Rhetoric and Emotion (original) (raw)

2007, Worthington/A Companion

Abstract

If you wish to consult an ancient Greek or Roman discussion of the emotions, the place to look is not-as one might have expected-in a treatise on psychology, or in classical terms, 'On the Soul' (for example, Aristotle's De anima), but rather an essay on rhetoric. First and foremost, on the Greek side, there is Aristotle's own Rhetoric, with its detailed treatment, in Book 2, of a dozen or more different passions. In Latin literature, Cicero examines the emotions in his youthful De inventione, as well as in other essays on oratory, although he also treats them at some length in his philosophical dialogue, The Tusculan Disputations (especially Books 3 and 4). As late as the third century AD, a certain Apsines-if that is his true name 1-surveyed the emotions in elaborate detail as part of an extensive handbook on rhetoric (only a portion survives, chiefly the part dealing with pity). It is not difficult to see why the emotions were of interest to writers on rhetoric. If an orator was to be convincing, he had to know how to arouse or allay the passions of his audience, whether in the courtroom, the Assembly, or some other public forum, and the composers of manuals duly undertook to catalogue the best ways of doing so. This, in turn, required at least an elementary understanding of what emotions are and how they function. The emotions may also affect human behavior in general, which is why they are discussed at least to some extent in treatises on ethics, for example Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. But the close connection between rhetoric and the emotions in ancient Greece was not merely an accident of scientific compartmentalization. Classical Greece was an intensely verbal culture, and from the very beginning of Greek literature it is words that are the stimuli to emotion: Achilles' great wrath in the Iliad is a consequence of what he considers an intolerable insult on the part of Agamemnon, and the events that lead to Achilles' fateful withdrawal from the battle at Troy take the form of speeches. The intimate connection between emotion and discourse, in turn, contributed decisively to the way the Greeks conceived of and defined both emotion in general and the several specific passions. Richard Lazarus, one of the founders of the modern 'appraisal theory' of the emotions, which takes Worthington / Companion to reek Rhetoric 1405125519_4_027

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References (22)

  1. See M. Heath, 'Apsines and Pseudo-Apsines', AJP 119 (1998), pp. 89-111.
  2. R.S. Lazarus, 'Relational Meaning and Discrete Emotions', in K.R. Scherer, A. Schorr and T. Johnstone (eds.), Appraisal Processes in Emotion: Theory, Methods, Research (Oxford: 2001), pp. 37-67; citation on p. 40. Cf. also A.L. Hinton, 'Introduction: Developing a Biocultural Approach to the Emotions', in A.L. Hinton (ed.), Biocultural Approaches to the Emotions (Cambridge: 1999), pp. 1-37 at p. 6.
  3. Translated by W. Rhys Roberts, 'Rhetoric', in J. Barnes (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle 2 (Princeton: 1984), pp. 2152-2269.
  4. 4 The most recent edition is by M. Fuhrmann, Anaximenes, Rhetorica ad Alexandrum (Leipzig: 1966). See further, P. Chiron, Chapter 8.
  5. Trans. D.A. Russell and M. Winterbottom, Ancient Literary Criticism: The Principal Texts in New Translations (Oxford: 1972), pp. 7-8.
  6. J. Barnes, 'Rhetoric and Poetics', in J. Barnes (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle (Cambridge: 1955), pp. 259-285, especially p. 262.
  7. G.A. Kennedy, Aristotle On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse (New York: 1991), p. 28.
  8. P. 44.20-21 in the Commentaria Graeca in Aristotelem 19, ed. G. Heylbut (Berlin: 1889) - hereafter Heylbut. For other lists of emotions or patheˆ, cf. Rhet. 3.19 1419b24-26, where, in speaking of the epilogue to a speech as the place to rouse emotion, Aristotle mentions pity, shock [deinoˆsis], anger, hatred, envy, competitiveness or emulation, and strife; Nicomachean Ethics 1105b21ff., On the Soul 403a16-17.
  9. 9 Cf. A. Kappas, 'A Metaphor is a Metaphor is a Metaphor: Exorcising the Homunculus from Appraisal Theory', in K.R. Scherer, A. Schorr and T. Johnstone (eds.), Appraisal Processes in Emotion: Theory, Methods, Research (Oxford: 2001), pp. 157-172, especially p. 160.
  10. It is true that in the Eudemian Ethics (1220b14-15) Aristotle speaks of pleasure OR pain, and says that these MOSTLY accompany the emotions; but in the Nicomachean Ethics (1104b13-16), he twice writes pleasure AND pain.
  11. On the mixture of pleasure and pain in emotion, cf. D. Frede, 'Mixed Feelings in Aristotle's Rhetoric', in A.O. Rorty (ed.), Essays on Aristotle's Rhetoric (Berkeley and Los Angeles: 1996) pp. 258-285, especially p. 278 and G. Striker, 'Emotions in Context: Aristotle's Treatment of the Passions in the Rhetoric and His Moral Psychology', in A.O. Rorty (ed.), Essays on Aristotle's Rhetoric (Berkeley and Los Angeles: 1996), pp. 286-302, especially p. 291. Aspasius, in his digression on the emotions in his commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (pp. 42.27-47.2 Heylbut), affirms -incorrectly, in my view -that the emotions are grouped generically according to pleasure (heˆdoneˆ) and pain (lupeˆ);
  12. R. Sorabji, 'Aspasius on Emotion', in A. Alberti and R.W. Sharples (eds.), Aspasius: The Earliest Extant Commentary on Aristotle's Ethics (Berlin: 1999), pp. 96-106, argues that desire or appetite is also essential to the Aristotelian classification.
  13. Cf. Rhet. 1.1, 1354b8-13 on how the pain and pleasure associated with the emotions obfuscate [episkotein] judgment; also 1.2, 1356a15-16: 'for we do not render judgments in the same way when we are suffering and rejoicing, or loving and hating'.
  14. W.W. Fortenbaugh, Aristotle on Emotion 2 (London: 2002), p. 114.
  15. E. Hatfield and R.L. Rapson, 'Love and Attachment Process', in M. Lewis and J.M. Haviland-Jones (eds.), Handbook of Emotions 2 (New York: 2000), pp. 654-655.
  16. Cf. Andoc. 1.8, 1.24, 30, Lys. 10.26, 10.29, 11.10, 12.20, 12.58, 12.96, 14.8, 14.13, 16.17, 20.1, 25.16, 27.15, 28.2, 29.9, 29.12, 30.23, 31.11 and Dem. 16.19, 18.18, 18.20, 19.7, 19.302, 20.8, 21.34, 24.215, 40.5. It is going too far, however, to affirm that orgeˆand orgizesthai 'came to mean, for a time, not only ''anger'' and ''to be angry'' but also sometimes ''punishment'' and ''to punish''': W.V. Harris, Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, MA: 2001), p. 62.
  17. D. Allen, 'Democratic Dis-Ease: Of Anger and the Troubling Nature of Punishment', in S.A. Bandes (ed.), The Passions of Law (New York: 1999), pp. 191-214, especially p. 194. For the role of anger in judicial verdicts, see also D. Allen, The World of Prometheus: The Politics of Punishing in Democratic Athens (Princeton: 2000), pp. 18-24; on anger as the counterpart to pity, see D. Konstan, Pity Transformed (London: 2001), pp. 41-43.
  18. J. von Arnim (ed.), Stociorum Veterum Fragmenta (Leipzig: 1921-24) 3.395 ¼ Stobaeus 2.91.10; cf. Diog. Laert. 7.113; also Posidonius, fr. 155 in L. Edelstein and I. Kidd, Posidonius (Cambridge: 1972-99) ¼ Lactantius On the Anger of God 17.13.
  19. Plut. On Moral Virtue 10, 450c ¼ Stociorum Veterum Fragmenta 3.390; quoted in Harris, Restraining Rage, p. 370.
  20. We know from Cicero and other sources that there were self-professed Stoic pleaders, and it is an interesting question how they might have performed in the courtroom.
  21. See also Dion. Hal. Demosthenes 22 in S. Usher, Dionysius of Halicarnassus: The Critical Essays 1 (Cambridge, MA: 1974), p. 322.
  22. For a neo-Stoic approach, see M.C. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: 2001).