Introduction: An Overview of Protreptic Rhetoric in the Aristotle Corpus

We offer a survey of the Aristotle Corpus (the Organon or logical works; the physics or natural works, the Metaphysics, the practical works, and the productive works (Rhetoric and Poetics) and discuss “protreptic aspects” pertinent to each, including: (1) direct discussion of protreptic rhetoric by Aristotle in the Rhetoric and Topics; (2) indirect employment of protreptic rhetoric in other works (such as On the Soul, Parva Naturalia, On the Parts of Animals), and (3) text re-uses or parallels to arguments in the lost Protrepticus, for example in the Metaphysics and Politics. We observe that Aristotle is generally reluctant to offer protreptic rhetoric in the Corpus, unless it is protreptic to some kind of specialized way of doing philosophy (such as psychology, biology, metaphysics, etc.); and in many cases he offers no protreptic whatsoever; interestingly, he avoids protreptic in cases where he seems to think that the matter has been sufficiently investigated, or at least exhorted to, for example logic (syllogistic) and meteorology.