Deep Ecology of Rhetoric in Mencius and Aristotle

Discusses philosophers Mencius and Aristotle as socio-ecological thinkers.Mencius (385-303/302 BCE) and Aristotle (384-322 BCE) were contemporaries, but are often understood to represent opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum. Mencius is associated with the ecological, emergent, flowing, and connected; Artistotle with the rational, static, abstract, and binary. Douglas Robinson argues that in their conceptions of rhetoric, at least, Mencius and Aristotle are much more similar than different: both are powerfully socio-ecological, espousing and exploring collectivist thinking about the circulation of energy and social value through groups. The agent performing the actions of pistis, "e;persuading-and-being-persuaded,"e; in Aristotle and zhi, "e;governing-and-being-governed,"e; in Mencius is, Robinson demonstrates, not so much the rhetor as an individual as it is the whole group. Robinson tracks this collectivistic thinking through a series of comparative considerations using a theory that draws impetus from Arne Naess's "e;ecosophical"e; deep ecology and from work on rhetoric powered by affective ecologies, but with details of the theory drawn equally from Mencius and Aristotle.