Pathetic Proofs (Pathos)

This chapter focused on pathetic proofs, also known as Pathos. I found a great amount of the material interesting, but what really caught my eye was when the reading mentioned that “people tend to think of emotions as belonging to individuals” (Crowley 171) and therefore do not always trust them. There was also talk of the phenomena when people can experience emotions together as a group and how this can intensify the emotions felt. This is something that is drawn upon by many rhetors and can be a useful tool when using a pathetic appeal to an audience. This got me thinking about the group instance of emotional appeal though. The book mentions 9/11 and how it brought our country together, which is fine and dandy, but why did something that affected so many individuals on a personal level strike a national chord of emotion? It was because the attack on the twin towers could be seen as an attack to every single person in our country. Coincidentally while writing this I received an amber alert on my phone which got me to thinking about why something as random as an amber alert for someone one does not know can trigger an emotional reaction. The answer I came to was that its just like 9/11, hearing news like that makes one think what if it was me or my family that this happened to. This is something that ancient rhetors used to rely upon, for example in modern times when the president addressed the country after 9/11 there was a great emotional appeal that drove the idea of going to war because the country felt vulnerable.

Aristotle also made many contributions to the understanding of pathetic appeal, in fact, “he defined emotions as those things through which, by undergoing change, people come to differ in their judgments” (Crowley 175). This is interesting because it seems simple, but what it seems to me that he’s saying is that peoples emotions are based on their different experiences. So how then does a rhetor make an emotional appeal to a large audience? This is where the 9/11 example comes in, the rhetor must find something, some emotion that the audience can all share. This is also why when using emotional appeal many speakers pair it with either ethos or logos in addition. Pathos in many cases seems to be used merely as an additive in my opinion.

Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. 5th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2012. Print.