IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2013 - 19

core concepts do not and cannot
conceive the other human being as
another human being. Instead of
a retrieval of the unthought origin
through a "step back"7 in thinking
that allows the open clearing of a)
lh q/ eia to be seen as the site of
presencing and absencing, disclosure and withdrawal, an alternative and complementary way of
leaving the all too well-worn ambit
of metaphysical thinking is to sidestep it to the other human being.
This side-step allows the estimating interplay8 between human
beings to ontologically come to
light in which we disclose ourselves to and also withdraw from
each other as who we are so that
the phenomenon of whoness9 can
light up as such for the first time in
the history of philosophy. The sidestep leads to an explicit ontological
bifurcation in the being of beings
into quiddity and quissity, whatness, and whoness.
Let us consider the phenomenon
of rhetoric to see more closely how
it is that metaphysical thinking
does violence to the phenomena of
human interplay.

Rhetoric as a
Paradigmatic Technique
of Social Interplay10
In English we speak of an art or
technique of rhetoric and usually
have in mind the phenomenon of
public speaking - before a court,
in parliament, in public assemblies,
in the mass media, etc. - and it

7
Cf., above all Heidegger's seminar paper [10],
and also the transcript "Protokoll zu einem Seminar über den Vortrag>Zeit und Sein<" [11].
8
On interplay, cf., Eldred [9], especially
section 5.6, http://www.arte-fact.org/untpltcl/
rstrpltc.html#5.6.
9
Cf., [12] [13]. Both these works could also
bear the title Phenomenology of Whoness.
Cf. http://www.arte-fact.org/kaumstan.html Cf.
also [14].
10
For more details, see [15], especially section 3
"rhetoric as a test case for power over the other"
at
http://www.arte-fact.org/untpltcl/pwrrhtrc.
html#3. An interpretation of interplay as angeletics is provided by rafael Capurro in [16] and [17].

is true that these are prime sites
where rhetoric comes into its own.
But rhetoric can also be seen more
broadly as speaking to win the other
over, and this covers great expanses
of our being-with-one-another.
When Aristotle investigates
rhetoric, he calls it a te/xnh, an art
or technique, "like all the others"
(Rhet. A1355b10), and tries to fit it
as a "power" (du/namij A1355b25)
into the mold of a du/namij meta \
lo /gou, which he worked out in
the Metaphysics.11 In this way he
brings rhetoric into line with the
other te /xnai of bringing-forth,
even though we may well hesitate to call it a te /xnh poihtikh /
like house-building. Nevertheless,
Aristotle says that rhetoric is an art
whose "work" (e rgon)
)/
is "to see in
each case the existing means of persuasion" (A1355b10). This seeing
is the same knowing fore-seeing
of the builder who sees the means
of house-building with respect to
the end of a finished house. The
end (te l
/ oj) which the speaker has
in mind is to have persuaded his
audience.
The key term here is piqana /
from the verb pei q/ w meaning
"to persuade, win over, engender
trust and confidence, convince,
move," in short, to bring another
or others around12 to a viewpoint
amenable to the speaker's aims.
The medium in which this is done
is speech itself, but, as we shall see
shortly, it is by no means what is
said that is crucial in any rhetorical situation. rhetoric, according
to Aristotle, is therefore a power

11
Cf., my investigation of Heidegger's inadequate
treatment of the ontological structure of rhetoric
[15], section 4 "Heidegger's treatment of rhetoric
in Summer Semester 1924," at http://www.artefact.org/untpltcl/pwrrhtrc.html.
12
The corresponding passive/middle form
pei q/ esqai means "to be persuaded, won over,
moved, to believe, trust, to listen, obey." rhetoric is thus a power of moving that depends on
listeners' allowing themselves to be moved, so
there are (at least) two reciprocal, intermeshing
a )rxai / kinh /sewj (sources of movement) in the
rhetorical situation.

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

SuMMEr 2013

in his sense, residing as a foreseeing know-how in the speaker
that enables him to bring about
a change in another, namely the
listening others, the audience, to
persuade them, to win them over,
to gain their trust. Such winningover is of course a matter of changing the listeners' mood, of retuning
the audience to another attunement
more amenable to the speaker's
objectives, and it is easy to see in
this a budding will to power. This
fits Aristotle's ontological definition of a du /namij meta \ lo /gou,
but furthermore, rhetoric is a
du /namij e )n lo /g%, i.e., a power
that "lives and breathes" in the element or medium of the logos. The
means of winning over a listener
are words themselves, whereas for
a builder, the means of building a
house are stone, wood, etc. as well
as his tools.
But to say that the means of
winning over a listener are words
themselves is immediately misleading because Aristotle says that
there are three ei )d/ h (A1356a1)
or "faces" of means of persuasion, namely, firstly, the habitual
stance or character of the speaker,
secondly, putting the listener into
a "certain mood" (1356a3), and
lastly what is said, through which
something is "shown or seems to
be shown" (1356a4). There are
therefore at least four peculiarities
of the art of rhetoric in contrast to
the other productive arts:
First, it aims at showing or
seeming to show something to a
listener, thus presupposing that the
other who is to be changed by the
power of rhetoric is another human
being who understands what is said
and participates in a happening
of disclosure or at least seeming disclosure of what is spoken
of. The rhetorical event is thus
situated within the open clearing
of a )lh q/ eia to which only human
beings are exposed. The other
upon which the power of rhetoric
works in its energy (e )ne /rgeia) is
not something, like wood or stone,
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http://www.arte-fact.org/untpltcl/ http://www.arte http://www.fact.org/untpltcl/pwrrhtrc.html http://www.arte-fact.org/kaumstan.html http://www.arte-fact.org/untpltcl/pwrrhtrc

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2013