Aristotelian!
" He would become the teacher of the man who conquered the world. He would recognize that rhetoric is an art that it is crucial for human survival." (Smith, 63). Our final stop on our journey through the Greek Trilogy is with Aristotle. He was born in 384 BC and was a metic, ( a person who was nto from Greece). Aristotle was a student of Plato who draws from both the Platonic and Sophistic epistemologies. He was well studied in rhetoric and everything else he knew, too. His epistemology was that of an empiricist. The empiricists believed in an idea that true knowledge is grounded in personal experience. So if there is no personal experience there is no truth. (Confusing! I know). He uses the three different types of appeals (Logos, Pathos and Ethos) to explain his views on rhetoric. Logos was his favorite appeal because it appeals to logic. Terms like deductive reasoning (general to specific), syllogism (absolutely true), enthymeme (probably true) , inductive reasoning (specific to general) and a maxim (general truths) help us understand how logos plays a role in rhetoric. Pathos are the
appeals to emotion. They help us establish proximity, use descritive language, and can be visual which can be more helpful for some people than using logic. Finally, ethos appeal to credibility. The three charactersitics of ethos are arete (virtue), eunoia (goodwill) and phronesis (wisdom and knowledge). Aristotle believed that "credibility is the most potent form of persuasion. If the speaker is believable and trusted, audiences are more likely to believe the speaker." Aristotle believed that you should make your style pure and use a natural style.
"Rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic."