Where there are no rules or systems to guide us: Argument from example in a hermeneutic rhetoric

Many rhetoricians treat argument from example as a kind of induction, an illustration of a general principle. Although this is one function of example, consistent with Aristotle's statements about the paradeigma and The New Rhetoric's "argumentation by example," it camouflages the practice of exemplary proof that has contributed to our richest sense of rhetorical understanding. Inductive example allies use (with the principles of theoretical science and contradicts Aristotle's insight that rhetoric functions where rules or systems are wanting. A properly rhetorical understanding of the exemplum does not work through a universal, implicit or otherwise, but follows a sideways movement from particular to particular. This essay traces the alliance of the paradeigma with inductive science to an unstable fault-line in our Aristotelian heritage, then retraces the path of the prudential tradition by following the long and distinguished career of the rhetorical example in the West in order to reclaim this heritage and to challenge the pre-eminence of inductive subsumption.