Aristotle

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Biography

Aristotle (384-322 BCE), student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great, was a Greek philosopher. He lived in Athens for most or all of his life and wrote books on politics, ethics, physics, metaphysics, logic, poetry, and, most importantly for the purposes of rhetorical theory, rhetoric. Aristotle's Rhetoric is one of the oldest documents that treats the subject as a legitimate discipline and art, or in Aristotle's words, a "techne." Aristotle also provided the world's first definition of rhetoric as "the art of persuasion."

After the fall of Rome, the Aristotelian worldview became so widespread throughout the West that to challenge his findings could have been considered heresy -- in fact it was in the case of Galileo. It could even be argued that the only philosopher that could perhaps match Aristotle's influence would be his teacher Plato. ^[1]