Thank you Michael Eldred for your helpful observations concerning Stimme,
Stimmung, Aristotle and Rhetoric. Id like to try to carry these
connections a bit further. You say:
>I agree with you alighting on the Stimme as something worthy of attention.
>What
>Aristotle makes of the voice in his Rhetoric and what Heidegger in turn
>makes of
>Aristotle in SZ in the analysis of particular moods revolves on Stimme as
>voice
>and Stimmung as mood. For Aristotle in his Rhetoric it is a matter of the
>persuasive power of the voice, the mood it can awaken and resonate with which
>can sway the opinion of a meeting. A. tries to make of Rhetoric an art, a
>technique for steering changes (metabolai) of mood. Does Aristotle's
>"appropriateness" mean being in tune with the mood of a meeting? (And today a
>"meeting" can be nationwide or even worldwide.)
I think the terms "appropriateness" for Aristotle here refers to the whole
complex of elements one finds in the situation in which speaking occurs.
Thus the attunenement which takes place in a successful rhetorical act, an
attunement which Aristotle characterizes by the word appropriateness,
refers to the bringing together in language of all these different
elements. Mood, of course is central to this enterprise, and the
connection with music is strongly suggested by the Aristotelian idea of the
pathos of the speech being " at the "right pitch" But I think Heidegger
sees something of great siginificance in the centrality of pathos in
Aristotle's Rhetoric.
There is a strong hint in Aristotle that he also sees moodedness as an
originary sort of grounding, in this case, of the rhetorical situation.
He defines Rhetoric in Book One has having the objective not of persuasion
per se, but as a "capacity for discovering in the particular case what are
the available ( he later glosses the word avalilable here as "given") means
of persuasion." Three verses later he says it is also within the purview of
this capacity to "see whAt is persuasive about the given." It is our
moodedness which makes persuasion possible in the particular situation, but
that moodedness is "given" WITH the situation equaprimordially. Therere
are a number of wAys in which the bemooded rhetorical situation might be
"interpreted, some of them more "appropriate" than others. Here I'm
tempted to introduce something about "The Call" as a way to somehow guide
thel response to the rhetorical situation. Perhaps the term cor-respodence,
as Heidgger uses it in Was ist Philosophie, would be in place here: Sie ist
in der Weise des Entsprechens, das sich abstimmt auf die Stimme des Seins
des Seinden ( p.92)
Heidegger gave a series of lectures on Aristotle's Rhetoric in 1924 in
which he concentrated quite heavily on Pathos and its place in the
phenomenological structure of understanding. They have yet to be published,
but I'm hoping to be able to take a look at them this fall in the archives.
Has anyone seen them.
More later,
Allen Scult
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
Stimmung, Aristotle and Rhetoric. Id like to try to carry these
connections a bit further. You say:
>I agree with you alighting on the Stimme as something worthy of attention.
>What
>Aristotle makes of the voice in his Rhetoric and what Heidegger in turn
>makes of
>Aristotle in SZ in the analysis of particular moods revolves on Stimme as
>voice
>and Stimmung as mood. For Aristotle in his Rhetoric it is a matter of the
>persuasive power of the voice, the mood it can awaken and resonate with which
>can sway the opinion of a meeting. A. tries to make of Rhetoric an art, a
>technique for steering changes (metabolai) of mood. Does Aristotle's
>"appropriateness" mean being in tune with the mood of a meeting? (And today a
>"meeting" can be nationwide or even worldwide.)
I think the terms "appropriateness" for Aristotle here refers to the whole
complex of elements one finds in the situation in which speaking occurs.
Thus the attunenement which takes place in a successful rhetorical act, an
attunement which Aristotle characterizes by the word appropriateness,
refers to the bringing together in language of all these different
elements. Mood, of course is central to this enterprise, and the
connection with music is strongly suggested by the Aristotelian idea of the
pathos of the speech being " at the "right pitch" But I think Heidegger
sees something of great siginificance in the centrality of pathos in
Aristotle's Rhetoric.
There is a strong hint in Aristotle that he also sees moodedness as an
originary sort of grounding, in this case, of the rhetorical situation.
He defines Rhetoric in Book One has having the objective not of persuasion
per se, but as a "capacity for discovering in the particular case what are
the available ( he later glosses the word avalilable here as "given") means
of persuasion." Three verses later he says it is also within the purview of
this capacity to "see whAt is persuasive about the given." It is our
moodedness which makes persuasion possible in the particular situation, but
that moodedness is "given" WITH the situation equaprimordially. Therere
are a number of wAys in which the bemooded rhetorical situation might be
"interpreted, some of them more "appropriate" than others. Here I'm
tempted to introduce something about "The Call" as a way to somehow guide
thel response to the rhetorical situation. Perhaps the term cor-respodence,
as Heidgger uses it in Was ist Philosophie, would be in place here: Sie ist
in der Weise des Entsprechens, das sich abstimmt auf die Stimme des Seins
des Seinden ( p.92)
Heidegger gave a series of lectures on Aristotle's Rhetoric in 1924 in
which he concentrated quite heavily on Pathos and its place in the
phenomenological structure of understanding. They have yet to be published,
but I'm hoping to be able to take a look at them this fall in the archives.
Has anyone seen them.
More later,
Allen Scult
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---