822 Matching Annotations
  1. Nov 2013
    1. I con-sider the subject matters of the arts to be distinct and separate.

      I can see some indie hipster going on about this is what makes art so great is we discuss what makes art art. And this is a good question, and I find the answers we get don't tell us what art is but how the speaker interprets art. HashTagDeep

    2. We shall distinguish the art of rhetoric from the other arts, and make it a single one of the liberal arts, not a confused mixture of all art

      Interesting idea. But it still gets mixed in and influences so many areas. It's harder to qualify and contain than that

  2. Oct 2013
    1. But this material of oratory, as we define it, that is, the subjects that come before it, some have at one time stigmatized as indefinite, at another as not belonging to oratory, and have called it, as thus characterized, an ars circumcurrens, an infinitely discursive art, as discoursing on any kind of subject.
    1. But that it is an art may be proved in a very few words, for whether, as Cleanthes maintained, an art is a power working its effects by a course, that is by method, no man will doubt that there is a certain course and method in oratory; or whether that definition, approved by almost everybody, that an art consists of perception consenting and cooperating to some end useful to life, be adopted also by us, we have already shown that everything to which this definition applies is to be found in oratory

      Establishing oratory as art

    1. Rhetoric, then, (for we shall henceforth use this term without dread of sarcastic objections) will be best divided, in my opinion, in such a manner that we may speak first of the art, next of the artist, and then of the work.

      Rhetoric as an art

  3. Sep 2013
    1. It is clear, then, that rhetoric is not bound up with a single definite class of subjects, but is as universal as dialectic; it is clear, also, that it is useful. It is clear, further, that its function is not simply to succeed in persuading, but rather to discover the means of coming as near such success as the circumstances of each particular case allow. In this it resembles all other arts. For example, it is not the function of medicine simply to make a man quite healthy, but to put him as far as may be on the road to health; it is possible to give excellent treatment even to those who can never enjoy sound health.

      defining rhetoric's worth and limitations

    2. Both ways being possible, the subject can plainly be handled systematically, for it is possible to inquire the reason why some speakers succeed through practice and others spontaneously; and every one will at once agree that such an inquiry is the function of an art.

      Rhetoric as a legitimate system because the inquiry is the function of an art, which can be handled systematically.

    1. the arts are made great, not by those who are without scruple in boasting about them, but by those who are able to discover all of the resources which each art affords

      The definition of arts. Both Isocrates and Socrates claim that only complete knowledge can meet the definition of arts.

    2. For, excepting these teachers, who does not know that the art of using letters remains fixed and unchanged, so that we continually and invariably use the same letters for the same purposes, while exactly the reverse is true of the art of discourse?

      Rhetoric as an art form: fluid and creative; it is not analogous to something as rigid as learning the alphabet.