads to superior understanding.

Dialectic, negative -- questioning of premises that leads to an aporia, a moment of total doubt. The primary premise of this activity is that there are no essential properties of things.

Dialectic, Platonic -- collection and division: regulated by "the nature of things."

Dianoia -- discursive reasoning, as opposed to thinking (noesis), literal meaning of a written text. Compare hypanoia.

Didaskalos -- teacher

Dikaiosyne -- justice

Dike -- equity, fairness, justice.

Doxa -- opinion. Plato derogates opinion in favor of knowledge (episteme) because the former is variable and frequently influenced by prejudices or thoughtless beliefs.

Dynamis -- capacity, faculty, power, potential. See Aristotle's definition of rhetoric.

Eidos -- idea.

Eikos -- likelihood, what one would expect (which suggests confirmation of prejudices).

Ekklesia -- Athenian general assembly, the decision-making body composed of all male citizens, often consisting of more than 6000 members and sometimes as many as 10,000. This was the basic assembly that a rhetor would address, no small challenge.

Elenchus -- Socratic reasoning whereby beliefs are challenged until it is realized that no one really knows anything of which they speak.

Endoxa -- opinion held in commmon by the experts, better than doxa, but not as certain as episteme.

Enthymeme (Aristotle)-- -- a form of rhetorical argument, a probable syllogism, sometimes erroniously referred to as a truncated syllogism, although that is actually an epicheireme (Corbett). E.g. of an epicheireme: Socrates is a man and will therefore die (the primary premise of all men are mortal is absent but understood). E.g. of an enthymeme: Socrates will have to pay taxes because he is an Athenian (probably but not necessarily true since some Athenians were granted dispensation as a consequence of their public actions).

Epideictic rhetoric (Aristotle) -- a speech praising conventional virtues and condemnng conventional vices. The halmark is that there is no issue in dispute, no real point to be made but simply the need to increase adherence to existing values. The valedictorian speech is an epideictic speech, so is a funeral oration.

Episteme -- truth, scientifically certain statement, knowledge.

Eristic -- misleadingly known as sophistic reasoning, where the purpose of disputation is to win the argument regardless of truth or perceived beliefs.

Ethos -- character, habitual way of life. According to Aristotle, ethos is one of the three forms of proof or pisteis, logos and pathos being the other two. Ethos consists of argument from representation of character within a particular speech, not argument from reputation. In establishing a good ethos you wish to convince the jurry, judge, or assembly that you are a good person of good sense and good will. In other words, that you have everyone's best interests in mind and that you know what you are doing. Ethos is about establishing credability as you speak by choosing your words carefully, remaining on topic and on task, and offering wise council.

Forensic rhetoric (Aristotle) -- disputation in the law courts, concerned with establishing facts, what happened in the past. Relevant topics might be character, way of life, justice, tradition.

Hexis -- state, characteristic, habit. Arete is a hexis, as opposed to an emotion (pathe) or capacity (dynamis).

Hypanoia -- intention, meaning residing behind the words of a text. Compare dianoia.

Idiotes -- private citizen, a man who did not participate in government.

Isagora -- literally, equality in the market place, the principle that ensured each male citizen the right to address the ekklesia.

Isanomia -- literally, equality before the law. The principle that ensured the same rights and privileges to all male citizens.

Kairos -- occasion or moment, timing. An accurate and useful speech is a function of the occasion or of the speaker's perception of the occasion: timing. Kairos was personified in the form of a man running away from pursuers who have grasped so often at his once flowing hair that he is now bald except for a forelock. It also means "weather", as in, "You don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows."

Kategorein -- to accuse publicly.

Logographos -- a speech-writer. There were no lawyers in Athens. You had to defend yourself in court, but not everybody was capable of doing so. For a fee, a logographos would write a speech for you to deliver. If he was good at it, he would make the words fit a man of your birth, rank, and predicament. The sophist Antiphon was particularly adept at this sort of representation.

Logos -- According to Lidell-Scott, the word logos has an incredible variety of meanings: the word, or that by which the inward thought is expressed, and the inward thought itself; language, talk; in word or pretense as opposed to in reality; a saying, a statement; an oracle; a maxim, a proverb; an assertion, a promise; a resolution by common consent, and condition, a command, speech discourse, conversation, fable, history, narrative, prose writing, prose, the thing spoken of, the subject matter of that which is said, a proposition, position, principle, a definition, and an argument. Aristotle uses it in the sense of a reasoned argument, a more or less sustained series of correctly related statements that lead to a probable conclusion independent of author and audience. Untersteiner claims that Gorgias uses the word to mean power, specifically the ability to create the illusion that knowledge which is composed of pure sensation, can be spoken of. It enables us to fix the flow of sensation:

Over against logos which is power stands opinion which is `unreliable and groundless, and which therefore involves those who use it in unreliable and groundless aberrations. 'The contrast is not as is usually believed between truth and opinion as occurs in Parmenides, but rather between two ways of knowledge: on the one side stands doxa which incapable of dialectical synthesis because it does not possess `recollection of things past, knowledge of things present, pre-vision of future things,' on the other side is logos, which through the process described achieves that deception which governs the soul, thus overcoming by an irrational act the impossibility of acquiring objective knowledge, from the moment when `in fact there is no way either of recalling the past or exploring the present or divining the future.

This intellectual capacity of man to overcome by the irrational power of logos, which deceives, persuades an transforms a disconnected knowledge into a knowledge which creates or discloses links and relationships. Opposed to the passivity of opinion is the dynamic force of logos. While thought achieves conquest of the universal by means of synthetic connections, thought which is immediate and limited in the contingent is transformed into action, involving a relationship between the former and the latter. Where there is action there is logos; where there is error there is opinion only. And logos arises when there is the capacity to hear innumerable voices of sorrow and joy, innumerable emotions of human beings (Untersteiner 116).

We need to define some positions on the nature of language. Realism argues that there is a stable external world which is available to language as long as logic connects words with their correct referents. From this perspective language is a conduit, a or windowpane, on the world. Nominalism claims that a word and its referent is connected by convention only. Language is a kind of social contract, a repository of beliefs and commitments. Language does not connect humanity to the world but rather creates the world. When reading the sophists, if you ask yourself are these things they say true, you are thinking philosophically. If you ask (without feeling guilty or degraded), what could be done with these things, what are their implications, then you are thinking rhetorically.

Metic -- a noncitizen resident of Athens. He could not vote, legislate, litigate, own property or marry an Athenian. The sophists held this status.

Metis -- cunning, the sort of intelligence possessed by "wily Odysseus", opportunistic, adaptable, resourceful, one step ahead of the crowd. In Aesop's fables, the fox is metis.

Misology -- state of intellectual despair arrived at as a consequence of engaging in too much unsatisfying dialectic, a rejection of words and thought.

Mythos -- story.

Noesis -- (wordless) thinking, intuition, as opposed to discursive thinking (dianoia).

Nomos -- law, custom, convention.

Nous -- mind, reason, intelligence

Ochlocracy -- mob rule.

On -- Being

Ouisia -- substance, essence, reality.

Paideia -- education.

Parrhesia -- a willingness to speak publicly on any topic, implies both verbal facility and shamelessness; in political contexts, freedom of speech.

Pathos -- emotional appeal. One of Aristotle's three forms of proof, logos and ethos being the other two. With this form of argument, you try to increase or decrease your audience's emotional involvement in the argument by directly addressing their values, commitments, and beliefs. While many people today believe that emotional appeals are flagrant abuses of argumentation, the very essence of what is wrong with rhetoric, belief in the importance of dispassion in decision making is a value itself. And while exciting people may seem reprehensible to the people who prefer quiet contemplation of the fact, even these people must admit that being able to calm and audience must be something a speaker or writer can do.

Phronesis -- practical wisdom, prudence.

Physis -- nature.

Pisteis -- proof, or faith.

Probability -- common sense, typical opinion, what most people would expect to happen. Used to support direct evidence such as testimony and written records or in the absence of direct evidence. It was this form of proof that so annoyed Plato because it was purely hypothetical, used common opinion (doxa) which he held in contempt to begin with, and because the same probable statement could be made to fit both sides of a case. If a large man were accused of accosting a smaller man in a bar, for example, he could argue that he would do no such thing because he had nothing to gain by the act but derision from onlookers because he was so big. While the smaller person would argue that the large one was simply a bully. How would a large person behave in a bar? Obviously this is not a very worthy question, calling for a huge generalization with no direct correlation between variables (size to social behavior), yet ask any one and chances are they will have an opinion. Hence Plato's disgust. But not all probable arguments are clearly stupid. We base many of our daily activities on past experience even though there is no direct or even indirect correlation between the past and the present. Because we expect (or desire?) things to remain the same, we assume that they probably will.

Progymnasmata -- preliminary exercises in rhetoric. This was the series of exercises that a student of rhetoric practiced. First came fable, then narrative, then chria (exposition of a moral saying attributed to a wise man), aphorism, confirmation, refutation, commonplaces (set speeches about commonly discussed subjects, the evils of poverty, the misery of labor, the arrogance of youth, how wealth makes a person lazy, how power corrupts), eulogy or censure, comparison, ethopoeia (description of a character, his manners and actions, the thesis (a general claim about the nature of existence supported by reasoning), and finally a legal issue.

Psychagogy -- Plato's rhetoric based on soul as explained in Phaedrus.

Psyche -- soul.

Rhema -- Utterance, words spoken. Related to rhetor etymoligically and contrasted with logos which is tanslated as thought or word. So rhema is about expression, what is said, while logos is about thought. One can say what one is thinking or try to at least, but the different words suggest the two phenomenon are different. Gorgias seems to argue that in On Being.

Rhesis -- The Greek word for a speech, as in what a rhetor says before an audience. Related to rhema (utterance) and rhetor (speaker).

Rhetor -- One who makes speeches in formal settings, what today we would call a lawyer or a politician or a preacher or lecturer.

Rhetoric -- an overdetermined word. There are so many definitions as to leave the impression that there is no definition. The term has meant everything from persuasive argumentation to bullshit, from noble oratory to political lies, from a complete pedagogy to tropes and figures. It has been extolled and castigated. But there is perhaps no culture in the world that has not considered the relationship between language and action. See random sample definitions at right.

Sophia -- wisdom.

Sophrosyne -- good sense, temperance, self-control.

Strategoi -- council of ten elected military generals. One man was elected from each demos for a one year term, although one could serve as often as one was re-elected. Any male citizen who owned land was eligible, but the generals were typically chosen from among the more wealthy citizens.

Techne -- art, a purposive practice based on unchanging principles that can be known and taught. Aristotle claimed that rhetoric was a techne; Plato denied it that status, in Gorgias at least. In Phaedrus he may have provided the unchanging principles for rhetoric to become a techne, depending on your interpretation of Phaedrus and of rhetoric.

To prepon -- appropriateness, perspicuity. What is appropriate or fitting given the speaker, the occasion, the audience, and the subject.