The Dimensions of Rhetoric in Plato, Aristotle, and Foucault: Another Table by Nora, Logan, Brittney, and Travis

	PLATO	ARISTOTLE	FOUCAULT
WHAT IS RHETORIC?	“To lead souls by persuasion” (163).	Rhetoric is both the modes of persuasion (179) and the the faculty of observing in any case the available means of persuasion (181).	For Foucault, it seems that rhetoric and discourse are interchangeable terms. Major difference from what we’ve seen before: “These relations characterize not the language used by discourse, nor the circumstances in which it is deployed, but discourse itself as a practice” (1440). Rhetoric can also be seen as the control of discourse: “[Discourse] is the thing for which and by which there is struggle, discourse is the power which is to be seized” (1461). So, those that hold the power of discourse are able to frame the debate as it were, determining what is “truth” or “knowledge.”
WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF RHETORIC?	Rhetoric moves towards transcendent truth; an art the leads souls.	Finding the best means of persuasion in a given circumstance (183). To provide a guide for finding these means.	The purpose of rhetoric (or a theory of discourse) would be to understand the relations between/among units of discourse and the network of ideas and institutions in which and through which that discourse acts. These networks and institutions all serve to maintain some sort of discursive power.
WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF INVENTION?	Divine reality (149).	The topoi (226); artistic and inartistic proofs.	The attempt “to locate the relations that characterize a discursive practice” (1441). Making this kind of knowledge allows a composer to find a point of entry into the discourse. Three systems of exclusion “forge discourse”: forbidden speech, division of madness, and the will to truth (1463). The Surfaces of Emergence, Authorities of Delimitation, and Grids of Specification also serve to create objects of knowledge, forming discourses, reifying them through institutions, and delineate objects within a discourse and their relations to other discourses.
WHERE IS THE AGENCY?	Plato (or the rhetor) is the true authority who provides knowledge, offering little agency to the audience. The rhetorician who “knows the various forms of the soul” (163).	Agency lies in the ability of the rhetor to understand the rhetorical occasion and the needs of the audience to be addressed. This is why Aristotle provides so many different scenarios.	“But [discourse] is the thing for which and by which there is struggle, discourse is the power which is to be seized” (1461). [I think this means that participating in the institutions of the discourse gives one power and possibility, thus agency.] It also comes from the will to truth (1463). He also, on page 1467, describes “a group of procedures which permit the control of discourses … [by] determining the condition of their application, of imposing a certain number of rules on the individuals who hold them, and thus of not permitting everyone to access them.” In this way, exclusion is an important aspect of formulating discourse.
DESCRIBE THE PROCESS OF RHETORIC?	The rhetor uses dialectic to discern absolute truth; then they present the truth to their audience so that they can also reach the divine.	When describing why rhetoric is useful, he offers a description of the process: “ Employ[ing] persuasion, just as strict reasoning can be employed, on opposite sides of a question, not in order that we may in practice employ it in both ways (for we must not make people believe what is wrong) but in order that we may see clearly what the facts are, and that, if another man argues unfairly, we on our part may be able to confute him” (180-181).	“It is constitutive of the statement itself: a statement must have a substance, a support, a place, and a date” (1457). If rhetoric/discourse is an event, this quote articulates the process. In order to speak, a rhetor must meet the requirements of a “society of discourse,” which has rules governing the admission to said society.
WHAT IS “NATURAL”?	1) the search for meaning; the soul. 2) the desire for pleasure 3)to be good, ethical Oral communication is more natural, as opposed to writing (which is superficial).	There exists “universal law [which] is the law of nature” (207). “Things that are just have a natural tendency to prevail over their opposties...” (180).	The “surfaces of emergence” (1437). This materiality is something that he returns to later on, and seems to be important to what can and can’t be said. His hypothesis on 1461 to suggests a natural phenomenon: “...in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled...and redistributed by a certain number of procedures...”
WHAT IS THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE?	leads to truth or deception	A vehicle or means for persuasion.	It is the tool and the system by which we make the associations necessary to understand and make discourse: “There is not statement that does not presuppose others; there is no statement not surrounded by a field of coexistences, effects of series and succession, a distribution of functions and roles” (1456).
WHAT METAPHORS DOES THE THEORIST USE?	plant seeds, souls	the everyday; used as a function.	Networks, Webs, Systems.