Ethos

Aristotle, in his usual fashion, systematized the modes of persuasion we are already seeing in the run-up to the Presidential campaign into the categories of logos (logic), pathos (emotion) and ethos (the topic for today).

While most people can spot when a speaker is delivering a logical or emotional argument, ethos is a more complex and subtle thing to determine. The Greek term translates to “character,” so in one sense ethos is the character of the person delivering a persuasive (political) speech.

But what do we mean by character? Is it the authority a speaker brings to the subject due to his or her level of expertise or experience? While such authority can be a component of ethos, an appeal to authority (including one’s own) can also be considered a fallacy, especially if the person claiming authority has not earned this right (or is trying to use his or her authority on one subject to establish credibility in another subject outside their domain of expertise).

A speaker can also establish credibility by speaking exceedingly well and convincingly. But if such skill is used to cover up a lack of actual knowledge (or obscure a poor argument), then rhetoric is not being used to clarify but to confuse or even deceive.

It helps if we think of ethos as an award given by an audience to a speaker which derives from a number of variables. Aristotle felt that ethos can only be awarded to someone based on what they say, not on any authority or moral character they have established outside of the arguments they are presenting. But he was living in an era when political campaigning consisted almost entirely of speeches given in person before live groups such as political assemblies or the courts.

In our modern world, we are forced to create a composite of a candidate based on inputs and information coming from all directions (the news media, breakdowns of a candidate’s personal and political history, campaign ads created by them as well as directed against them). In fact, even when we have celebrated a particular candidate’s rhetoric skill (as we did with the current President during the last election), our evaluation was based more on his ability to speak before and move extremely large audiences than it was on the particular contents of any given speech.

So how can we determine the ethos of a candidate, other than taking the easy way out and rewarding it automatically to the person we were planning on voting for anyway (and similarly denying it to his opponents) regardless of what either of them says?

Certainly (appropriate) authority and general rhetorical talent can be part of the equation. But a more important test was alluded to in the recent posting on pathos. There I noted that emotionally based arguments cannot be dismissed out of hand as manipulative and irrational, but they should be subject to scrutiny to ensure they are not being used inappropriately.

Within this context, pathos can be tested both quantitatively (is the speaker too dependent on emotional argument, sacrificing logos in the process?) and qualitatively (is he or she appealing to good emotion such as courage and generosity, or bad emotion such as fear and selfishness?).

If a speaker gets this combination right (regardless of whether they are speaking before one person or many, in person or over the airwaves), then we should be more inclined to award them that powerful intangible gift of ethos.

And if they don’t (or if no candidate does), we’ll need to live with the fact that we might be electing a President with high qualifications, great gifts or strong experience, who unfortunately lacks components of character required to earn the reward of ethos, a lack that will likely come back to bite him (and us) during his or her term in office.