Class 5 - On the art of rhetoric

Welcome back

Welcome back from your break! In this session, we’re going to be looking at the arts of rhetoric. You have already read the extract from Aristotle’s Rhetoric, but we’re going to read it again in class together.

But before we start, we should try and define rhetoric and say what it is. When talking about the arts of argument, we mauy often think about formal arguments — about premises and conclusions and logic and so on. In the ancient Greek world, this kind of exploration of argument was called dialectic. Literally this means the art of investigating or discussing the truth of opinions, whether these are our own opinions or the opinions of others. Think about the back-and-forth argumentation that Socrates engages in.

But for the Greek philosopher Aristotle, dialectic is only part of the story when it comes to the arts of argument. The other part of the story, that runs in parallel with dialectic, is rhetoric.

So what is rhetoric? For Aristotle, it is a techē or a skill in how we make use of human speech. Aristotle says that rhetoric is “a capacity to get a theoretical grasp on what is possibly persuasive in each case.” It’s about how we talk people round to our view.

For Aristotle rhetoric and dialectic are counterparts. He says this at the very beginning of his book on rhetoric. You can imagine them both I like the two wheels of a bicycle. You can get where you want to go on a one wheeled bicycle, or a unicycle, but it is difficult and demanding and you have no guarantee you will arrive. But if you have both wheels, then you are going to get where you want to go much more easily, and with far less risk of falling off or having an accident.

The arts of argument are the same as this. You can rely only on dialectic, and this might get you where you want to go, but it’s going to make things difficult. And you can rely only on rhetoric, and similarly this might get you where you want to go, but again the journey is going to be much more difficult. However, if you rely on both then your argument is a much more stable and reliable vehicle

To today we are going to be looking at this by exploring the work of arstitotle. And we’re going to explore one significant rhetorical moment in the history of the 20th century.

So let’s start with the philosopher who some say is the father of rhetoric. And that is Aristotle.

Shared reading

We’re going to share the reading of part of Aristotle’s Rhetoric 1.2, reading from page 5 of our shared text.

Discussion

To get us started, I’m going to get you to discuss the following questions:

• What is the function of rhetoric?
• Why is rhetoric like a craft?
• What are the three kinds of persuasion, and how do they differ?

We’ll talk about this in the larger group.

Break

Rhetoric in Action

In Greek, Aristotle uses three terms to talk about these forms of persuasion.

• logos is persuasion by means of the argument itself
• pathos is persuasion through disposing the listener in some way, through affecting them emotionally
• ethos is persuasion through the character of the speaker, in other words, through building trust. Now we’re going to look at one of the most famous speeches of the 20th century, the speech by Martin Luther King delivered on 28th August 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial. I’m going to get you to listen through the text for five minutes:

https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm

You can read along as well. We’re going to listen up to the point 5 minutes 25 seconds in, where MLK says “Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.”

Now I want you to discuss this in groups.

• How does MLK use logos (logical validity) to make his arguments?
• How does he use ethos (trust-building)?
• How does he use pathos (provoking emotion)?

Homework

Next time, we are going to try some experiments in rhetoric. So we are going to use Aristotle as a road-map for preparing mini-speeches. I’m going to give you five titles.

1. Why cats are better than dogs (or vice versa)
2. Social media leads to social decay.
3. We need to stop thinking about happiness, and start thinking about justice.
4. Boredom is good.
5. Rhetoric undermines political discourse.

Think about which of these you are most interested in talking about. Then some initial research into the topic, and think about how you might persuade others of your view. There’s no need to note anything down on Canvas this time around! We’re going to play with this next time, and do some mini-speeches, using the arts of rhetoric from Aristotle.