“The general secret of rendering signs effective:” on the Aristotelian roots of Peirce’s conception of rhetoric as a dynamis, téchne and semeiotic form of the summum bonum

Abstract

In this and a following twin-article we aim at articulating Peirce’s comprehensive architectonic view of the phenomenon of rhetoric by putting its account in “Ideas, Stray or Stolen, about Scientific Writing” (MS 774, 1904) in perspective with its treatment in the much neglected classification of the practical sciences (MS 1343, 1903). In the present article, we first reconstruct the main conceptual axis of “Ideas, Stray or Stolen”, which is erected by the terms ‘universal art of rhetoric’, ‘ordinary rhetoric’ and ‘speculative rhetoric’. As this axis guides us towards the classification of special rhetorical studies Peirce proposes in the final section of “Ideas, Stray or Stolen”, the careful reconstruction of this axis constitutes a hermeneutic duty, the neglect of which would hinder a proper understanding of what Peirce is classifying at the end of his most mature account of Speculative Rhetoric (Section I). Next, we proceed to expose the Aristotelian roots of Peirce’s conception of the universal art of rhetoric (Section II) and analyze the intrinsic relation rhetorical semeiosis has to the summum bonum as one of its historically evolving semeiotic forms (Section III). If this interpretation of Peirce’s conception of rhetoric is adequate, however, we should expect him to somewhere give us an account of the capacity of rhetoric to evolve––and thus grow––in the first place. It will be the task of the following second paper to show that and how Peirce’s conception of rhetoric as a practical science (τέχνη) and instinctive faculty (δύναμις) rooted in the “graphic instinct” (MS 1343) accounts for its capacity for growth.