In Aristotle's Rhetoric, logos must be conceived as enthymematical argumentation relative to the issue of the case. Ethos and pathos also can take the form of an enthymeme, but this argumentation doesn't relate (directly) to the issue. In this kind of enthymeme, the conclusion is relative to the ethos of the speaker or (reasons for) the pathos of the audience. In an ideal situation -with a good procedure and rational judges -logos dominates and in the real situation of Aristotle's time -with an imperfect procedure and irrational judges -ethos and pathos prevail.

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Which properties are characteristic of the enthymeme in Aristotle's Rhetoric? There is no consensus on this point. The present discussion centres on three properties. 1. Is there always an implicit premise? (Answer: Above all, a pragmatic level and a logical level must be distinguished.) 2. Do the premises consist by definition of probabilities and signs? (Answer: No.). 3. Are all enthymemes reducible to a syllogistic form? (Answer: The literature pertaining to this question is dominated by a false dilemma: an enthymeme does not have either a topical or a syllogistic structure). In general, Aristotle's approach to the enthymeme in the Rhetoric appears to shift from argumentation theory to logic.

In the present article I attribute to the common topic in the Rhetoric a twofold suggestive function and a guarantee function. These three functions are possible because this type of topic, while often quite abstract, nevertheless contains thoughtsteering, substantial terms, and formulates a generally empirical or normative endoxon. Assuming that according to Aristotle an enthymeme has at least two premises, it would appear that a common topic is the abstract principle behind the often implicit major premise. This means that the topic may be regarded as the -generalizing -if-then statement in a modern argumentation scheme. Therefore it should be possible to see the enthymemes of Rhetoric 2.23 as a combination of a logical argument form (which can usually be reconstructed as modus ponens) and an argumentation scheme -even though we may not attribute this idea to Aristotle himself.

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