Teaching the Art of Writing: Part II
Pieces of Reality: Aristotelian Logic

(See Part I: Introduction to the Art of Writing, Part II: Aristotelian Logic, Part III: Common Sense)

If teaching someone to write requires us to understand how we understand reality, as James A. Berlin suggests, we have to accept that each element of reality has a perspective. This study of how is called epistemology, the study of the nature of knowledge itself. What do we know, and how do we know?

In relation to writing, and the teaching of writing, Berlin says “rhetorical theories differ from each other in the way writer, reality, audience, and language are conceived—both as separate units and the way the units relate to each other” (Berlin, 256). He says that knowing reality concerns the relationship between four elements: the individual (the writer), reality (the “objective” universe), humanity (the audience of the writer), and language (how we communicate).

Berlin’s essay discusses the four general schools of thought (Neo-Aristotelians, Positivists, Neo-Platonists, and New Rhetoricians), epistemologically speaking, that more or less compose the entirety of rhetorical theory. Each of these four schools understands the significance of the four elements of knowing reality in a different way.

The first of the schools he describes is the Neo-Aristotelian, or Classicist perspective. Aristotelians believe that the material world exists in an objective dimension; that it exists independently of the Observer, the individual who “experiences” the world. Aristotelians believe that the world is knowable, through our senses, to a rational being. These sense impressions mean nothing until our minds exercise the human faculty of syllogistic reasoning.

Syllogistic reasoning, or Aristotelian deductive logic, is easy to grasp on its surface level. You can look to any example to see what I mean:

All men are human beings.
All human beings are mortal.
All men are mortal.

Syllogistic reasoning involves the making of propositions. Within Aristotelian thinking, a proposition is not a hypothesis, not a statement needing to be tested. A proposition is a statement describing the relationship between two terms. A term is a part of speech representing a thing (a man, a human being, a mortal) that has meaning, but no truth or falsity in and of itself. The description of that thing is the predicate; therefore, as above in the first proposition, “all men” is the subject while “are human beings” is the predicate, in this case affirming the second term (human beings) of the first (all men). The syllogism in this example is the logical step taken that allows the third proposition (all men are mortal) to be deduced from the first two propositions.

Aristotelian reality, from its own perspective, is relatively simple. The necessary function of reason—and the rules of reason determined by logic—are inherent in the structure of mind and universe. The mind knows the universe.

The Neo-Aristotelian school teaches rhetoric in order to enable a speaker or writer “to find the means necessary to persuade the audience of the truth” (258). This rhetoric teaches three inventional devices (rational, emotional, and ethical) such that the writer may discover his argument, and his audience is subsequently persuaded by the truth.

A writer uses the rational device to explain how he discovered the truth; he uses both the emotional and ethical devices to throw his own identity into an appealing light—so his audience will hear and understand the truth.

So, a professor belonging to the Neo-Aristotelian school must believe that the material world exists independently of the writer; that an individual may understand this reality by deducing truth from the data collected by his senses; and that the writer may communicate the truth to an audience by presenting logic through the three devices.

Simple.

Anyone see a problem?

TaBoo Tenente
Copyright ©2004, ©2005, ©2006 Joshua P. Suchman.