is largely a reflection of disciplinary divisions, dating back to Peter Ramus' attacks on Aristotelian rhetoric in the late 16th century and continuing to the present.

Like the other works of Aristotle that have survived from antiquity, the Rhetoric seems not to have been intended for publication, being instead a collection of his students' notes in response to his lectures. The treatise shows the development of Aristotle's thought through two different periods while he was in Athens,