I have a confession - beyond the three proofs (ethos, logos, pathos) and a skimming (advised by my teacher) of the excepts from Books 1, 2, and 3, I've made it through a year of rhetorical study with very little work with or on Aristotle. In defense of my program, I believe it's because teaching Aristotle wholesale is harmful to advancement in our studies - he's not contemporary, his thinking is conservative and with each passing year, Aristotude (I just made that up, pretty cool, right?) becomes less en vogue. So, they teach us the things that have stood the test of time, like, ethos, logos, pathos and ask us to explore new worlds, which is great.
Here's the problem, and my reason for wanting this book much sooner: outside of the physical classroom, like for example, reading for this test, EVERYONE cites Aristotle. In the 60s - late 90s (still today for some) he was a voice to be reckoned with, a rhetorical father used to further aims of conservative scholars (or at the least, liberal scholars used him as an example). In whole, without a good understanding of Aristotle, Rhet/Comp, for me, has been kind of like watching the Family Guy except only getting half the jokes. Now, yes, I could have/should have taken it upon myself to scour out this text and read it on a break...no excuses being made, but I say all this to urge any of you who may teach elements of rhetoric or believe it to be something that could inform your students, this is the book you want to take excerpts from. Kennedy does an AMAZING job translating, organizing and overall, making Aristotle wholly readable (and I would argue relevant) in the 21st century.
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