Aristotle and the Boundaries of the Good Life Western rhetoric historically has tried to transform rhetoric as an art

to philosophy or ethics/politics (162) Atwill argues rhetoric should be categorized as productive knowledge, which challenges interpretive traditions and assumptions. (162) Rather that embodying cultures highest value, the subjects of productive knowledge are better characterized as the very nexus of competing standards of value; rather than securing boundaries of either knowledge or subjectivity, productive knowledge is more likely to be implicated in their transgression and renegotiation (185). Theory/Practice debate: Thought has only two forms theoretical or practical/productive (164) Orders of knowledge are social rather than conceptual (166) Although, Atwill emphasizes that the categories arent airtight, Aristotles domains are most stable concepts in corpus due to close relationship with telelogy (168) Plato and Aristotle agree philosophical life was tied to class privilege and disposition, made possible only by subordinating other classes to fulfill various social and economic functions in the state (176) The best or good life, in Aristotles opinion: Is a life of excellence; restricted to a few (179) The inability to achieve it is accounts for different forms of government (179) The lowest type of life equates goodness with pleasure (166) Thoughts about Art: In connection to the productive discussion about INVENTION: Art is governed by the same teleogical principles. Indeed, it appears that the very discovery of this principle in nature is possible only because it was first understood in the operation of human production (173) Art is concerned with the contingent; can never claim theoretical knowledge (174)

The user is the most appropriate judge of an artistic product (174) The art of rhetoric as a valued mode of intervention into existing conditions and a means for the invention of new possibilities is lost in the taxonomy (189)

Division/Taxonomy of knowledge Theoretical (epistm) philosophy or the highest knowledge Study of metaphysics, mathematics, natural sciences (162) Has to do with things that are either immovable or have their source of motion in themselves (164) The contemplation of the notion of telos (169); of the highest objects Concerned with what exists and acts by necessity (169) The highest knowledge; essential constituent of true wisdom (169) Most distinguishing characteristic is that its pursued for no practical or utitlitarian end (170) Self-moved or self-directed way of life (170)

Practical (praxis) the study of ethics and politics Directed toward the end of eudaimonia- happiness/the good life (162); the only well defined telos (171) Concerned with action and what is far less than perfecthuman behavior (171) Never concerned with the necessary (171)

Productive (poisis) Incorporates all important technai- architecture, navigation, medicine, and rhetoric (162) No specific subdisciplines (165) Defined by three characteristics: concern with contingent, its implication in social and economic exchange, and its resistance to determinate ends (173) Purposeful knowledge; for the sake of another end (174) Always implicated in exchange- always in a producer and its end in a user, or receiver Criteria directly applies to the art of rhetoric; rhetorical knowledge is always subject to contingencies of context, time,

and history (175); their relationship is explicit in relation to social exchange (176) Has no ultimate authority but makers and users who change with every exercise of art (176) Subject are users, not knowers; and every different use of techn defines the subject differently

Key Terms eudaimonia- happiness/the good life; a hexis, or state that is one of contemplation of the highest knowledge (162-3); a continuous activity of contemplation {the actualization of knowledge in the mind (181)} (180) teleology or the principle of telos- an end, tied to principles of origination (169)