Iago : An Aristotelian Rhetorician Essay

According to Aristotle, certainly the most prominent rhetorical theorist in Ancient Greece and probably the most lasting rhetorical theorist in the Western tradition, an effective speech is made up of three “proofs”—logos, pathos, and ethos. Logos is the speech’s logic, pathos is the speaker’s appeal to the audience’s emotions, and ethos, finally, is “the most authoritative form of persuasion”—one that emerges

Aristotle also believed that rhetoric can be forensic, epideictic, and deliberative, which is the second division of his work. The art of persuasion and a way of advising about things to come is the best definition of deliberate rhetoric. This pattern has been used throughout the film and it is another obvious appeal to make it more effective and achieve its goals. Aristotle argues that “for using deliberative rhetoric, the speaker needs to consider deterrents, inducements and the motives people have for avoiding or doing the actions in the question”

In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Brutus and Antony attempt to persuade the audience of their position on the death of Caesar. While Brutus explains that his death was necessary, Antony claims that Caesar was not deserving of his demise. However, though Brutus does have ample credibility and taps into the emotional link with his audience to some extent, he does not convey as powerful of an argument as Antony, as he fails to provide sufficient factual evidence. Antony, on the other hand, utilizes logical argumentation with solid evidence, creates an emotional connection with his audience, and maintains credibility in order to support his own argument. Through this, it can be seen that Antony’s use of rhetorical appeals and devices is superior

Julius Caesar, a play by William Shakespeare, has many instances of great rhetoric in the speech of its characters. Marc Antony, a main character and a pupil of the great Julius Caesar, has a speech that shows many uses of rhetorical appeal and devices. He is able to sway the citizens easily because of how strong his rhetoric is and how persuasive he is. Antony uses devices like dramatic irony, appeals (ethos, logos, pathos), and repetition to make the citizens believe in him and Caesar to disregard the conspirators argument.

“Character may almost be called the effective means of persuasion.” This was a quote written by Aristotle who also came up with the rhetorical principles. The rhetorical principles, also known as ethos, pathos, logos, is used as the key in effective persuasion. In the play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, Cassius persuades Brutus original view on Caesar by using ethos, pathos, logos.

Along with Aristotle’s philosophical and scientific interests, he was a master of reasoning who proposed many theories still believed and used to this day. Over time, the philosophies he had taught were further expanded, hence Classical Rhetoric; he would write important, detailed texts about the basics of these notable ideas he fathered -- one of which is Rhetoric. In this text, composed of three books and total of sixty chapters, he introduces the rhetorical triangle. Each point in the triangle - ethos, pathos, and logos - holds a certain value in the context of communication, simultaneously influencing the others creating a trilateral relationship. The devices used in classical rhetoric are modern additions to the basic Aristotelian Rhetoric

By skillfully using rhetoric a speaker can persuade an audience to follow their beliefs by using emotions, logic and ethics. In the play, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare, a group of men create a conspiracy to kill Caesar on March fifteenth and take control of Rome. They succeeded in killing Caesar by stabbing him and to justify their treason they say Caesar was a threat to Rome. On the other hand a man named Marc Antony, who was a close friend of Caesar, needs to persuade the romans that the treason unjust. Antony succeeds by making a powerful speech at Caesar’s funeral. As a skilled speaker he used uses rhetorical devices such as ethos which shows credibility or character, logos which shows a logical approach to the

In the play “Julius Caesar”, characters Brutus and Antony give speeches at Caesar’s funeral. Brutus had a fairly short speech and Antony, on the other hand, had a lengthy speech. Analyzing the ethos, pathos, and logos from both Brutus and Antony’s funeral speeches, it is clear that Antony is more persuasive towards the crowd. There are three forms of rhetorical speaking: ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos is the appeal of the reader, or audience’s, sense to ethics and morals.

“Rhetoric, which is the use of language to inform or persuade, is very important in shaping public opinion. We are very easily fooled by language and how it is used by others.” Ray Comfort couldn’t have said it better. Rhetoric is a very powerful tool used in the English language. It has the power to conform people’s minds to fit the ideal society or influence their opinions about a certain subject. It is everywhere! It can be found in books, movies, commercials, debates, and speeches just to name a few. In Aristotle’s book, Rhetoric, he mentions all of the analytical strategies that are used when this literary art is practiced. These strategies will be applied to three different works of literature.

In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Brutus and Antony both uses rhetorical devices to persuade the audience to believe their statements. Antony’s speech is a more effective rhetorician because he uses pathos to connect with people’s emotion, sarcasm to share his true opinion and appeal of logic and emotion to support and to counter Brutus statements. Brutus’s does use ethos to emphasize his points, and repetition to keep the audience’s attention, but he does not have enough logos and pathos. .

Rhetoric is the language designed to persuade and impress the audience using figurative speech and other techniques. In act 3 of “Julius Caesar” by William Shakespeare, both Antony and Brutus made powerful speeches at Caesar’s funeral to persuade and inform the people about their point of view on Caesar’s death. After the fall of Caesar, Brutus convinces the people by saying how Caesar should be killed due to his ambition and for the future of Rome and its people. However, although Antony repeats how all the conspirators are honorable men, he was being sarcastic and his main purpose was to have people rethink about this claim on his way to oppose it by providing evidence about how Caesar’s not ambitious. In Antony’s speech, confirmatio, where

William Shakespeare, in his historical play Julius Caesar, makes the characters Brutus and Antony utilize rhetorical strategies in order to win the favour of the Roman people for their own purposes. These two speakers try to convince the audience of different things: where Brutus, who speaks first, was trying to subdue the passions of the mob and use logic to win acceptance for his murderous actions, Antony, who had to follow Brutus, was trying to awaken the passions of the mob and stir up the need for revenge. In addition, Antony had the additional challenge that he was not allowed to speak ill of Brutus and his fellow conspirators. To persuade their audience, the characters manipulate the use of persona to move the audience’s perception of themselves, to establish or reinforce the strengths of their positions, and to undermine each other’s arguments.

The Gorgias is a dialogue in which Socrates expresses his ideas with others about rhetoric. From the dialogue, it can be argued that the philosopher is a mortal enemy of rhetoric. He condemns it on ethical and epistemic grounds. Socrates argues that rhetoric is not a real knowledge because it is not a legitimate art, and that the teachers of rhetoric are nothing but fraudsters. In addition, he asserts that rhetoric is ethically bankrupt and its main objective is to gratify the ignorant and enhance its experts’ power to practice it.

Inartistic proof is persuading with hard evidence and artistic proof is persuading with rhetorical appeals (Classical Rhetoric – Aristotle/Rhetoric, p. 176). Ethos the appeal to authority or honesty of the speaker to the audience, pathos the appeal to the audience’s emotions and logos the appeal to the audience’s logic. The first line of the Rhetoric is "Rhetoric is a counterpart of dialectic" (Classical Rhetoric – Aristotle/Rhetoric, p. 179) as Aristotle’s way of arguing that reason and rhetoric are intertwined together. According to Aristotle, logic is concerned with reasoning to reach scientific certainty or big T truth while dialectic and rhetoric can be a tool used to manipulate and deceive. Aristotle's believe rhetoric should be viewed as “the ability in any particular case to see the available means of persuasion” " (Classical Rhetoric – Aristotle/Rhetoric, p. 181). Aristotle saw the Sophists use of rhetoric as a way manipulate others by manipulating their emotions and omitting facts and that’s why he identified rhetoric as one of the three modes of persuasion. Aristotle goes on the say that “Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech is spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more

Through the figure of the sophist, I aim to explore Plato's critiques of rhetoric by looking at two dialogues in particular, Apology and Gorgias. Using these dialogues as well as references to other of his dialogues including Phaedrus, Protagoras, and Sophist, I will argue that while Plato critiques the role of rhetoric in sophist arguments, he does not present the philosopher as free of rhetoric either, as he himself uses elements derived from the rhetoric he critiques in his arguments. This will then be argued to be problematic to the traditional conception of the distinction between the sophist and the philosopher, as well as his overall view of the sophist through his work as a whole.