Monday, January 26, 2009

Aristotle: Rhetoric: Book 2: Ch 10-

Ch 10-11
Difference between envy and emulation is that envy is being upset that someone has something you do not; emulation is being upset that you do not have something that someone else does. Envy is doing things to prevent your neighbor from living well; emulation is doing things so that you live well.


Ch 16
There is indeed one difference between the type of the newly-enriched and those who have long been rich: the newly-enriched have all the bad qualities mentioned in an exaggerated and worse form -- to be newly-enriched means, so to speak, no education in riches.


It was interesting to learn that hatred of the nouveau riche has been around for millenia.

Ch 21: Rocking the Maxim
1395b
The maxim, as has been already said, a general statement and people love to hear stated in general terms what they already believe in some particular connexion: e.g. if a man happens to have bad neighbours or bad children, he will agree with any one who tells him, "Nothing is more annoying than having neighbours," or, "Nothing is more foolish than to be the parent of children." The orator has therefore to guess the subjects on which his hearers really hold views already, and what those views are, and then must express, as general truths, these same views on these same subjects. This is one advantage of using maxims. There is another which is more important -- it invests a speech with moral character. There is moral character in every speech in which the moral purpose is conspicuous: and maxims always produce this effect, because the utterance of them amounts to a general declaration of moral principles: so that, if the maxims are sound, they display the speaker as a man of sound moral character.


Read through chapter 23
Reread 23. It's dense.

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