Die rhetorische Psychologie von Aristoteles - Eine Antwort auf die platonische Rhetorikdefinition

Abstract

Roland Barthes uses in his overview of ancient rhetoric the terminus “rhetorical psychology” for Aristotle’s theory of the affects. It is contrary to “the abstracting psychology that tries to figure out what is behind the talk of people and claims anger, for example, is caused by something else, hidden.” Here the emotions are to decipher and interpret. For Aristotle, however they are more "ready-language pieces". Aristotelian rhetorical psychology is "a dividing psychology that differs languages" (Barthes 1990: 71). If so, then the following questions emerge: How does Aristotle divide feelings? Why is a defender of argumentation-rhetoric so concerned with the division of emotional states? Do the "language pieces" of feelings have nothing to do with the argument? This paper seeks answers to these questions in Aristotelian rhetoric script. The Aristotelian classification of emotions and human types can be regarded as a response to the Platonic demand for a true, real, ‘technical’ rhetoric (Phaedrus 271a-d). The Aristotelian descriptions of feelings constitute the pathostopoi as general aspects (2.3.17) that can be used when arguing. But the reference that discouraged the use of enthymemes in order to evoke pathos may be found in the Aristotelian rhetoric script (3.17.8). In these cases, the speaker should not look for psychological evidence and enthymemes, but rather be instructed in the theory of style. In the epilogue-treatise (3.19) Aristotle treated as one part of the epilogue the amplificatio functioning as an affective influence of the listener. Amplificatio ultimately serves the emotional impact, about which Cicero discussed in Partitiones oratoriae in detail. But this would be an outlook on further work.