Abstract
Originality of al-Farabi's Rhetoric Conception
In its most general use, the term rhetoric means the art of persuasion. Plato criticized rhetoric in antiquity. Plato’s criticism is not an attempt to completely discard rhetoric, but rather an attempt to give rhetoric a conceptual framework. The reason is that Plato’s criticism of rhetoric was later described by Aristotle and interpreted to be an art of persuasion and he adds a new methodical dimension to rhetoric. The subject of the study is to delineate the conceptual framework which can be called “Rhetoric Art According to Al-Farabi”, as Al-Farabi agrees with Aristotle. When he speaks of rhetoric, Al-Farabi explains that different forms of comparative propositions should be made use of. According to Aristotle, there are two important methods of rhetoric: Implicit Comparison and Sampling. These two methods form the basis of rhetorical art. The main purpose of Al-Farabi’s suggestion of these methods is to prove that Plato’s rhetoric is done logically in response to Plato’s criticism of rhetoric. He also considers different ways of applying rhetoric, such as body language and tone adjustment for the rhetoric. Al-Farabi’s views on rhetoric still seem to be alive today. In this sense, his views on rhetoric are also systematic and consistent.
Keywords
Islamic philosophy, Farabi, Plato, Aristotle, rhetoric, logic.
