The third of the artful modes of persuasion is emotional appeal. It is introduced in Rhetoric 1.2 and discussed in 2.1-11, beginning with the following statement: ‘The emotions are those things on account of which men so change as to differ in their judgments and which are attended by pain and pleasure, for example anger, pity, fear and all other such things and their opposites’ (2.1 1378a19-22). This statement is unsatisfactory, for it opens the door to physiological disturbances, like headaches and stomach-aches, that can affect a person’s judgment. Better are Aristotle’s immediately following remarks. They tell us that each emotion is to be analyzed in three ways: the condition of persons prone to the emotion, the object of the emotion, and the grounds that are the basis of the emotion. The mention of object and grounds is important, for it makes clear that Aristotle conceives of emotions as intelligent responses. When a person becomes angry, his anger is directed at someone, because thoughts have objects (an angry man thinks about someone who seems to have insulted him). And we can ask whether his anger is well-grounded, for not everything a man believes is in fact the case (no insult has occurred or only a trivial one, and that should be obvious to the person who is angry).
Recognizing the involvement of thought in emotional response had important consequences for rhetoric. In particular, emotional appeal could no longer be viewed as an extra-rational force that works on an audience in the manner of a drug or enchantment (cf. Gorgias, Helen 10-19). Rather, emotional appeal was seen as a rational process. Through argument, the orator controls what a listener believes, and in this way he arouses an emotional response. To be sure, argument can be misused so that inappropriate emotions are aroused or emotions are intensified in an unreasonable way. But the possibility of misusing emotional appeal does not mean that all emotional appeal must be condemned. An orator of wisdom, virtue and goodwill advances reasonable arguments, and in doing so, he excites emotional responses that are appropriate to the situation.
What then should we say about the criticism of emotional appeal in Rhetoric 1.1? The question has occasioned various answers. I mention three. One is that 1.1 introduces an ideal rhetoric that limits itself to arguing the issue. That ideal is put aside in 1.2, where Aristotle turns to real political oratory, which includes emotional appeal.10 The trouble with this response is that emotional appeal need not be hostile to arguing the issue. Indeed, arguing the issue may arouse an appropriate emotion. A second answer is that the criticism in 1.1 is narrowly directed against contemporaries of Aristotle who were prepared to arouse emotions by non-discursive means like cries and tears and wry faces.11 But nowhere in 1.1 does Aristotle suggest that his criticism has such a restricted target. Indeed, it seems natural to read the text as a sweeping rejection of all forms of emotional appeal.12 For that reason, I much prefer a third answer: namely, that 1.2 and 2.1-11 reflect a development in Aristotle’s thought. We know from Plato’s Philebus and Aristotle’s Topics that during Aristotle’s residence in the Platonic Academy the relation between emotion and thought was a subject of discussion. Aristotle came to see thought as the efficient cause of emotional response, and that encouraged him to adopt a new and friendlier attitude toward emotional appeal. Changing thoughts is what orators do, and when the change is accomplished through reasonable arguments that result in emotional response, then the orator has done nothing wrong. He is performing his task in an artful manner.
It is likely that Aristotle first set forth his analysis of emotional response in a lost treatise like Divisions and then transferred it to his course of lectures on rhetoric once he had developed a doctrine of three artful modes of persuasion. The transfer was accomplished with less than complete attention to detail. I mention one instance. The account of hate in 2.4 states explicitly that this emotion occurs without feelings of pain (1382a12-13), yet the initial statement concerning emotion in 2.1 ties emotional response to feelings of pleasure and pain. My guess is that the initial statement belongs to an earlier period when Aristotle viewed emotion as upsetting and incompatible with reasoned judgment. Be that as it may, hate is an emotion of especial importance in judicial oratory. When jurors vote to condemn the accused, they are likely not to be moved by painful anger, for they themselves have not been subjected to outrage. But they may hate the accused, for this emotion is directed toward types of people (adulterers, thieves and the like), whom they would like to see removed from society.
Immediately following the analysis of types of emotion, i. e., in 2.12-17, Aristotle discusses different kinds of character tied to age and fortune. First the attributes that mark young men, old men and men in their prime are surveyed, and then attributes tied to good birth, wealth and power are taken up. Being placed after the chapters on emotion suggests that this discussion of character was intended to supplement the analysis of emotion. If an orator is addressing an audience of older men and knows that old men are cowardly and given to anxiety, i. e., their condition is such that they are prone to fear, then the orator will ask himself whether exciting fear will help his case. And if he thinks that it will, then he will speak of impending dangers that are grounds for fear. So much is clear, but we should not overlook the fact that the discussion of kinds of character is useful in other ways: e. g., it may provide ideas for blackening the character of an opponent and for constructing a convincing narrative. Moreover, the absence of any examples from oratory suggests that the discussion was not originally written for rhetorical instruction. It may have been transferred to rhetoric after the chapters on emotions became part of rhetorical instruction.13
World History
