PATHOS 1: RHETORICAL PROOF
The word pathos comes from a Greek word meaning “what we experience, as opposed to what we do” (Bailly, [Pathos]).
In Latin, pathos is sometimes translated as dolor, which basically means “pain”; Cicero uses dolor to refer to passionate eloquence (Gaffiot [1934], Dolor).
In classical rhetoric, pathos is a kind of evidence, complementary to that derived from logos and ethos. “Evidence” here means “persuasion”, in the sense of pressure and control exerted on the audience. The word pathos encompasses a set of social emotions that the speaker can draw upon in order to direct his audience towards the conclusions and actions he or she advocates.
1. Ancient rhetoric: Emotions as a manipulative tool
1.1 Ethos and pathos, two levels of affects?
The trinitarian account “ethos, logos, pathos” isolates each of these components, especially ethos from pathos; but Quintilian understands pathos and ethos as two kinds of feelings (adfectus):
Pathos and ēthos are sometimes of the same nature, the one to a greater and the other to a lesser degree, as love, for instance, will be pathos, and friendship ēthos, and sometimes of a different nature, as pathos in a peroration will excite the judges, and ēthos soothe them. (IO, VI, 2, 12)
Of feelings, as we are taught by the old writers, there are two kinds, the first of which the Greeks included under the term πάθος (pathos), which we translate rightly and literally by the word “passion” [adfectus]. The other, to which they give the appellation ἦθος (ēthos), for which, as I consider, the Roman language has no equivalent term, is rendered, however, by mores, “manners”; whence that part of philosophy, which the Greeks call ἠθική (ēthikē), is called moralis, “moral”. 9. […] The more cautious writers, therefore, have chosen rather to express the sense than to interpret the words and have designated the one class of feelings as the more violent, the other as the more gentle and calm, under pathos they have included the stronger passions, under ēthos the gentler, saying that the former are adapted to command, the latter to persuade, the former to disturb, the latter to conciliate. 10. Some of the very learned add that the effect of pathos is but transitory. (Id., 8-10)
The following table summarizes the major oppositions between ethos and pathos.
| ethos | pathos |
| has its source in the character of the speaker | has its source in the occasion |
| makes the speaker sympathetic | moves the audience |
| inclines the audience to benevolence | brings about, snatches the decision |
| is pleasing | is moving |
| low arousal: calm, measured, sweet | high arousal: vehement |
| typical ethotic emotions: affection, sympathy | typical pathemic emotion: love, anger, hate, fear, envy, pity |
| ongoing thymic tonality of the discourse | phasic emotion episodes |
| convincing | commanding |
| the introduction focuses on ethos | the conclusion (end of the discourse) focuses on pathos |
| speech genre: comedy | speech genre: tragedy |
| type of causes: ethical (moral) | type of causes: pathetic |
| moral satisfaction | aesthetic satisfaction |
As two complementary types of feeling, ethos organizes the ongoing thymic basic tonality of the discourse, upon which the speaker will base the phasic variations of intensity that characterize emotion episodes.
The doses of ethos and pathos must be carefully balanced according to the goals of the discourse.
1.2 Pathos: a bundle of emotions
n the Rhetoric, Aristotle distinguishes a dozen of basic rhetorical social emotions grouped in complementary pairs (Rhet., II, 1-11; RR. p. 257-310):
anger vs. calm, serenity
friendship vs. hostility, hatred
fear vs. confidence
shame vs. impudence, insolence
kindness, helpfulness vs. unkindness (eliminating the feeling of kindness)
pity vs. indignation
envy vs. imitation, emulation.
This enumeration does not cover all the political and legal emotions:
Aristotle neglects, as not relevant for this purpose, a number of emotions that a more general independently conceived treatment of the emotions would presumably give prominence to. Thus grief, pride (of family, ownership, accomplishments), (erotic) love, joy, and yearning for an absent or lost loved one (Greek pothos) hardly come in for mention in the Rhetoric […] The same is true even for regret, which one would think would be of special importance for an ancient orator to know about, especially in judicial contexts. (Cooper 1996, p. 251)
1.3 Manipulation through emotions
The question of the impact of emotion on judgment is one of balance between logo-logical demonstration on the one hand, and ethotic and pathemic pressures on the other. Logical arguments transform the representations, and representations determine the will; but, in some situations, pathos can still outweigh will. This makes pathos something mysterious and powerful, a little bit superhuman, a little bit demonic. Classical texts are full of such declarations pitting pathos against logos, that is emotion against reason and judgment, in terms of their ability to make decisions:
Now nothing in oratory is more important than to win for the orator the favor of his public, and to have the latter so affected as to be swayed by something resembling a mental impulse or emotion, rather than by judgment or deliberation. For men decide far more problems by hate, or love, or lust, or rage, or sorrow, or joy, or hope, or fear, or illusion, or some other inward emotion, than by reality, or authority or any legal standard, or judicial precedent, or statute. (Cicero, De Or., 178 XLII).
In a powerful passage, Quintilian contrasts the dull character of logical argument with the violent and vicious action of emotion:
As to arguments, they generally arise out of the cause, and are more numerous on the side that has the greater justice, so that he who gains his cause by force of arguments will only have the satisfaction of knowing that his advocate did not fail him. 5. But when violence is to be offered to the minds of the judges and their thoughts are to be drawn away from the contemplation of truth, then is this peculiar duty of the orator required. This the contending parties cannot teach; this cannot be put into written instructions. (IO VI, 2, 4-5)
Such praise of passionate speech as capable of distracting the judge away from reality and truth is the source of the still dominant manipulative view of rhetoric.
2. Rhetoric and Magic
One may be surprised by such an open admission of the cynical, immoral and manipulative character of rhetorical pathemic persuasion. But one can remain skeptical about the very possibility of such manipulation.
First, such claims must be taken with a grain of salt. They can be read as a form of professional advertising designed to magnify the power of the professional rhetorician, and inflate course fees: “Follow my teachings, and you’ll become a magician of the spoken word!”.
Perhaps more important,, as Romilly points out in reference to Gorgias, these claims seem to transfer the virtues attributed to magical speech to emotional rhetorical speech: “what can we say about this, except that the words, in ways that seem irrational, bind and affect the listener in spite of himself?” (Romilly 1988, p. 102).
This is precisely Socrates’ viewpoint when he holds that the art of speech-makers:
is part of the enchanters’ art and but slightly inferior to it. For the enchanter’s art consists in charming vipers and scorpions and other wild things, and in curing diseases, while the other art consists in charming and persuading the members of juries and assemblies and other sorts of crowds. (Plato, Euthydemus, XVII, 289e, p. 130).
Magic formulas, as chanted by Tibullus, actually had the power to alter the very physical perception of reality:
For me she [= the witch] has made chants with which you can deceive.
Sing them thrice, and spit thrice when you have sung.
Then he [= your husband] cannot believe anyone about us,
Even if he himself has seen us on the soft bed.
Tibullus, Elegy I, 2, v. 55sq (my emphasis)[1]
Pericles’ persuasive speech had the same powers:
Plutarch quotes the words of an opponent of Pericles, who was asked who, out of him and Pericles, was the strongest in the fight. His answer was: ‘“When I bring him down in the fight, he argues that he did not fall, and he wins by persuading all the assistants” (Pericles, 8). (Id., p. 119)
Notice that the defeated Pericles addresses his persuasive speech to the spectators, not to his victorious opponent, who is holding him down. Fortunately, the argumentative situation is in fact a three-pole situation, involving the speaker, the adversary and the judge(s) or arbiter, in the role of the third party, see Roles.
Be that as it may, these views express an ancient classical and popular theory of the functioning of the human mind, in which emotion, will and action oppose, distort and compete victoriously with reason, understanding and contemplation.
In contrast to all these explanations, Aristotle simply warns against the overly effective use of the pathos:
It is not right to pervert the judge by moving him to anger, envy or pity — one might as well warp a carpenter’s rule before using it. (Rhet., I, 1, 1354a25; RR, p. 96-97)
The judge is “the rule.” The rejection of pathos is not based on moral considerations but on a cognitive imperative; distorting the rule is harmful not only to others and to the world, but first of all to oneself; error is more fundamental than deception.
[1] The Complete Poems of Tibullus: An En Face Edition. Trans. by R. G. Dennis and M. C. J. Putnam. With an introd. by J. H. Gaisser. Berkeley, etc: University of California Press, 2013.