Aristotle

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Rhetoric is the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the exploitation of figures of speech and other compositional techniques. Aristotle said great communication comes down to three things:
·      Ethos – Ethics, values, the credibility of the person speaking, for example, “Am I worth listening to?”
·      Logos – Evidence, facts, the logic, or apparent logic of what they are saying, for example, “Am I right?”
·      Pathos – The emotions of the audience, for example, “Do I care?”

 

Aristotle also said that you could not win an argument with just one of these things, to win an argument, you will need each of the three to be always present. And as soon as you think about communication from the receiver’s perspective, you can see that he was correct.

Do you agree?

If you agree with the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, that all human action is purposeful in some way, and you are only truly happy when you are doing something that is moving you toward something that you want. The big questions then become:
·  What are your goals?
·  What purposes are you aiming at?
·  What do you want at the end of the day?

This year I had the opportunity to work with a global financial services organisation, and they clarified their purpose as ‘enabling positive futures’. In other words, the better able they are to deliver financial services, the more likely they are to enable the positive futures of their customers. The key was that every employee in their organisation was conscious of this purpose and incorporated it into everything they did.

Rhetoric and the art of persuasion

Image c/o TED ED

When we have conflicting views over truth, we often enter into a game of persuasion where we try to convince the other that the belief we hold is, in fact, the true one. Rhetoric creates a partnership for a system of persuasion based on knowledge instead of upon manipulation and omission. Over 2,000 years ago the Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that there were three basic ways to persuade an audience of your position: ethos, logos, and pathos. To craft a good persuasive argument, we must consider these three things.

1.         The character of the speaker (ethos)
2.         The condition of the listener (logos)
3.         The strength and plausibility of the argument itself (pathos)