Response to Aristotle's Rhetoric Book II, Ch. 1-11

The overarching purpose of these blogs still eludes me. They seem to be an informal forum to hash out ideas and practice pathetic techniques, in the hope that they become both more and less...pathetic. But then we are graded on them making them immediately formal - a sort of polished hypothesis. I probably should just read the assignment description again.

As for the purpose of this specific entry, as I began with a frustrated digression, I will track my thoughts on the give-and-take between anger and calm upon the mortal mind.

Relying heavily on pathos, as well as on ethos or logos, can ruin an argument. Aristotle makes this point early in his Rhetoric that you need the correct combination of all three principles to be the most persuasive to your audience, and to inherently, find the truth. So I feel safe in saying putting too much reliance in one, shorts the others.

Anger and calm cannot fully exist in the same mind since "...the frame of mind that makes people calm, it is plainly the opposite to that which makes them angry..." (ch 3, ln ~1380b). So just like moderating ethos, pathos and logos, a rhetor must stray from sole/heavy dependence on one emotion. He suggests this later on in the passage:

"Hence Philocrates, being asked by someone, at a time when the public was angry with him, 'Why don't you defend yourself?' did right to reply, 'The time is not yet.' 'Why when is the time?' 'When I see someone else calumniated.'" (ln ~1380b, 10)

In the illustration, the public figure Philocrates refused to defend himself since his accusers were acting out of anger alone. He chose to wait to plead his case to them once they had redirected their anger and let a bit of calm in. He did this because Philocrates knew the mind of those judging him were tainted with fresh emotion and would react rashly and unjustly to his situation (whatever that may have been). It appears that, in the Aristotelian perspective and in my mind the correct one, decisions made in the initial flooding of one's mind by an extreme emotion are rash and hasty and do not qualify for his meaning of the use of pathos as a rhetorical tool. Use emotion - by all means - but use balanced emotion.

Philocrates knew in order to get a fair assessment from his peers he needed to let the initial emotion subside and give time for the calm to swim amongst the anger and dilute it to a more reasoned level. He needed to apply kairos to their emotional level in order to be able to present his actions/argument before the public in a reasoned manner, allowing for time and his words to supply a sense of calm to the public's anger.

I guess my general thought here is that the interplay between anger and calm described in Aristotle's third chapter is a sort of loose paradigm for guiding interaction between emotion in the mind of your audience. So it follows that the ethical responsibility of a rhetor to put his/her audience in the correct emotional state (combonation of anger and calm) when presenting an argument to them in order for them to arrive at a collectively good decision.

Enargeia

The four of us road tripped all night. We finally arrive at a ghost town watering hole jam-packed with tourists for the night. We stand close enough to see, but behind the novices, and take turns wearing out a path to the bar. Suddenly it begins. Spotlight on. They strike the first chord. Endorphins take flight and our eyes light up with the stage. We stop conversation mid-sentence and instinctively step forward. The harmonized melody inextricably wound to memorized lyrics course through our veins, amplifying the pre-drank euphoria. Verses relate moments all four of us have separately lived, uniting them to a common experience. We belt the words at all octaves and pitches, oblivious to those around, keeping rhythm by jamming a boot too harshly into the ground. One hand clutching my beer, the other one flying autonomously to the beat. Everyone around us fades into a blurry collage and are attention only acknowledges the stage and the occasional re-affirming glance at one another, nodding that it all was worth it. And the band plays on.

Test

First blog post...
success.