Logos Ethos Pathos Quotes

Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

Goals. What does the persuader want to get out of the argument? Is she trying to change the audience’s mood or mind, or does she want it to do something? Is she fixing blame, bringing a tribe together with values speech, or talking about a decision? Ethos, pathos, logos. Which appeal does she emphasize—character, emotion, or logic? Kairos. Is her timing right? Is she using the right medium?

In book two of his Rhetoric,2 Aristotle identified and explained three means of persuasion that a speaker may use: logos, pathos, and ethos. Logos is the logical argumentation and patterns of reasoning used to effect persuasion. Pathos includes the emotional involvement of both the speaker and the audience as they achieve persuasion. Ethos refers to the character of the speaker

Pathos is an appeal to the audience’s feelings. Ethos is an explanation of the speaker’s credibility. Logos feeds the viewer’s logic needs, using facts and evidence.

HOW DO YOU USE ARISTOTLE’S COMPONENTS OF PERSUASION? Take one of your recent presentations and categorize the content into one of the three categories we just covered: Ethos (credibility), Logos (evidence and data), and Pathos (emotional appeal). How does your pathos stack up against the rest? If your emotional appeal is minimal, you might want to rethink your content before you give this presentation again, like adding more stories, anecdotes, and personal insights.

The early Greeks had a magnificent philosophy which is embodied in three sequentially arranged words: ethos, pathos, and logos. I suggest these three words contain the essence of seeking first to understand and making effective presentations. Ethos is your personal credibility, the faith people have in your integrity and competency. It’s the trust that you inspire, your Emotional Bank Account. Pathos is the empathic side—it’s the feeling. It means that you are in alignment with the emotional thrust of another person’s communication. Logos is the logic, the reasoning part of the presentation.

Notice the sequence: ethos, pathos, logos—your character, and your relationships, and then the logic of your presentation.

The key criteria for creating a change story is fourfold. °  The story must be credible and relevant – in Aristotelian poetics, it must have ethos (an authority and understanding of the subject) and logos (it must make rational sense). °  It must be Visual and Visceral – appealing to the auditory, visual and kinaesthetic receivers in our brains. It must seize our hearts as well as impress our heads. In terms of Aristotelian poetics, it must have pathos (it must be felt). °  It must be flexible and scaleable – as easily told around a campfire as across the boardroom table. This implies the use of simple, everyday language and ideas. °  And it must be useful – able to turn vision into action; purpose into practice – acting as a transferor of meaning between one domain and another, between ‘your’ world and ‘mine’, between the ‘leader’ and the ‘led’.

To appeal to the ethos, pathos and logos is naught lest the soesos: appeals for the faith of the parts of the whole, in their spirit.

The concept of Kairos is, perhaps, much more fundamental than even ethos, pathos, and logos. It simply means biding your time. It means waiting to attempt persuading people until a time comes when persuasion is most likely to work. In business, for example,

I don't think the argument in favour of libraries is especially ideological or ethical. I would even agree with those who say it's not especially logical. I think for most people it's emotional. Not logos or ethos but pathos.