Invention: The First Part of Rhetoric
Aristotle said that the essential job of a rhetorician was to “discover the best available means of persuasion.” The first part of rhetoric is ‘invention’ meaning to not make things up but to examine what there is to mention about a subject. Invention is about doing your homework by thinking in advance in arguments to make a case for and against a particular proposal.
The mastery of picking arguments that go with the intended audience that you are making your case to will make it easier to win them over on your side of the case. Aristotle sets out characteristics to define the young from the old and it helps to judge the audience you are speaking to, so you can be more relatable to the crowd which will make it easier to win them over. Aristotle says idealism is the characteristic of young people because they are “sweet natured through not having yet experienced much wickedness” and “they haven’t realized that most things turn out for the worse.” It also mentions how young people are more impatient and changeable. Aristotle said that old people are shrewd, “sour tempered” and crabbed with disappointment. Some more characteristics he mentions about old people are that they have “many opinions, but no knowledge, live in memory rather than hope, and are slaves to profit.”
Aristotle identified three different types of persuasive appeals. The first is ethos which is how a speaker makes the connection with the audience. With ethos it is the foundation of which the rest of the appeals are built on. It’s how you present yourself, letting the audience know you’re trustworthy, and persuading your audience that you are one of them. If you want to be heard by the audience, the most important thing to do is to establish who you are. Secondly, logos are what drives your argument forward. Logos has an origin with logic and reasoning by induction. Reasoning by induction is the only way to make progress in things and is the process of generalizing from the accessible data given. Logos and ethos intersect with the use of commonplaces. A commonplace is a piece of shared wisdom. Thirdly, Pathos is the appeal to the emotion and no not just sadness but also excitement, fear, and love. The persuasive appeal emotion only works as long as there is shared emotion. For example, in pathos the term fellow feeling is the ground of everything that most of us think is important to us in being humans. Without having fellow feeling we wouldn’t fall in love or do any other emotional act towards one another like throwing dinner parties or asking one another out on dates.
