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Wellsprings
rhetoric

Stasis (Rhetorical Issue-Theory)

στάσις

The advocate's first move: pinpointing the exact issue a dispute really turns on.

Stasis-theory teaches a speaker to locate the precise crux of a case before arguing it. Did the act occur (fact/conjecture)? What should it be called (definition)? Was it justified (quality)? Or should this court even hear it (jurisdiction/objection)? Hermagoras of Temnos developed the system in the 2nd century BCE; it passed into Latin through Cicero and the Rhetorica ad Herennium as the doctrine of status, and was later refined by Hermogenes and Quintilian. It remained the standard method of legal and argumentative analysis for centuries.

Where this idea shows up

7 Greek sources

Where to read it