<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: relevant even today!
Review: Aristotle is amazing in his insight into the human nature. "Aristotle on rhetoric" focuses on what people like, how to talk to them, and how to act around them. However, be forewarned that the reading is not light, many hours can be spent on each chapter. If you are interested in finding out that people are the same today as they were in ancient Greece, read this book!
Rating: 
Summary: The most scholarly & readily translation of the "Rhetorica"
Review: Aristotle's treatise "On Rhetoric" has been the seminal work in the field since it was written. There is a very real sense in which there is nothing new under the sun since Aristotle's day, and that the rhetorical constructs of Burke, Toulmin and every other rhetorical theorist are simply Aristotle's concepts dressed up in new terms. Certainly no one has been as comprehensive in cataloguing all the available means of persuasion. The study of rhetoric begins in earnest with Aristotle's volume. While there are numerous translations of "On Rhetoric" available, this remarkable translation by George A. Kennedy is the one worth owning. Kennedy has studied classical rhetorical for over three decades and he brings his knowledge of what rhetoric meant in the time of Aristotle to his translation. By the time you get to the first sentence of this translation--"Rhetoric is an antisrophos to dialectic"--you have ample evidence that Kennedy is the ideal translator for this text. You will have gone through a Prooemion, an Introductory essay, a synopsis of the first three chapters of Book 1 before you get to that first sentence, which contains two footnotes detailing the contemporary meanings of "rhetoric" and "antistrophos." More than any other scholar to tackle this project, Kennedy is as well versed in the subject matter as he is the original language. Kennedy's translation also benefits from the fact that it is eminently readable. Additionally, this volume includes only a glossary and bibliography, but two excellent appendixes. The first consists of Supplementary Texts: (A) Gorgias' "Encomium on Helen," the showcase speech by the leader of the Sophists; (B) Aristotle on "Art as an Intellectual Virtue" from his "Nicomachean Ethics"; (C) "An Introduction to Dialectic" from Aristotle's "Topics"; (D) Cicero's "Description of Aristotle's Synagoge Tekhnon"; (E) Aristotle on "Word Choice and Metaphor" from his "Poetics"; and (F) Kennedy's note on "The Concept of the Enthymeme as Understood in the Modern Period." The second appendix features three Supplementary Essays: (A) "The Composition of the 'Rhetoric'"; (B) "The History of the Text After Aristotle"; and (C) "The Strengths and Limitations of the 'Rhetoric.'" The supplemental works alone would make this the translation to own. Every teacher or student of rhetorical theory/criticism needs to own Kennedy's translation of Aristotle's "On Rhetoric."
Rating:
Summary: Spare me the Anti-P.C.! Kennedy's translation is great!
Review: Aristotle's treatise "On Rhetoric" has been the seminal work in the field since it was written. There is a very real sense in which there is nothing new under the sun since Aristotle's day, and that the rhetorical constructs of Burke, Toulmin and every other rhetorical theorist are simply Aristotle's concepts dressed up in new terms. Certainly no one has been as comprehensive in cataloguing all the available means of persuasion. The study of rhetoric begins in earnest with Aristotle's volume. While there are numerous translations of "On Rhetoric" available, this remarkable translation by George A. Kennedy is the one worth owning. Kennedy has studied classical rhetorical for over three decades and he brings his knowledge of what rhetoric meant in the time of Aristotle to his translation. By the time you get to the first sentence of this translation--"Rhetoric is an antisrophos to dialectic"--you have ample evidence that Kennedy is the ideal translator for this text. You will have gone through a Prooemion, an Introductory essay, a synopsis of the first three chapters of Book 1 before you get to that first sentence, which contains two footnotes detailing the contemporary meanings of "rhetoric" and "antistrophos." More than any other scholar to tackle this project, Kennedy is as well versed in the subject matter as he is the original language. Kennedy's translation also benefits from the fact that it is eminently readable. Additionally, this volume includes only a glossary and bibliography, but two excellent appendixes. The first consists of Supplementary Texts: (A) Gorgias' "Encomium on Helen," the showcase speech by the leader of the Sophists; (B) Aristotle on "Art as an Intellectual Virtue" from his "Nicomachean Ethics"; (C) "An Introduction to Dialectic" from Aristotle's "Topics"; (D) Cicero's "Description of Aristotle's Synagoge Tekhnon"; (E) Aristotle on "Word Choice and Metaphor" from his "Poetics"; and (F) Kennedy's note on "The Concept of the Enthymeme as Understood in the Modern Period." The second appendix features three Supplementary Essays: (A) "The Composition of the 'Rhetoric'"; (B) "The History of the Text After Aristotle"; and (C) "The Strengths and Limitations of the 'Rhetoric.'" The supplemental works alone would make this the translation to own. Every teacher or student of rhetorical theory/criticism needs to own Kennedy's translation of Aristotle's "On Rhetoric."
Rating:
Summary: Spare me the Anti-P.C.! Kennedy's translation is great!
Review: I can't understand quite what it is about Kennedy's book that has so outraged the last reviewer("Spare me the PC!!",Dec. 26,'01). It can't be any real "PC" dogmatism;there's none in Kennedy's book. But take a look at the passage the anti-PC reviewer refers to,& judge for yourself:
"Two features of my translation may be worth pointing out in advance. ...[Here Kennedy discusses a feature that need not concern us now.]... A second feature is avoidance of some of the sexist language seen in older translations,which often speak of 'men' when Aristotle uses a more general plural. I have used *man* or *men* only in those few instances in which the word appears in the Greek; otherwise I use *someone*,*people*,or *they*. On the other hand,to alter Aristotle's many uses of *he*,*his*,or *him* in reference to speakers or members of a Greek assembly or jury would be unhistorical & involve an actual change in the text. Aristotle usually envisions only males as speaking in public; but he clearly did not think that rhetoric was a phenomenon limited to males...."
Now whether Kennedy considered this feature a "virtue" of his translation (as the anti-PC reviewer suggests) is debatable; but based on what I've quoted,Kennedy seems only to speak of it as one of two features "worth pointing out in advance".
Now what has so outraged the anti-PC reviewer? It's not as though Kennedy is translating Aristotle's use of the Greek words for *man* or *men* into gender-neutral English words. Kennedy explicitly says that he has *not* done so.
Kennedy is saying that wherever Aristotle uses a noun or pronoun (*other* than "man/men" or "he/him") that happens in Greek to be masculine in gender,even though there is no particular reason to think (and maybe even positive reason *not* to think) that Aristotle means to be referring exclusively to males,then in such cases (and,from what I understand,*only* in such cases) Kennedy uses a word that in English is gender-neutral,like "person/people" or "someone". Now there is no reason to get into a huff about this or think that Kennedy is constructing some barrier between us English readers & what Aristotle is actually saying. The neuter "gender" just wasn't used in Greek as a way to refer to a mixed group of males & females or as a way to refer to people without specific reference to their gender. The masculine "gendered" words were used for this purpose. This was just a fact about the language.
It's true that in English we sometimes oddly use a word like "guys" to refer to a mixed group of males & females or even to a group of women only,& we sometimes use a word like "he" to refer indefinitely to *someone*,male or female. But in English such cases aren't the norm. In fact,it's peculiar that the specific word "guys" *may* be used in the way I just mentioned,but the word "men" is *never* used in that way. And although "he/him" is,as I said,used with gender-indefinite reference,it's increasingly *not* the norm; these days we just as often see the words "he or she" or even "she" were we formerly found only "he". Now this is just a fact of our language,whether or not you agree that it is an improvement. (I haven't commented on the use of the suffix "-man",which is another matter that is fairly irrelevant here.)
So unless we think that Aristotle actually is referring exclusively to males every time he uses a noun or pronoun that happens in Greek to be masculine in gender,a translator is rather misrepresenting the Greek to translate,as a matter of course,these words into words that in English are obviously-and almost always,exclusively-masculine,like "man/men" & "he/him". Kennedy is simply trying to accurately represent in English a grammatical feature quite common to Greek words but rather rare in English.
I have made a big deal of a point that Kennedy only says was "worth pointing out". I've done this only to do better justice to Kennedy's translation which is quite an improvement over previous English translations.(Even *if* the anti-PC reviewer were justified in his/her characterization of Kennedy's attitude about gender,I don't see how the reviewer arrived at his/her one-star rating. Is this all the reviewer cares about in a translation? Or does he/she think that Kennedy's choice of "people" over "men" totally *ruins* an otherwise good translation?!)
The anti-PC reviewer has (apparently unwittingly) propagated the PC agenda by giving undue attention to what,for serious readers of Kennedy's translation,can be only marginally important.
Rating: 
Summary: Spare me the P.C.!!
Review: One would think that if anyone had an interest in not erecting artificial barriers to understanding the past, it would be classicists. How then to explain the introduction to George A. Kennedy's new edition of Aristotle's _Rhetoric_? On page xii, Kennedy highlights his own "enlightenment" by noting that one of the "virtues" of his new translation is his avoidance of the "sexist" language featured in older translations. What does he mean by this? Earlier translators used "man" as a sex-neutral noun and various words ending with the suffix "-man" and its forms to translate the neuter gender, which exists in Greek but not in English. This is nothing but stupidity, of course. Contrary to the myth propagated by feminists in the media, particularly in publishing, "-man" _is_ the sex-neutral ending, and it is only "-woman" that is sex-specific. English is like dozens of other Indo-European languages in using the same word for its masculine and its neuter forms; if people really wanted to get rid of sex-specific forms, they would eliminate "female" (which etymologically is a form of "male"), "woman" (a form of "man"), etc. What they really want to do, however, is to point to their own superior sensibility in a pharisaical way, simultaneously implicitly impugning everyone else (in Kennedy's case, all Aristotle scholars) who came before. So, if you want a translation of Aristotle that is not marked by the latest P.C. foolishness, steer clear of this one. Obviously, however good his grasp of Greek in itself, Kennedy has neither the respect for his field nor the knowledge of linguistics one hopes for in a translator.
<< 1 >>
|
