"The following is a more detailed list of things that must be good."

I find Aristotle both infuriating and inspiring. The above is what started me on a rant to Kathleen about Aristotle's intentions in writing Rhetoric. Here's more of the quotation from above:

"Happiness, as being desirable in itself and sufficient by itself, and as being that for whose sake we choose many other things. Also justice, courage, temperance, magnanimity, magnificence, and all such qualities... Further, health, beauty... Wealth... Friends and friendship... Sciences and arts... And life: since, even if no other good were the result of life, it is desirable in itself."

These are all things that Aristotle says must be good. Must? What I'm not sure of here is whether Aristotle is trying to prove something, or if he's using these definitions as a way to show his students how to use these accepted definitions against/ for someone. For example, would he say these are greater, natural truths that cannot be disputed, or are they just perceived as natural truths by most people, and therefore can be used as a weapon in rhetoric? Aristotle does this with nearly everything he defines, spending pages giving us definitions of motives, goodness, irrefutable truths, and wrongdoing.

Later, he writes, "If the audience esteems a given quality, we must say that our hero has that quality, no matter whether we are addressing Scythians or Spartans or philosophers. Everything, in fact, that is esteemed we are to represent as noble. After all, people regard the two things as much the same" (RT 199).

Aristotle, you MUST SAY that, but why? In order to convince your audience of the goodness of your subject, regardless of whether you actually think he was good? And if, say, murderous behavior is an esteemed one to your audience, must you give that attribute to the subject? I think Aristotle would say yes, because rhetoric is about persuasion, but doesn't that go against what Aristotle believes about those irrefutable truths? Is the idea that "It's all relative" at odds with undeniable, irrefutable truths? Or are they not? It bothers me because I don't exactly see how they can be reconciled, and yet somehow they are in Aristotle's Rhetoric. Perhaps those turths that are fundamental ARE, indeed, irrefutable, BUT you have to cater to other untruthy (thanks Stephen Colbert) things in order to win over an audience, which, after all, is the goal of rhetoric.

Hm, afterthought: this might be solved by looking more closely at page 207, where A discusses particular law versus universal law. Ugh. I actually don't think it's solvable.