Aristotle's Rhetoric

Aristotle seems to have a love hate relationship with rhetoric. He believes that it should be used only for good, and never for bad. For example, in the text, he talks about trials and how lawyers use rhetoric to sway the judge to let guilty people walk free. He does not think rhetoric should be used to twist the truth and convince people of falsehoods. He thinks it should be used as an art form of oratory which he puts into three groups: political, forensic, and ceremonial. As mentioned before, forensic involves things like trials where rhetoric should be used to speak truth, not twist it into something to convince people otherwise. Political rhetoric either convinces us to do or not do something. Finally ceremonial rhetoric deals with the present and finds it useful to bring up the past and guess the future.

In class we also spoke about syllogism, enthymemes, and their relationship to rhetoric. Syllogism boils down to the simple mathematical principle called the transitive property. Basically, if a = b, and b = c, then a = c. Again, the example we spoke of in class was "If Plato is a man, and man is mortal, then Plato is mortal." If we used the transitive property in this example it would be Plato = man, man = mortal, Plato = mortal. The difference between this and an enthymeme is the middle step, or b = c. You then must assume that fact to come to a conclusion. With the math example that is easy, if a = b and a = c, then obviously b = c for that to work. When it comes to actual English phrases, it becomes harder to determine the connecting principle.

So how is an enthymeme like rhetoric? It is not a clear cut process like a syllogism, we know this because people use rhetoric to twist the truth, like people defending convicted murderers. They essentially insert their own connecting step to make their enthymeme a false syllogism. But when rhetoric is used for good, the connecting step can be the correct statement, or one that is appealing to the audience. The audience appeal can come in three flavors: logos, pathos, and ethos.

Logos is essentially logic. A professor uses logos to convey information that the student can then interpret and understand. Pathos deals with emotion, so when used in rhetoric it appeals to the audiences emotions, whether it is negative or positive. For example a story or movie may make you cry, which is playing off your emotions. The same for if you were to laugh. Finally, ethos deals with the moral side of rhetoric. A speakers character and moral is an example of ethos. John Leopold says "The personality of the orator outweighs the issues."