Everydayness itself is manifested within a fundamental basic-structure: its temporality. Being in itself as concern and concernful speaking is temporal, concerns the not-yet-present, speaks about what has-happened-already, treats the existing-there-right-now.
Aristotle then goes further. This peculiar stretching in temporality is manifested in the beings that rhetoric takes up. Aristotle apprehends in an ontologically more precise way, in a certain sense in a more formal way, the characters of the being-there of the environing world with the aspects of their temporality. What is spoken of as being-thus has the character of “more or less,” is characterized by a μέγεθος,83 a definite “extending” that is defined by the character of indefiniteness. This “more or less” is a basic character of the being of beings, as it is nearly this way and nearly that. Along with this is the aspect of δυνατόν and ἀδύνατον.84 These are fundamental determinations of being that come to language in a λόγος: that which is thus, which has such being, that in itself also “can be otherwise,” ἐνδεχόμενον ἄλλως ἔχειν,85 which is already different in the next moment, no longer what it was before.
According to this being-structure of everydayness, λέγειν is also something peculiar. It cannot be “scientific proving,” ἀπόδειξις, but rather the being of which we say that it happens day-by-day, does not stand under theoretical axioms but consists of basic opinions, views that have arisen not from a theoretical treatment, but those that life itself has cultivated in everydayness. We will discuss ἔνδοξον and we will do so on the basis of ἔνδοξον. Thus there result definite conditions for how λόγος itself must be with respect to its exhibiting-character, its concreteness. It must be able to show this everydayness, must be able to exhibit simply, without complexity, in such a way that it does not require more detailed arguments: (1) through a definite type of “leading-up,” ἐπαγωγή; (2) insofar as something is spoken of and a conviction is supposed to result from it, συλλογισμός must be a sharpened form of inferring,86 since the hearer to whom one speaks in the public assembly is “simple,” ἁπλοῦς.87 He cannot “follow a long chain of inference”; he has short-winded thinking; he cannot piece together a connection of thoughts reaching very far; he cannot “piece together very much,”88 and therefore the type of exhibiting must also be something different: ἐνθύμημα, such that the proof is taken more to heart for him.
83. Rhet. Α 3, 1359 a 22 sq.: δῆλον ὅτι δέοι ἂν καὶ περὶ μεγέθους καὶ μικρότητος καὶ τοῦ μείζονος καὶ τοῦ ἐλάττονος προτάσεις ἔχειν.
84. Rhet. Α 3, 1359 a 14 sq.: ἀναγκαῖον [ . . . ] ἔχειν προτάσεις περὶ δυνατοῦ καὶ ἀδυνάτου.
85. Rhet. Α 2, 1357 a 13 sqq.: ἀναγκαῖον τό τε ἐνθύμημα εἶναι καὶ τὸ παράδειγμα περί τε τῶν ἐνδεχομένων ὡς τὰ πολλὰ ἔχειν ἄλλως.
86. Rhet. Α 2, 1357 a 15 sqq.: τὸ μὲν παράδειγμα ἐπαγωγὴν τὸ δ’ ἐνθύμημα συλλογισμόν, καὶ ἐξ ὀλίγων τε καὶ πολλάκις ἐλαττόνων ἢ ἐξ ὧν ὁ πρῶτος συλλογισμός.
87. Rhet. Α 2, 1357 a 12.
88. Rhet. Α 2, 1357 a 3 sq.: οὐ δύνανται διὰ πολλῶν συνορᾶν οὐδὲ λογίζεσθαι πόρρωθεν.