Aristotle Response Essay

Submitted By banned94
Words: 903
Pages: 4

This text goes over many key features regarding what the three genres of rhetoric are and how to they are to be worked according to Aristotle. “Rhetoric seems to be capable of seeing what is persuasive about any given thing (Saches, 2009, pg.137).” Ethos, pathos and logos are defined as wisdom, virtue and good will. These are all three basic ways to persuade an audience according to Aristotle. Ethos is used to refer to a speaker’s character as it is delivered to the audience. Logos is the character of the speaker or the audience’s emotions they give off. For example “All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.” (web.calstatela.edu) Pathos is the emotion of the audience. The emotions angry, pity and fear and the opposites. Joe Sachs taught philosophy and law for thirty years at St John’s University in Annapolis Maryland. With the understanding of Aristotle’s physics, Sachs brings in new work in on Aristotle’s theories. Sachs translates Aristotle with words that comes to stands with concepts in everyday Greek language. Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher in Stagira Greece, He was born in 384 BC. Aristotle was set under Plato’s teachings at age seven. Then later on went and founded his own school where he studied teaching and writing his whole life. Aristotle defines rhetoric by being defined as the faculty of discovering in the particular case of available means of persuasion. After the assigned reading the three main ideas Anger, hatred and happiness are three ideas that stuck out to me and I found to be important. The first of my main three main ideas is Anger. Anger is a natural feeling, it reads as response to selfish challenges that is not directed at ones specific self. When people talk about family or any other emotional subject it is usually the whole family who is involved. Being angry at a group of people rather than just one person in that group. The second main idea I found to be important is hatred. Where it is targeted at ones specific self in that group of people you are angry at. In addition, the quote, “Liking someone is a desire for the good of that other person. Hostile things extend beyond anger and include a dislike of general classes of people, such as thieves and informers.” (pg. 124, chp.4) Based off what was done towards you by one’s self you can allow yourself to have hatred towards that person. Hatred in not partaking towards a crowd, and one person you can’t be angry at. Pathos is very similar to anger, when a speaker is speaking towards an audience his goal is to make the audience angry. With the audience being more than just one person. When in reveres the audience can have hatred towards the speaker for his words being presented towards the crowd. The third idea I found to be important is Happiness. “All advice about what is advantageous to a community it aims untimely at the happiness of its citizens (pg.22 Ch. 23)” For example happiness is more of a community. The community cannot be happy unless its citizens are happy. Some significates can be the election of the president. The president tries to fulfil a majority of people’s needs. For example Obama is liberal, but not everyone is liberal. All conservatives may not be happy with him. This makes the world an unhappy place because a majority of the United States population is not happy. On a smaller aspect, if one person in the courtroom is unhappy and everyone else is happy, that courtroom is a happy