Logos, Ethos, Pathos : Classical Rhetoric Revisited

TLDR: In this paper, the main purpose of this paper is to reflect upon the question to what extent contemporary politics is only the "eristic technique" skilled at introducing pathos and instrumentaly appealing to logos and ethos.

Abstract: The main purpose of this paper is to reflect upon the question to what extent contemporary politics is only the "eristic technique" skilled at introducing pathos and instrumentaly appealing to logos and ethos. Aristotle's rhetorical triad-logos, ethos,pathos-makes rhetoric the art of persuasive or honest communication. Applying methods developed by psychoanalysis and in reference to the work of Freud, Lacan, Searle, Laclau, Ranciere and Foucault author reflect on the premises, the shape and the consequences of contemporary sophistic politics. Author is tempted to test the intuition according to which the prototype of a method of communication is catachresis, a figure of speech in which a word or phrase has vastly departed from its traditional, paradigmatic usage.Keywords: communication community, distorted communication, excitable speech, illocutionary speech act, iterability, locutionary speech act, means of effecting persuasion, performative acts, perlocutionary speech act, philosophy, politics, resignification, rhetoric, sophists, total speech situationPhilosophy, Politics, RhetoricThe relations between language, politics and rhetoric were subject to philosophical and sociological investigations from the very onset of philosophy, sociology and rhetoric, e.g. the three grand disciplines in quest of the answer to how words, the persuasive effect and community life are entwined. Philosophy of Heraclitus, that of Plato, of Aristotle, Diogenes the Cynic, Pirrho, or Epicurus was always embedded within certain politics and could always gain rhetorical momentum-the case of that being the subordination of philosophy to rhetoric and rhetoric to politics by sophists. The rationality of beliefs and actions is naturally a timeless topic of philosophical investigations. One could even say that philosophical thought originates in reflection on the reason embodied in cognition, speech, and action; and reason remains its basic theme.Similarly, the history of rhetoric from Gorgias and Protagoras, through Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, and Seneca, up until twentieth century rhetoric pondering upon the question of "unity" of rhetoric was similarly embedded within a certain political context which was sometimes dedicated to furthering this end and sometimes not necessarily at all. Athenian democracy, to give but one example, renowned for treasuring rights of all citizens to speak at public gatherings was supportive to this end. In Rome, on the other hand, it was open legal process which played key role in this regard by allowing citizens to enter disputes on their own behalf. It might well explain why the structure of speech, line of argumentation and so many rhetorical figures embody the very idea of a legal speech.Finally, symbolic interactionism of George Herbert Mead, social anthropology of Franz Boas, and above all Edward Sapir's project of anthropology of language-in itself a contribution to sociolinguistics and ethnography of speaking of Dell Hymes, and consequently Claude Levi-Strauss' structuralism, Erving Goffman's sociology of everyday life, not to mention Pierre Bourdieu's theory of power and practice and generally speaking the contemporary theory of discourse in its richest diversity- have always been nothing but social theories considered from the point of view of "living speech" of participants of a "collective game" and as such they have been described within the context of social influence of linguistic and discursive structures on "non-discursive" or "non-linguistic" structures.After all Teun A. van Dijk argues that instead of the usual direct relationship being established between society and discourse, this influence is indirect and depends on how language users themselves define the communicative situation. It is a widespread misconception, in traditional sociolinguistics, that social situations and their properties-such as class, gender or age of language users-exercise direct and unmediated influence on language use. …