This week we went to a lecture about Aristotle from Kevin O’Neill. Aristotle was a student of Plato, but branched away from him when it came to the power of rhetoric. Where Plato believed that rhetoric should not be involved in discourse, that fact and truth only should be used, Aristotle believed in it and its power to persuade. O’Neill mentioned that this might have been because to be someone of importance in Greece at the time, one had to be a skilled speaker, as that was a good piece of one’s public life. There were three types of public arguments or speeches: the deliberative, which was used to argue a future prospect; judicial, which was used in the past tense and also to defend oneself or accuse or defend someone else; and the epideictic, which tried to convince others that someone’s actions were either praiseworthy or shameful, depending. The object wasn’t necessarily to be right; it was whether or not one could skillfully argue their case and turn their audience to their way of thinking.
Aristotle believed that there were three means of persuasion. There was ethos, the appeal to the character of the listener or a confirmation of the character of the speaker, pathos, an appeal to the listener’s emotions, and logos, which was an appeal to the listener’s rational thought. Good arguments use at least two of these elements. Personally, I believe that the argument that would work the best would be appealing to the listener’s emotions. When a person – or even better, a group of people – has their emotions roused in your favor, they are more likely to see things your way. They might not agree once they calm down, but if all you need is to get a vote, then whether or not they agree when it is over doesn’t really matter. It may be a manipulative way to look at things, but to my mind, rhetoric is nothing more than a manipulation of words to get a desired outcome
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