The Meaning of Heuristic in Aristotle's Rhetoric and Its Implications for Contemporary Rhetorical Theory

This chapter encourages a reexamination of the meaning of heuristic in Aristotle's Rhetoric in an effort to reenvision not only the invention processes inherent in his notion of Rhetoric but also the Rhetoric itself. It argues that Aristotle used the term heuristic to capture the way meaning is cocreated between rhetor and audience and how, through this process of interaction, participatory meaning is shared. The chapter provides an explanation of the place of heuristic in Aristotle's Rhetoric by showing its endemic operation between rhetor and audience in constructing probable knowledge. A meaningful rhetorical process begins in a moment of converging forces, a situation in which members of the polis face an irresolute but pressing problem that calls for new meaning and thus compels or occasions a search to develop ever more probable courses of action or explanation.