Seventeenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

I want to call for a new direction in the teaching of the history of rhetoric, a discipline that has constituted for over twenty-five hundred years a major part in the Liberal Arts tradition in American and European universities. More specifically, I call for the inclusion of the medieval Arabic commentary tradition on Aristotle’s Rhetoric. The questions that I want to address are as follows: (1) What aspects of resemblance does the medieval Arabic commentary tradition on Aristotle’s Rhetoric show when it is put close to Aristotle’s text? (2) What aspects of difference does this tradition present when it departs from Aristotle’s text? (3) How does the study of this Arabic commentary tradition on Aristotle’s Rhetoric offer a new direction in the teaching of the Liberal Arts tradition in Europe and America? I shall examine excerpts from the commentaries of al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. The conclusion I aim to draw is that the Arabic commentaries of al-Fārābī, Avicenna, and Averroes on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, now available in an English translation, will give English-speaking students and scholars of rhetoric the opportunity to locate these works in the context of the confluence of western culture and the Arabic-Muslim culture.