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Ethos And Pathos In Aristotle's Rhetoric

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Introduction Two politically divided, but close friends, Rob and Dan, made a visit to the museum close by. Upon examining one of the exhibits, both friends were drawn to one painting in particular that depicted a bald eagle being strangled by its own claws. The conservative, Rob cried out “Look at this poor bird killing himself! Must be from all of these Democrats trying to take away our economic freedom!” Dan, the Democrat, counter advocated “This eagle must symbolize America’s destruction of nature and beauty because of all the right-winged negligence!” Immediately after, a stranger to Rob and Dan walked by the same picture and proclaimed “Political government gridlock sure is strangling the nation to death.” As my story above has demonstrated, …show more content…
I have also examined two different case studies involving the application of Aristotle’s appeals to ethos (creditability), logos (logic), and pathos (emotion) in two different career fields. I evaluated these two studies as well as Aristotle’s Rhetoric as a whole in order to provide a better understanding of the theory. The reader is provided with a more artistic approach to Aristotle’s Rhetoric, in which the reader should be able to decide his/her own personal approaches towards persuasion, using Aristotle’s Rhetoric as the reader’s …show more content…
When Aristotle (1954) wrote “Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion” (p. 24), he clearly believes that his Rhetoric is an art, waiting for his students to interpret it. Hopefully, this paper has provided the reader with the adequate amount knowledge to help them understand and form their own art of rhetoric. I also hope that it is now clear Aristotle was an artist and the Rhetoric was his finished

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