Choice and its Overarching Place in Rhetoric

Determining the meaning of the term "choice" is an object most of the writers/theorists most of our readings work through.  The concept is covered extensively in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, but makes its presence known in other forms in the other readings.  For example, some potential equivalent words include strategy (or strategies) from Kenneth Burke's Equipment for Living,  privilege from Michael Foucault's What is an Author?, writing as expressed in Roland Barthes' Death of the Author, and fictionalize (or fictionalizing) put forth by Walter Ong's The Writer's Audience is Always a Fiction.  Although within this list language differs in terms of style and specific functions, including modern grammatical rules, they also work to represent specialized factions of ideas, first put forth by Aristotle (as understood in this post on the date of the first published work). Our current understanding of "choice" has altered considerably since Aristotle's Ethics first circulation.  However, understanding it to the fullest extent allows for further examination upon similar ideas expressed by later rhetoricians and theorists.

Aristotle first approaches the concept of choice when describing voluntary and involuntary actions.  The most basic discernment one can make between these two actions is that one who acts voluntarily makes a choice.  The opposite can be said for one who commits an involuntarily action- there is technically no choice.  However, he breaks this barrier by commenting on the idea of a "not voluntary action."  Although acts done through ignorance is in every case not voluntary, this does not make all acts (and therefore choices to commit these acts) involuntary.  The act is only involuntary if the agent regrets it afterwards. (Aristotle 117)  He also argues that “the ignorance that makes a claim blameworthy is not ignorance displayed in a moral choice (that sort of ignorance constitutes vice)- that is to say, it is not general ignorance (because that’s held to be blameworthy), but particular ignorance, ignorance of the circumstances of the act and of the things affected by it…” (Aristotle 125)  Even though he argues that "choice is manifestly a voluntary act," (Aristotle 129) he also believes that the terms are not synonymous.  According to Aristotle, choices are what distinguishes a moral person, sometimes even despite outside circumstances such as ignorance or compulsion.
Aristotle then goes on to identify what he deems common mis-associations with the nature of choice, including desire, passion, wish, and some form of opinion. (Aristotle 129).

The idea of choice is heavily debated throughout the aforementioned works, although in different contexts and separate identities of vocabulary.  Strategies are necessary for "sizing up" social structures, and are typically accepted as societal proverbs. (Burke 293)  Developing strategies reveals a kind of method, although Burke shies away from this concept: "But if strategy errs in suggesting to some people an overly conscious procedure, method errs in suggesting an overly methodical one." (Burke 297)  Despite this acknowledged shyness, Burke understands strategies by developing them- "one tries, as far as possible, to develop a strategy whereby one can't lose." (Burke 298).  This connects an agent's final results in approaching a situation as a reflection of one's choices.  He also claims that "contradictions between proverbs depend upon differences in attitude, involving a correspondingly different choice of strategy." (Burke 297)   Therefore, although Burke finds "method" all too capable a word to describe strategies, he accepts the notion that choices follow attitudes.

As the social historian that he is, Foucault primarily focuses his essay, What is an Author? on power structures and how they come into play with the genius figurehead society looks to as the "author," and how this can destroy society, particularly within marginalized groups with already limited access to education and other resources necessary to make appropriate choices.  The role privilege has on society determines the choices people within a populace makes (an idea that Aristotle does not support).  Foucault makes it quite clear throughout his essay that able-bodied readers need to choose to pass by an author’s name with indifference in order to overthrow the problematic Author. (Foucault 914) He specifies that the reason the author has maintained their grip on their readers is because society has given them the gift of privilege; without this privilege, readers are denied their choice, and all of the power is transferred to the author.

Barthes also argues for the Death of the Author, but instead of putting the fault of privilege negating individual choices, he supports the basis of writing as a method of choice- and for readers to view writing as just writing.  For example, "as soon as a fact is narrated  no longer with a view to acting directly on reality but intransitively, that is to say, finally outside of any function other than that of the very practice of the symbol itself, this disconnection occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters his own death, writing begins." (Barthes 875)  When writing is interpreted as a free form, away from the bias of an accepted Author, a reader becomes an individual again, capable of making choices and restoring power to themselves.  He also explains through Balzac's example sentence that "no one, no "person," says it: its source, its voice, is not the true place of writing, which is reading," (Barthes 877) thus extending the courtesy of choice to readers as well as writers.

Ong's concept of  fictionalizing an audience acts as another function of choice.  He integrates the metaphor of a writer attempts to address a distinct reader (a plural noun), where an orator addresses an audience (a collective noun). (Ong 10-11)  However, he argues that there is an important boundary that cannot be expected of writing to ever be able to cross- the circumambient actuality. (10)  The fictionalizing of an audience is a choice the writer is forced to make.

Choice is an overreaching concepts that extends itself throughout a majority of the readings we have come across as a class.  It is important for us to understand the potential equalizing terms in order to determine any changes in present modes of discourse, and pinpoint our own interpretations of choice and its place in rhetoric.

-Jasmine Spitler