RHETORIC AND DIALECTICS IN TECHNÊ RHÊTORIKÊ
RHETORIC AND DIALECTICS IN TECHNÊ RHÊTORIKÊ

Summary/Abstract: For Aristotle, rhetoric is more an art of identifying means of persuasion for each situation than an art of persuasion as such. Where demonstration is not possible, in order to deal with a polemic debate, the rhetoric brings with it all the means necessary for persuasion in a particular case, in a particular situation. Practiced by sophists, in the eristic version, dialectics translates into an art of permanent controversy, which ended imposing the fallacy of falsity. For Socrates, then for Plato, dialectics is found in the exclusive service of truth (alethes), becoming the very method of philosophy. For Aristotle, dialectics is distinguished by both the philosophical and the scientific demonstration, because it regards both the probable (endoxa) and the eristic of sophists, because its judgments are constructed in a rigorous manner, strictly following the logical rules. Thus, "rhetoric is the corresponding (antistrophos) of dialectic."Thus, both dialectic and rhetoric, can distinguish the truth of appearance: dialectics distinguishes true syllogism from sophistry, and rhetoric, true persuasion from deception. If formally, rhetoric is antistrophos of dialectics, from the perspective of its content, its sphere of application is related to ethics and politics. Thus, dialectics is a rational approach, which, among its possible applications, involves rhetoric. If dialectics sometimes demonstrates "only in appearance", rhetoric is not intended to support a thesis, but to defend a cause that concerns the legal, political, or ethical destiny of the people. That is why, instead of a constantly inescapable evidence, rhetoric must take into account the plausible.

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