Before Aristotle

At the very beginning of his Rhetoric, Aristotle makes it clear both that there were earlier works on rhetoric, now lost to us, and that they too dealt with the emotions; indeed, he faults them precisely for devoting excessive attention to this topic. Thus, he opens his discussion by remarking (1.1, 1354a11-24) that:

The framers of the current treatises on rhetoric have constructed but a small portion of that art. The modes of persuasion are the only true constituents of the art: everything else is accessory. These writers, however, say nothing about enthymemes [that is, proofs based on hypothetical premises], which are the substance of rhetorical persuasion, but deal mainly with non-essentials. The arousing of prejudice, pity, anger, and similar emotions has nothing to do with the essential facts, but is merely a personal appeal to the man who is judging the case. . . It is not right to pervert the judge by moving him to anger or envy or pity - one might as well warp a carpenter’s rule before using it.3

Unfortunately, there do not survive any of the treatises that worried Aristotle for their undue focus upon the emotions. The Rhetoric to Alexander, which has been transmitted to us as part of the Aristotelian corpus but is now generally ascribed to Anaximenes and was probably written a decade or two before Aristotle’s own treatise, has little to say about the emotions.4 There are references in Plato and Aristotle to a work called Eleoi, or ‘Pities’, attributed to the sophist Thrasymachus, which may have taken the form of a rhetorical handbook but perhaps was more like a collection of model topics or examples. The orators themselves, of course, give evidence of the appeal to emotion, and to pity in particular, as a means of persuasion from the late fifth century on down; the practice was common enough to be satirized by Aristophanes in his comedy Wasps, produced in 422 (cf. 572, 975-978).

Perhaps the most explicit statement concerning the role of emotion in persuasion that survives today is to be found in the famous display speech, Praise of Helen, by the eminent orator Gorgias (second half of the fifth century). Gorgias testifies to the extraordinary power of words to move an audience. As he puts it, ‘Speech is a great prince. With tiny body and strength unseen, he performs marvellous works. He can make fear cease, take away pain, instill joy, increase pity... For just as various drugs expel various humours from the body. . . so some speeches give pain, some pleasure, some fear, some confidence’ (8, 14).5 It is just this magical influence of speech to which Gorgias appeals in order to exonerate Helen from blame; since persuasion is irresistible, the fault for Helen’s seduction must be laid entirely to the persuader, that is, Paris. Rhetoric works on the mind and the emotions like a drug, bewitching the hearer rather than persuading through dispassionate argument (see W. W. Forten-baugh, Chapter 9 p. 117 and A. Lbpez Eire, Chapter 22 p. 340).

As is well known, Plato harbored a deep distrust of rhetoric, which he compared disparagingly to cooking: it was not, he argued in the Gorgias, properly speaking a craft at all, with specific standards and goals and a regard for truth, but rather a form of flattery, catering to the taste of the masses without regard for what was right or beneficial. It may be in part for this reason that Plato never developed an analysis of the emotions, or even distinguished ‘emotion’ as a clear and independent psychological category. When he does mention such passions as pity, he is deeply suspicious of their effect on human behavior. A well-known example is the passage in the Republic (606a), in which Socrates warns that, when we watch characters lament in tragedies:

The best element in our nature, since it has never been properly educated by reason or even by habit, then relaxes its guard over the plaintive part, inasmuch as this is contemplating the woes of others and it is no shame to it to praise and pity another who, claiming to be a good man, abandons himself to excess in his grief; but it thinks this vicarious pleasure is so much clear gain, and would not consent to forfeit it by disdaining the poem altogether. That is, I think, because few are capable of reflecting that what we enjoy in others will inevitably react upon ourselves. For after feeding fat the emotion of pity there, it is not easy to restrain it in our own sufferings (trans. Shorey).

It is just when reason has relaxed its hold that the emotions are aroused, and the passionate part of the soul feels authorized to indulge in the pleasure proper to it. Pity and similar emotions grow simply by being allowed to find expression; were reason in control, it would prohibit them as inappropriate responses to the vicissitudes of life.