Aristotle's Three Modes
of Persuasion in Rhetoric

Persuasion is clearly a sort of demonstration,
since we are most fully persuaded when we
consider a thing to have been demonstrated

Of the modes of persuasion furnished
by the spoken word there are three kinds. [...]

Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character
when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. [...]

Secondly, persuasion may come through the hearers,
when the speech stirs their emotions. [...]

Thirdly, persuasion is effected through the speech itself
when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means
of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question.

---- ARISTOTLE, "Rhetoric", 350 BCE





INTRODUCTION

Rhetoric is one of the arts of using language as a means to persuade. Along with grammar and logic or dialectic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse From ancient Greece to the late 19th Century, it was a central part of Western education, filling the need to train public speakers and writers to move audiences to action with arguments. The very act of defining has itself been a central part of rhetoric, appearing among Aristotle's Topics. The word is derived from the Greek (rhetorikós), "oratorical", from "public speaker", related to "that which is said or spoken, word, saying", and ultimately derived from the verb "to speak, say". In its broadest sense, rhetoric concerns human discourse.

In medieval universities, the trivium comprised the three subjects taught first: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The word is a Latin term meaning "the three ways" or "the three roads" forming the foundation of a medieval liberal arts education. This study was preparatory for the quadrivium. The quadrivium comprised the four subjects, or arts, taught in medieval universities after the trivium. The word is Latin, meaning "the four ways" or "the four roads": the completion of the liberal arts. The quadrivium consisted of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. These followed the preparatory work of the trivium made up of grammar, logic (or dialectic, as it was called at the times), and rhetoric. In turn, the quadrivium was considered preparatory work for the serious study of philosophy and theology.

Grammar is the mechanics of a language; logic (or dialectic) is the "mechanics" of thought and analysis; rhetoric is the use of language to instruct and persuade. Sister Miriam Joseph described the three parts of the Trivium thus:

Logic is the art of thinking; grammar, the art of inventing symbols and combining them to express thought; and rhetoric, the art of communicating thought from one mind to another, the adaptation of language to circumstance.

Another description is:

Logic is concerned with the thing as-it-is-known,
Grammar is concerned with the thing-as-it-is-symbolized, and
Rhetoric is concerned with the thing-as-it-is-communicated.

The study of logic, grammar and rhetoric was considered preparatory for the quadrivium, which was made up of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. The trivium was the beginning of the liberal arts. At many medieval universities this would have been the principal undergraduate course. However, the contrast between the simpler trivium and more difficult quadrivium gave rise to the word "trivial".

The following schematic presents the arrangements of this system of educational disciplines, and shows how Aristotle's Three Modes of Persuasion in Rhetoric fit into the bigger picture.

Schematic The Education System derived from Antiquity The three basic elements of the "Trivium" -- Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric -- (rhetoric being further sub-classified into Ethos, Pathos and Logos) are the prerequisites for the four subjects of the Quadrivium - Arithetic, Geometry, Music and Astronomy. These become the preparatory for the "serious Higher education" involving Philosophy and Theology.





The Three Modes of Persuasion in Rhetoric:
Ethos, Pathos and Logos




Aristotle's Three Modes of Persuasion in Rhetoric
Ethos	Appeal to the audience's sense of honesty and/or authority
Pathos	Appeal to the audience's sense of emotions
Logos	Appeal to the audience's sense of logic





(1) Ethos

	Ethos is a Greek word originally meaning "accustomed place", "custom, habit", equivalent to Latin mores.

	Ethos forms the root of ethikos, meaning "moral, showing moral character".
	To the Greeks ancient and modern, the meaning is simply "the state of being",
	the inner source, the soul, the mind, and the original essence, that
	shapes and forms a person or animal.

	Ethos is an appeal to the authority or honesty of the speaker.
	It is how well the speaker convinces the audience that he or she
	is qualified to speak on the particular subject. It can be done
	in many ways:

		By being a notable figure in the field in question, such as a college professor
		or an executive of a company whose business is that of the subject.
		By having a vested interest in a matter, such as the person being related to the subject in question.
		By using impressive logos that shows to the audience that the speaker is knowledgeable on the topic.
		By appealing to a person's ethics or character.

(2) Pathos

	Pathos is one of the three modes of persuasion in rhetoric (along with ethos and logos).
	Pathos appeals to the audience's emotions.
	It is a part of Aristotle's philosophies in rhetoric.

	It is not to be confused with 'bathos',
	which is an attempt to perform in a serious,
	dramatic fashion that fails
	and ends up becoming comedy.

	Pathetic events in a plot are also not to be confused with tragic events.
	In a tragedy, the character brings about his or her own demise, whereas
	those invoking pathos often occur to innocent characters, invoking
	unmerited grief.

	Emotional appeal can be accomplished in a multitude of ways:
	by a metaphor or story telling, common as a hook,
	by a general passion in the delivery and an overall number
	of emotional items in the text of the speech, or in writing.

	Pathos is an appeal to the audience’s ethical judgment.
	It can be in the form of metaphor, simile, a passionate delivery,
	or even a simple claim that a matter is unjust.
	Pathos can be particularly powerful if used well, but most speeches
	do not solely rely on pathos. Pathos is most effective when the author
	connects with an underlying value of the reader.

(3) Logos

	Logos is an important term in philosophy, analytical psychology, rhetoric and religion.

	Heraclitus (ca. 535–475 BCE) established the term in Western philosophy as meaning both
	the source and fundamental order of the cosmos. The sophists used the term to mean discourse,
	and Aristotle applied the term to rational discourse. The Stoic philosophers identified
	the term with the divine animating principle pervading the universe. After Judaism came
	under Hellenistic influence, Philo adopted the term into Jewish philosophy.


	Logos is logical appeal, and the term logic is derived from it.
	It is normally used to describe facts and figures that support the speaker's topic.

ETHICS and the BIBLE

Are There Ethics in the Hebrew Bible?
By Emeritus Professor Philip Davies
University Of Sheffield, England
September 2009
"I repeatedly hear advocates of religion asserting
that it is religion that gives humans ethics that bestow value
on human life. I have rarely heard anything so ridiculous in my life.
So let’s look at ethics in the (Hebrew) Bible.

From Aristotle we have learnt that there are three modes
of persuasion in rhetoric - ethos, pathos and logos. We
are all very much aware there is zero or little logic in
the bible, and here is it quite clear that there is zero
ethos.

That basically implies that the persuasiveness of the bible
is surely fair and square founded on pathos --- a direct
appeal to the emotions of the (uneducated) audience.

What a pathetic state of affairs. The authors of the NT
appear to have created a new and strange religion using
persuasion via pathos.

"Ethics is not one of religion’s gifts to humanity, and
the Bible cannot serve a modern democracy as a moral guide
unless of course we decide ourselves, on or own ethical principles,
which bits of it we will follow and which ones we will not.
Come to think of it, though, isn’t this really what most of
its believers actually do? So why not come clean and stop
pretending that our Western culture is built on biblical values:
for, thank god, it isn’t!"

CONSTANTINE's BIBLE

The New Testament is a collage of wisdom literature spun into the accounts of four unsigned and undated obituaries and was commissioned by Constantine to be fabricated from the extant milieu of literature which he found in the libraries of Rome, and the empire, when he liberated that city from its senate c.312 CE.

. The religious authority in the empire at that time, and for centuries prior to the arrival of Constantine and his Bible, was associated with the lineage of various schools and academies which used - in a collegiate and custodial manner - the vast architectural networks of temples and shrines to preserve the milieu of Greek religious thought. Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Euclid and many others were still being preserved by the Greek academics - such as Porphyry, at that epoch. A revival in Greek literature, starting as early as the mid second century with Marcus Aurelius had strengthened in the third century under authors such as Philostratus, is known to academics as "The Second Sophistic"

Constantine culminated the Second Sophistic with the commissioning of an official monotheistic Holy Writ which was called "The New Testament". All other writings were deemed secondary in importantance and relative merit, and many were targetted for destruction by fire by Constantine, who was not averse to fascism.

As a result of these political actions, the New Testament was elevated to the uppermost limits of the political and religious milieu at that epoch. The fascist tendencies of Constantine continue unabatedly to destroy the ancient temples and shrines of the Greeks one by one, and the construction one by one of new Christian churches - or basilicas - overe the top of these sure greek foundations. The City of Alexandria, once supreme in the sphere of architecture, art, scupture, literature, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, etc, was literally recycled to become the City of Constantine.

THE GNOSTIC "BOOKS" of the BIBLE

We present elsewhere an argument that the Gnostic books of the bible did not exist at the time of the Council of Nicaea. At this time Constantine was defending the New Testament Canon with the sword, and the Three Hundred and Eighteen Fathers submitted to his strength. Only three renegades refused to submit to this "Holy Writ". One of these three people was the logicial and author Arius of Alexandria.

Contrary to the written accounts of the heresiologists (such as Eusebius, Jerome, Augustine, Rufinus, Cyril et al) it is suggested that there were no "christian heretics" before Nicaea because Christianity - in the form of the New Testament Canon - was only recently fabricated, perhaps between the years 312 and 324 CE. For the sake of the following argument, irrespective or not if the new testament was fabricated then, it was not at all known by the Greeks. They had never read it.

Out thesis is that the first reaction to the new testament was the authorship of the new testament apocrypha - the "Hidden Gnostic Books" of the bible. Most people think that Constantine decided NOT to include these "Other Gospels", but the argument here is that they did not then exist at the time he assembled the new testament.

The "Other Books" - the "Other Gospels" and "Other Acts" were authored by Gnostic Greeks as ploemical literature aimed at lowering the public opinion and political authority of Constantine's Official Bible.


INDEX | Apollonius of Tyana | Mountain Man dot com