Dear Aristotle,

I understand your concepts on Rhetoric and Poetics, however, the way you write is almost painful to read. Please take a writing workshop if you wish to appeal to a wider audience.That is all.

Thank you,

Julie

Reading Rhetoric

From reading about rhetoric and poetics from Aristotle, I noticed some of these ideas and subjects seemed familiar. Oh yea, that's right, I forgot I an Art of Persuasion class last year, and to be honest, I didn't think I understood it a whole lot at the time. Having read some of this material again, I noticed that some of these ideas stuck in my head...they just needed to simmer a bit. (a year) Also, for the most part I relate rhetoric to graphic design. I think of some of the ways we have to use aspects of it like pathos, logos, and ethos to persuade our audience and that pathos dealt with emotions, logos dealt with information, and ethos dealt with a credible source.



Also, I wanted to share an interesting video I discovered the other day. It reminded me about our discussion from last class about the cutting of arts programs and some of the issues dealt with education. It's also just interesting to watch the drawings throughout the piece.

It didn't make sense to me when Aristotle says:

"The man...must, it is clear, be able (1) to reason logically...and (3) to understand the emotions-that is, to name them and describe them, to know their causes and the way in which they are excited."

In the same train of thought those ideas don't make sense to me, espeically in the vein which Aristotle was using them - it seemed like he was in favor of using the logical fallacy of appealing to emotion:

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-emotion.html

Sure, something might be "persuasive" - but emotional appeals aren't "logical".

Hello.. i was thinking about how much of a hard time i had when i was a freshmen in high school trying to keep up with ethos pathos logos. Now that i have a clear thought about it, it is so much easier to understand.

2/14/11

I really enjoyed the aspect of persuasion in Aristotle's Rhetoric & Poetics. What I found most interesting was when Aristotle spoke of what makes up a strong persuader. The speaker needs to reason logically, understand human character, and understand the emotions. I believe these aspects are incredible important when persuading because it's mostly about knowing how to manipulate the person your persuading and then backing up your persuasion with relevant reasons. Knowing how to read people, I feel, is a very important aspect of persuasion. You have to know how to get them on your side and then, of course, make yourself sound more concrete with facts.

Rhetoric & Poetics

My overall interpretation of Aristotle's Rhetoric & Poetics revolved around his systematically organized and sophisticatedly structured essay that I felt actually mimicked the subject of his article itself, rhetoric. I liked how Aristotle recognized the instinctive nature of human's to imitate instead of belittling that attribute.

Aristotle

Reading through the beginning with rhetoric, I felt as if I had been magically transported back into my AP English class and was learning about the parts of speech all over again. I found reading this that a lot of information I had learned my senior year except in a much fancier and hard to understand tone. There were some interesting points, such as how one can become a good persuader and what defined one, but most of what I read I felt I had knowledge about previously. And learned, previously, in a simpler way.

As for the Poetic portion of the reading, I found it interesting. I feel, again, as if I were learning the same ideas I was taught in high school, however, I feel as if there's a new spin to this section. I especially enjoyed the idea of humans having this natural inclination to imitate (which sets us apart from the rest of the world) and the breaking down of the key elements of tragedy. I enjoy the examples he uses in order to obtain his point, most notably the comparison or two poets Poly and Zeuxis. I enjoyed the small, minuet detail about them.