Aristotelian rhetoric also advocates the mastery of rhetorical means towards persuasion. The second comparison looks at the relationship between essence, category, and ethics in rhetorical traditions. While the cosmological assumptions in Chinese and Western rhetorics are different, the concentration of discussion on this issue is the same. Both Confucius and Mencius understand the rhetorical being as a moral self, thus word and thinking and ethics are inseparable. The same issue was debated in ancient Greco-Roman rhetoric between Plato and the Sophists.
Roman rhetorics are especially concerned with rounded development of self.
This essay points out that the highly dialectical rhetoric of the ancient Greek tradition is probably comparable to the rhetoric of KungSunlung. The essay then moves on to Taoist rhetoric of Lao Tze and Chuang Tze to observe the relationship between cosmology and logos. The paper concludes by identifying the implications of such comparative studies of rhetorical traditions for biblical studies. It is argued that biblical rhetoric, though influenced by Greco and Jewish rhetorics, is unique by itself. Biblical rhetoric is concerned with persuasion in proclamation and not in a dialectical proof.