Using Emotions Well in Arguments

Aristotle wrote the first book on Rhetoric. As in so many things, he did so well with the subject that his Rhetoric has remained a standard work on the subject for about 2,500 years. People disagree with Aristotle, perhaps, but they never stray far from the basic ideas he sets forth in his work on the subject. What remains of Aristotle's work is, in fact, a series of lecture notes, not the entire original "textbook" he wrote, but even his notes are so detailed, so clearly articulated, that they offer us a good deal of useful information.

In Book Two of the Rhetoric Aristotle talks at great length about how emotions enter into the art of persuasive speech. In his discussion, Aristotle focuses on how anger is used to make an argument effective. Aristotle has no problem thinking that we argue sometimes in response to some wrong that has been done to us, and he gives a great many examples of the conditions that give rise to our anger as well as how we use persuasive speech to arouse others to anger in service to a good cause. Aristotle is, after all, always clear about one thing: that persuasive speech is only to be used to produce good, never to produce evil. To Aristotle, rhetoric is a moral art, not merely a political one.

For all kinds of reasons, the subject of emotions and their role in public (sometimes even in private) debates can make us uneasy. On the one hand, many if not most of us are easily moved to feel something if we are invited by a speaker to engage our emotions. Sometimes a speaker or a writer asks us merely to feel something; at other times, we are asked, if not urged, to feel something so completely that the feeling involved moves us not simply to sense, but to act. If we are moved to act for the greater good, then the use of emotions by our imagined speaker will have been done in an ethical way--that is, to produce a good end. If, on the other hand, we are being manipulated by such emotions, we call the speaker who has aroused us a demagogue. A demagogue is someone who stirs people up into an angry mob. Unfortunately, it would seem that public life has grown full of such people. Perhaps this is one reason why we often grwo uneasy when emotions enter into a public discussion.

One writer I know of who responds well to emotions in rhetoric is Jay Bookman. Writing for the Atlanta Journal/Constitution, Bookman has offered a piece that deals with emotions in an interesting way. To read Bookman's piece, go here. Note how Bookman uses the idea of fear in his piece while inviting his audience not to be afraid.