On the Term "Dunamis" in Aristotle's Definition of Rhetoric
The term dunamis, by which Aristotle defines rhetoric in the first chapter of The Art of Rhetoric, is a “power” term, as its various meanings in Aristotle’s corpus—from vernacular ones like “political influence” to strictly philosophical ones like “potentiality”—attest.1 In the Rhetoric, however, dunamis is usually translated as “ability” or “faculty,” a designation that, compared to other terms that describe persuasion in ancient Greek poetics and rhetoric (such as “bia” [“force”] or “eros” [“seduction”]), marks rhetoric as a neutral human capacity rather than the use of language entangled in the vagaries of violence and desire.2 John Kirby calls Aristotle’s definition “one of the boldest moves in the history of the philosophy of language: to redefine rhetoric, not as the use of peitho but as the study of peitho” (1990, 227). The presumption of rhetoric’s ethical neutrality implied by dunamis has indeed become commonplace in interpretations of Aristotle’s treatise itself and of rhetoric as a social phenomenon. As George Kennedy puts it in his authoritative translation of the Rhetoric, “Aristotle was the first person to recognize clearly that rhetoric as an art of communication was morally neutral, that it could be used either for good or ill” (1991, ix). In this article, I would like to probe another, perhaps not so reassuring, implication of dunamis as a term for rhetoric—that as “an ability to see all available means of persuasion,” it does not need to become (or emulate) practical oratory. In what follows, I suggest that Aristotle’s terminology, however neutral it may appear, constitutes an intellectually and politically motivated act of naming that severs rhetorical knowledge from historically specific rhetorical practices and thereby erects a protective barrier between practical rationality and discourses of democracy.
Aristotle's Knowledge of Athenian oratory
In the Rhetoric Aristotle frequently illustrates the points he is making with examples drawn both from oratory and from other literary genres. Although some of these citations have been used to date the work, they have never been systematically examined. It is the contention of this article that, when Aristotle gives examples from speeches, he quotes exclusively from epideictic works, and that this fact tells us much both about the circulation of written speeches at Athens and about the preoccupations of Aristotle and his pupils.
Western versus asian types of multiple sclerosis: Immunogenetically and clinically distinct disorders
The polymorphism of HLA‐DRBI, ‐DRB3, and ‐DRB5 genes as well as magnetic resonance images of the brain and spinal cord were studied in 57 Japanese patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). Twenty‐three patients clinically displayed selective involvement of the optic nerve and spinal cord and were classified as having Asian‐type MS. Patients with Asian‐type MS had fewer brain lesions shown gy magnetic resonance imaging, but more gadolinium‐enhanced spinal cord lesions than did patients with Western‐type MS (47% vs 17%). Fruthermore, the DR2‐associated DRBI1501 allele and DRB50101 allele were associated with Western‐type MS (41.2%), but not with either Asian‐type MS (0%) or healthy control subjects (14.2%). Heterogeneity inthe immunogenetic background and in the magnetic resonance imaging features between the two subtypes of MS thus suggests the presence of two etiologically distinct diseases in Asians.