Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Rhetoric
Persuasion has three modes — through character (ethos), through emotion (pathos), and through reasoning (logos) — and the Rhetoric analyses each in systematic detail
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Rhetoric (Mature) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Both |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | None |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Reason |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Rhetoric
The temporal unfolding of the speech — beginning, middle, end — and the temporal occasion in which it operates.
Space
Rhetoric
The space of political-rhetorical performance: the assembly, the law court, the ceremonial occasion.
Matter
Rhetoric
The embodied speaker, audience, and the material content of the speech; embodied emotion as the matter of pathos.
Observer
Rhetoric
The audience whose conviction is the goal; the orator whose performance produces it; the philosophical theorist (Aristotle) who analyses the practice.
Energy
Rhetoric
The emotional and intellectual energies that the speech mobilises in the audience.
Information
Rhetoric
The discrete content of arguments, the structured emotional appeals, the catalogue of rhetorical techniques.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The Rhetoric's status as a work of philosophy versus a work of rhetorical training has been debated since antiquity. Modern interpretations (Rorty, Garver, Halliwell) have recovered the philosophical depth of the work — particularly the moral-psychological material — against earlier dismissive readings that treated it as a manual.