English 505
Rhetorical Theory
Session Four Notes
Goals/Objectives:
1) To begin to understand Aristotle’s basic understanding of Rhetoric
2) To begin to examine Aristotle’s viewpoint on Ethos and Pathos
3) To begin to understand the nature of Aristotle’s Proofs
4) To begin to understand Aristotle’s beliefs about Character
5) To begin to understand Aristotle’s beliefs about Probability
6) To begin to understand Aristotle’s beliefs about Reasoning, especially about the Enthymeme
Aristotle
Questions/Main Ideas
(Please write these down as
The son of the court physician of Macedonia to the north of Greece
you think of them)
As such, he was trained as a field biologist
Expert at observation
Aristotle
Observed and described all living and non-living things
And classifying such data for the use of others
Unlike modern scientists, his investigations were not limited to botany or zoology
Aristotle
Instead, he took the whole Greek world as his laboratory
Thus, we find works from Aristotle on law, political science, ethics, drama, etc.
Aristotle
He probably wouldn’t have seen the same distinctions we see
Every subject to which Athenians turned their attention to received his diligent attention
Aristotle
Among these was rhetoric
Earlier works on rhetoric, A maintained, dealt only with part of the field
They concerned themselves with irrelevant appeals to the emotions of a jury
Aristotle
While neglecting reason in public discourse
They (the Sophists) prescribed how a speech should be organized but ignored the speaker’s
role in creating proof
Aristotle
Rhetoric, in A’s opinion, has an important four-fold function:
1. To uphold truth and justice and play down their opposites
Aristotle
2. To teach in a way suitable to a popular audience
3. To analyze both sides of a question
4. To enable one to defend oneself
Aristotle
Viewed from this perspective, rhetoric is a moral but practical art grounded in probability
or the contingent nature of things
Aristotle
A’s analytical approach to rhetoric is most apparent in his definition of the term:
“The faculty of discovering in every case the available means of persuasion”
Aristotle
It is not enough that a speaker conceive of a single approach to persuasion
He must examine all means available
Aristotle
Only then would he be likely to choose the best course of action
(Rather than simply that which first comes to mind)
(Sorry Gorgias )
Aristotle
Although they weren’t codified in a systematic way until much later, the Greeks discussed
each of the canons at various times
Ethos and Pathos
Five canons of rhetoric
1. Invention
2. Arrangement
3. Style
4. Delivery
5. Memory
Ethos and Pathos
Invention concerns:
Finding and developing the subject of rhetoric
Identifying the issues involved
Creating arguments in support of the rhetor’s position
Finding proof to support this position
Ethos and Pathos
Generally, invention is divided up into three areas:
Stasis – The search for issues
Proof – The support for claims
Topoi – Common arguments the rhetor can summon in different situations
Ethos and Pathos
We’ll look at the ideas of stasis and topoi later
Before we look at proof, though, let’s consider the following questions:
Ethos and Pathos
What does the word “character” mean to you?
Where does “character” come from?
What role should it play in rhetoric?
Ethos and Pathos
Proof: rhetoric examines persuasion and persuasion must convince its listeners
Thus persuasion must use demonstrations, or proof
Ethos and Pathos
Aristotle apparently believed that those interested in persuasion must make ‘proof’ a part of
their lifestyle
Aristotle further divides proof into two categories: Atechnic (inartistic) and Entechnic
(artistic)
Ethos and Pathos
One must use the former to invent the latter
In other words, Atechnic (inartistic) proof is given by the situation and can only be used by
the rhetor, not created by the rhetor
Ethos and Pathos
The rhetor can, however, generate three additional kinds of (Entechnic; artistic) proof
Ethos – the character of the speaker
Pathos – emotions
Logos – the argument itself
Ethos
Ethos is very important because audiences judge not only the argument presented, but the
speaker as well
Felt that ethos always manifests itself to listeners or readers, whether a rhetor is aware or
not
Ethos
These are proofs that rely on a rhetor’s personality or reputation
Character (for ancient Greeks): the pattern of behavior or personality found in an individual
or group
Moral strength
Ethos
Self-discipline
Fortitude
A good reputation
Some Greeks felt that a rhetor’s ability to persuade was connected to his or her moral habits
Ethos
Character could be invented by means of habitual practice
But, it also referred to a community’s assessment of a person’s habitual practices
Ethos
Thus, a person’s individual character had as much to do with the community’s perception of
his actions as it did with actual behavior
We tend to think of character as being fairly stable
Ethos
They thought of character as being constructed not by what happened to the person but by
the moral practices in which they habitually engaged
Thus, ethos was not finally given by nature
Ethos
But was developed by habit (hexis)
It was important, therefore, for parents and teachers not only to provide children with
examples of good behavior
Ethos
But to insist that young persons practice habits that imprinted their characters with virtues
rather than vices
Since they considered characters to be shaped by practices, it was malleable
Ethos
(Within limits) one could become any sort of person he or she wished to be
Simply by engaging in the practices that produced that sort of character
Ethos
It followed then that playing the roles of respectable characters enhanced one’s chances of
developing a respectable character
Ethos
The upshot: Aristotle was not so concerned about the way that rhetors lived as he was about
the appearance of character that a rhetor presented in his or her discourse
(Sorry Plato )
Ethos
Aristotle recognized two kinds of ethical proof: invented and situated
Invented ethos – rhetors can invent a character suitable to an occasion
Ethos
Especially important with big audiences who would naturally not know the rhetor
personally
The rhetor must construct a character for themselves
Ethos
For A, this was especially important where the facts or arguments were in doubt
People, he felt, tend to believe rhetors who either have a reputation for fair-mindedness
Ethos
Or who create an ethos that makes them seem fair-minded
Three qualities are necessary:
Phronesis – practical wisdom
They must seem to be intelligent by demonstrating the they are well-informed about issues
Ethos
Arete –virtue
They must be of good moral character
They can project this image by describing themselves or others as moral persons
Ethos
Can refrain from the use of misleading or fallacious arguments
Eunoia – good will
They must possess good will toward their audiences
Ethos
They can do this by presenting the information and arguments that audiences require in
order to understand the rhetorical situation
Ethos
So how can you demonstrate intelligence?
You can:
Use language that suggests that you are an “insider”
Describe your qualifications
Ethos
Share an anecdote that indicates that you have experience or knowledge in a particular area
Ethos
How can you establish good character?
You can:
Weaken charges or suspicions that have been cast on your character
Ethos
Cite approval of your character from respected authorities (kind of like a letter of
reference)
Refrain from the use of unfair discursive tactics (faulty reasoning, non-representative
evidence, threats, name-calling)
Ethos
How can you establish good will?
You can:
Carefully consider what listeners need to know about the issue at hand
Ethos
Supply any necessary information that audiences might not have at hand, but not too much
(think movie review)
Voice also plays a role
Ethos
A rhetor can use certain stylistic choices that narrow or widen the rhetorical distance
between themselves and their audiences
Grammatical person: I vs. she/he/it
Present tense vs. past tense
Ethos
Qualifiers: some, most, virtually
Situated Ethos
Rhetoric is embedded in social context
Distance: the relative social standing of participants can affect a rhetor’s persuasiveness
Ethos
Power:
Who controls channels of communication
Influences over sources of information
Access to powerful people
Ethos
Charisma
How well do the people in the rhetorical situation like each other?
Aristotle also saw three possible ways in which rhetors could make ethical mistakes
Ethos
1. They could be so inexperienced or so uninformed that they simply don’t draw the right
conclusions
Ethos
2. Even though they may know the right answer, they may hide it from audiences because of
some character flaw
3. They may not care about the people they represent, so they don’t give good advice
Pathos
Before we turn to pathos, let’s consider the following questions:
What does the word “emotion” mean to you?
What role should “emotion” play in rhetoric?
Pathos
For ancient Greeks, pathos meant “emotion”
But also “suffering” and “experience”
Reason was associated with the mind
Emotions with the body
Pathos
Aristotle believed that a speaker should know about his or her audience so as to effectively
use an appeal to emotion
Instead of knowing an abstract idea such as the “soul”
Pathos
A believed that effective speakers understood the audience’s “emotions”
This is based, however, on the assumption that human beings share similar kinds of
emotional responses to events
Pathos
For examples – mothers and fathers weep for lost sons/daughters
There is the implicit assumption that people who live in the same community share similar
emotional responses
Pathos
Therefore, he treated emotions as a way of knowing
It can therefore be associated with intellectual processes rather than with bodily responses
IOW, emotions hold heuristic potential (helps you discover)
Pathos
Aristotle believed that when people experience emotions such as anger, pity or fear, they
enter new states of mind in which they see things differently
(seeing something in a new light)
Pathos
Emotions, however, should not be confused with “appetites” (pleasure/pain) or “virtues”
(justice/goodness)
Pathos
Aristotle argued that three questions regarding the emotions must be answered:
1. What is their state of mind?
Audiences bring certain emotional states of mind to a rhetorical situation
Pathos
Rhetors need to decide whether this state of mind is conducive to the acceptance of their
proposition
If not, need to change the state of mind first
Pathos
2. Against whom are the emotions directed?
Who can excite these emotions?
3. For what reasons do people feel the way they do?
Who/what made you angry
Pathos
Aristotle felt that without knowing all three of these things, it would be impossible to
connect emotionally with the audience
To compose pathetic proofs, you can use:
Pathos
Enargeia: rhetors picture events so vividly that they seem to actually be taking place before
the audience’s eyes
Emotion-laden words (patriot)
Honorific language (gutsy)
Pejorative language (flawed)
Logos Revisited
Aristotle taught that in each case of reasoning, the arguer began with a statement called a
premise
Premises were then combined with other premises in order to reach a conclusion
Logos Revisited
Arguers can insure that their arguments are valid (that is, correctly reasoned), if they observe
formal rules or arrangements of the premises
Logos Revisited
Conclusions reached by this means or reasoning are only true if their premises are true
In scientific demonstration, the premises of scientific argument must be able to command
belief without further support
Logos Revisited
In dialectal reasoning, the arguers are less certain about the truth of the premises:
The premises are accepted by the majority of people
Logos Revisited
Or by those that are supposed to be especially wise
In rhetorical reasoning, premises are drawn from beliefs accepted by all, or most, members
of a community
Logos Revisited
Many rhetorical premises are so taken for granted that they are not articulated very often
These are referred to as “commonplaces”
Logos Revisited
The difference then between scientific, dialectal, and rhetorical premises is not the external
criterion for truth
But rather the degree of belief awarded to them by the people who are arguing about them
Logos Revisited
Greek rhetoricians called any kind of statement which predicts something about human
behavior a statement of probability (eikos)
Probabilities are not as reliable as certainties
Logos Revisited
But they are more reliable than chance
They differ from mathematical probabilities in that they are both:
(a) more predictable and
(b) less easy to calculate
Logos Revisited
For example:
Compare the relative probability that you will:
(1) draw a winning poker hand
Logos Revisited
(2) to the relative probability that your parent, spouse, significant other will be upset if you
come home extremely late
The chances of drawing a winning hand are remote, but mathematically calculable
Logos Revisited
The chances that parents, spouse, significant other will be upset if you come home very late
are relatively greater than drawing a winning poker hand
But they can’t be calculated
(too many variables)
Logos Revisited
The reason for the relative certainty of statements about probable human action is that
human behavior in general is predictable to some extent
Logos Revisited
Since rhetorical statements of probability represent the common opinion of humankind, we
ought to place a certain degree of trust in them
Thus, statements of probability are pieces of knowledge
Logos Revisited
As such, they are suitable premises for rhetorical proofs
For Aristotle, argument took place in language
Arguers placed premises in sequence in order to determine what could be learned
Logos Revisited
Aristotle taught his students how to reason from knowledge which was already given to that
which needed to be discovered
Thus, people who wish to discover knowledge in any field did so by placing premises in
useful relation to one another
Logos Revisited
Deduction (or reasoning) he called syllagismos (syllogisms)–
A discussion in which certain things having been laid down
Something other than these things necessarily result through them
Logos Revisited
A famous example:
All people are mortal
Socrates is a person
Therefore, Socrates is mortal
Logos Revisited
The first statement is a general premise accepted by everyone
This is called the major premise
The second statement is a particular premise accepted by everyone
Logos Revisited
This premise is particular because it refers to only one person out of a class of people
This is called the minor premise
The reasoner has moved from a generalization to statements concerning a particular person
Logos Revisited
Aristotle assumed that premises did two kinds of work:
(1) they named classes of things
(2) and they named particulars
A class was anything grouped together because of a certain likeness or common traits
Logos Revisited
Syllogisms worked in classical logic because they thought that the relations between classes
and particulars were a fundamental element of human thinking
Logos Revisited
When scientists make classes or categories, they like to know that it contains all the
members of the class completely
Rhetors were not so concerned that the members of a class be completely enumerated
Logos Revisited
This is because rhetorical classes are intended to be persuasive rather than mathematical
Inductive reasoning goes in the opposite direction – from particulars to universals
Logos Revisited
The skilled pilot is the best pilot
The skilled charioteer is the best charioteer
Therefore, the skilled man is the best man in any particular sphere
Logos Revisited
Using this logic, Aristotle invented four types of reasoning:
1) Examples – paradeigma “model”
A rhetorical example is any particular which can be fitted under the heading of a class
Logos Revisited
It represents the distinguishing features of that class
Rhetorical examples are persuasive because they are specific
As such, they call up vivid memories of something the audience has experienced
Logos Revisited
This effect works especially well if the rhetor gives details which:
Evoke sensory impressions
Mention familiar sights
Use sounds, smells, tastes or tactile sensations
Logos Revisited
Such as:
Historical examples
Fictional examples
Analogies
Logos Revisited
2) Maxims
Wise sayings or proverbs which are generally accepted by the rhetor’s community
Ancient maxims were often drawn from poetry or history
Logos Revisited
Since, in ancient times, literacy was not widespread, much of the popular wisdom was
contained in oral sayings
Logos Revisited
3) Signs
Physical facts or real events, which usually accompany some other state of affairs
For example, if someone has a fever, this is a sign of illness
Logos Revisited
If someone bears a scar, this is a sign of a previous injury
If the relationship between the sign and the inferred state of affairs always exists, we have
what Aristotle called an infallible sign (tekmerion)
Logos Revisited
But not all signs are infallible signs
Like examples, signs can be effective if they appeal to the daily experiences that we share
with members of the audience
So the trick seemed to be to argue that the sign was infallible
Logos Revisited
4) Enthymemes
In dialectic and science, deductive arguments are called syllogisms
In rhetoric, enthymemes
Logos Revisited
The Aristotelian distinction seems largely to be one of context
In the case of syllogism - Tightly reasoned philosophical discourse
In the case of the enthymeme - Popular speech or writing with resulting informality in the
expression of argument
Logos Revisited
Derived from the word thymos “spirit” – the capacity whereby people think and feel
Ancient Greeks located the thymos in the midsection of the body
Logos Revisited
Quite literally, an enthymematic proof was supposed to grab you in the gut
Generally, major enthymematic premises represent commonsense beliefs about the way
people behave
Logos Revisited
Rhetors ordinarily use some widely held community belief as the major premise of their
argument
Then they apply that premise to the particular case in which they are interested
Logos Revisited
An enthymeme is a type of syllogism produced in the interaction between speaker and
audience
The audience supplies, through its own base of information, statements that help form a
speaker’s syllogism
Logos Revisited
In other words, when people use rhetoric, they don’t speak in tightly argued syllogisms
Instead, they rely on the audience to provide some of the proof for what the speaker is saying
Logos Revisited
The major premises of enthymemes are probabilities concerning human action
(rather than certainties as in scientific demonstration)
Logos Revisited
An example:
Major premise: racist slurs directed against innocent people are offensive and out to be
punished
(notice here that not all people believe this)
Logos Revisited
Minor premise: John stood outside the library and shouted racist epithets at people who
passed by
Conclusion: John engaged in offensive behavior and ought to be punished
Logos Revisited
The major premise is a rhetorical probability, since it is not certain that everyone is offended
by the use of racist slurs
The rhetor counts on the fact that most people accept this premise
Logos Revisited
The enthymeme depends for its impact, therefore, on a number of community
commonplaces and attitudes
Enthymemes are powerful because they are based in community beliefs
Logos Revisited
“Members of the media should be objective”
“In America, if you work hard, you’ll get ahead and make a good living”
“We need nuclear weapons to prevent war”
Logos Revisited
“The United States must occasionally intervene in various parts of the world with military
power to stop communism and promote democracy”
Logos Revisited
Because they are powerful, whether the reasoning is sound or not often makes little
difference to the community’s acceptance of the argument
Enthymemes work when listeners participate in constructing the argument
Logos Revisited
That is, if their prior knowledge is part of the argument, they are inclined to accept the
entire argument if they are willing to accept the rhetor’s use of their common, prior
knowledge
Logos Revisited
For this reason, enthymematic arguments do not always have to be spelled out completely
The rhetor may actually purposefully omit premises or even conclusions
They audience may actually enjoy supplying the missing premises
Logos Revisited
They may even be more readily persuaded by the argument if they have participated in its
construction
In modern times, the enthymeme is an abbreviated syllogism
Logos Revisited
That is, an argumentative statement that contains a conclusion and one of the premises, the
second premise being implied
Logos Revisited
The essential difference is that the syllogism leads to a necessary conclusion from
universally true premises
But the enthymeme leads to a tentative conclusion from probable premises
Logos Revisited
An example:
“John will fail his examination because he hasn’t studied”
What is the major premise that is implied?
“People who don’t study fail examinations”
Logos Revisited
Notice that this is only probable
You can pass an examination without studying
(I don’t recommend this method, however)
Logos Revisited
How about these? What is the missing premise?
“He must be a socialist because he advocates civil rights for minority groups”
“He couldn’t have killed his mother. He loved her.”
Logos Revisited
An actual example:
“Much as he tried to obscure it, on issue after issue, my opponent showed why he earned the
ranking of the most liberal member of the U. S. Senate”
George W. Bush (2004)
Questions?
What is the unstated generalization?
What is the unstated conclusion?
Summary/Minute Paper: