Philosophers could have predicted the Presidential race...dead on the money.

Posted by $ Olduglycarl 7 years, 4 months ago to Philosophy
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Almost 2,500 years ago, Aristotle wrote his book Rhetoric.
Which horse usually wins the race: ethos, logos or pathos?
SOURCE URL: http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/how-ancient-philosopher-predicted-2016-election


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  • Posted by Herb7734 7 years, 4 months ago
    Appeal to emotions. That can be good or bad depending on what emotions are being appealed to.
    In the case of Obama, there was the probability of free stuff. Come to think of it, most pathos made it seem as if it was patriotic to get free stuff. Trump's appeal was pathos, but of a different sort. No free stuff because it wasn't free and all the crooks who promised it had created a swamp of fever dreams that needed to be drained, like a pus filled wound needs to be drained. (How's that for pathos?)
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  • Posted by term2 7 years, 4 months ago
    I think the author got it wrong relative to this election. Hillary was big on emotion in that she appealed almost totally on emotion (pathos). But, she was weak on integrity (ethos). And her Logos appeals were filled with empty words.

    Trump concentrated more on Logos. His appeals made sense. (if you dont have borders you dont have a country- for example). He had better ethos than crooked hillary, and was a more confident and presentable person, especially when his family was involved.

    So he won.
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  • Posted by Owlsrayne 7 years, 4 months ago
    Unfortunately, I don't think Trump fits into any of those categories. He is the Junk Yard Dog. That why all the Republican candidates got torn up and thrown to the curb.
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  • Posted by Temlakos 7 years, 4 months ago
    Let me offer some corrections to the article.

    I agree that Hillary Clinton, thinking to emphasize pathos, in fact lacked it. She gave lackluster performances. One need only have compared her half-empty venues to Donald Trump's filled-to-overflowing venues to understand that.

    But I maintain Hillary didn't have logos either. Logos is about whether your words add up. Well, something clearly didn't add up, and now the people finally began to realize that.

    And as for ethos--Hillary lost the ethos comparison when people understood that, for all her attempts to emphasize pathos, she betrayed it whenever the betrayal suited her. She had no ethical compass other than "the wishes and desires of the biggest prospective donors to something called the Clinton Foundation."

    Donald Trump captured ethos. Better a self-made business emperor than one "much dispos'd to have an itching palm,/To sell and mart [her] offices for gold/To undeservers." He also captured logos--he correctly and effectively pointed out that Democratic policies, and Hillary policies, didn't add up. Or else they added up, all right--to a United States Ambassador and countless other good men and women getting themselves killed. And he had pathos because he spoke directly to the frustrations of the people.

    That's why he won. Trump came as close as any candidate to Reagan as the master of all three.
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