Chronological Snobbery

A mother was speaking with her son and his girlfriend. The latter two were living together, and the mother was expressing concern about what the grandmother might think of two unmarried people “shacking up.” The girlfriend smiled condescendingly, patted the mother on the arm, and said, “It’s 2012, dear.”

What an odd response. What does the year have to do with the morality of the action in question? Did I miss the announcement at the beginning of the year saying, “With the advent of the new year, the following actions are now permissible…”?

I know what she was getting at: “People don’t think that way anymore. Times have changed. We’ve moved on.”

C.S. Lewis and his friend Owen Barfield had a term for this way of thinking: chronological snobbery,

“the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited. You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood. From seeing this, one passes to the realization that our own age is also "a period," and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them” (Surprised by Joy, chapter 13).

It would be an argument something like this: “People used to believe in a geocentric universe. People also used to believe that fornication was morally wrong. People no longer believe in a geocentric universe. Therefore, people should no longer believe that fornication is morally wrong.” That’s a bit silly, isn’t it? What’s the causal connection between those two things? Is it that simply because times have changed, that means they should have? Where does this sort of thinking come from?

It’s my theory that people are getting their disciplines mixed up. They’re taking what they find to be true in science and applying it to the realm of ethics, which is a bit like trying to play baseball according to the rules of football: “That’s ball four, so it’ll be first and goal for the Giants.” Allow me to explain.

In empirical science, knowledge progresses through a process of formulating hypotheses, gathering data, analyzing that data, and extrapolating to general theories based on the outcome. When new data is gathered, previously held theories may be discarded if they no longer fit the data. Most people have neither the time nor the educational background to personally verify each new scientific discovery, and assume that this mechanism of advancement in knowledge is working as it should; they assume that science progresses. If an old theory isn’t held anymore, it’s because it’s been disproved. People used to believe the universe was held together by ether, or that the sun went around the earth, or that the universe was eternal; but they don’t believe those things anymore, so the scientific method must have eliminated them.

It may be the case that people, consciously or unconsciously, assume that this same sort of process takes place within philosophy, and especially morality. Perhaps they think that each generation of philosophy is a disputation with the previous generation in which the present group logically contradicts the ideas of the old guard, thus advancing our knowledge of the nature of being, or of ethics, or of the very logic being used to argue. If people used to believe in objective truth, or the real correspondence between language and reality, or the immorality of certain acts, but don’t anymore, it must be because these notions have been demonstrated to be false. If people don’t hold an idea anymore, it must have been disproved. …Right?

Really? Can you tell me when and how this occurred? Can you give me the name of the thinker who made this discovery? Can you demonstrate these new philosophical conclusions to me through valid argumentation? If you think you can, by all means, let’s proceed with the discussion; at least then, we’re investigating the matter and thinking about it, and not making the absurd move of pointing to the calendar and proclaiming “QED.” (* “QED” = quod erat demonstrandum, “That which was to be proved,” traditionally used in math and logic at the end of an argument when the conclusion has successfully been demonstrated.) You cannot simply assume that an idea has been reasonably disproved because it has fallen out of favor with “people” (a slippery term itself: Which people? Where? When?).

A person is quite prone to abandoning moral truths if it’s convenient; we need only look at our own lives to see that demonstrated. If enough people find it convenient to abandon the same moral truth for convenience, suddenly “people don’t believe that anymore.” Then if you were to ask someone why they didn’t believe that, say, “shacking up” was immoral, they’d respond with something like, “What? This isn’t the Middle Ages. It’s 2012.” They assume that, because either the mysterious “they” or “people” no longer hold that idea to be true, it must be because someone, somewhere at some time has shown that moral notion to be false, even if they can’t tell you how. “I can’t detail why Einstein’s model replaced Newton’s, but I trust that ‘they’ got it right; I can’t tell you why society has accepted X, Y, and Z that it used to reject, but I trust ‘they’ got it right.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about this phenomenon of chronological snobbery as our country has been engaged in a discussion over whether to re-define the institution of marriage. Well, actually, I wish there were a discussion: then we might actually get somewhere. A discussion would involve stating principles, reviewing arguments and lines of reasoning, considering what the good of the human person and human society is, and the like. But what we seem to get instead is a lot of name-calling (“bigot,” “homophobe,” “Nazi,” etc.); a whole lot of appeals to popular opinion, or rather, the opinions of the popular (“Well, Brad Pitt is in favor of same-sex marriage, shouldn’t you be? I don’t see your name on any Oscar nomination lists”); and an awful lot of chronological snobbery: “That’s so backward. This isn’t the Dark Ages. Be on the right side of history.”

As G.K. Chesterton said, “Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.” Just because an idea suddenly becomes popular does not mean that its contrary has been demonstrated false. But if you think it has, present your reasoning. Let’s examine your premises to see if they’re true. Let’s see if they lead to your conclusion. Let’s have a discussion. Let’s not just say, “It’s 2012.” After all, there are only 40 days left in 2012; if you think you’re right simply because “it’s 2012,” maybe in 2013 you’ll be wrong.

The Week in Review: Hammy Jokes

Not too many events of note to share with you from this last week. It was pretty standard. (I apologize for again not producing a mid-week post, but I've got one sitting on deck, ready to go for this week.) I'll share a few random thoughts and stories:

-- Could someone explain to me why Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, a Frenchman, drinks Earl Grey tea, quotes Shakespeare, and has an English accent? Did the British finally take over France some time before the 24th century?

-- I had the following exchange with a customer in our sandwich shop the other day:

Customer: What is the difference between the ham and the smoked ham?

Me (trying to keep a straight face): Well... one is smoked, and the other isn't.

Customer: OK, so one is smokier than the other?

Me: Um... yeah.

Customer: OK, give me half of each on sourdough.

-- My landlord asked me if I knew any philosophy jokes, so I told him this one: Rene Descartes walks into a bar and orders a few rounds. Near the end of the night, the bartender asks, "Would you like another?" Descartes answers, "I think not." And disappears.

(See, because Descartes' famous line was Cogito ergo sum, "I think, therefore, I am." So the joke is that when he says, "I think not," he would cease to exist because he's no longer thinking [though that's not quite what is meant by the phrase--his point is that he can be sure of his own existence because, were he to doubt his existence, the very act of his doubting means there's someone doing the doubting. Anyway....)

On to the week in class:

Ancient Philosophy: Neo-Platonism has about as much to do with the teachings of Plato as modern-day Lutheranism has to do with the teachings of Martin Luther.

Philosophy of Nature: We've been addressing questions like, "What is time? What is motion? What is space?" You know, the simple, easy stuff. To paraphrase St. Augustine, "I know what it is until somebody asks me." It's the things that are most fundamental, the things we take for granted, that are the most difficult to define or explain. But let's try: both time and motion exist as part of continua. That is, time does not precede as a series of discrete moments, like a series of dots forming a line; nor does motion proceed in such halting steps. They are potentially or theoretically divisible into infinite parts, but not actually divisible in that way. Both time and motion are fluid transitions from something not being the case to something being the case; and indeed, we only know time because of motion, or change. Motion is the measurement of change over time. Combine this with Einstein's theory of relativity, which states that time and speed can only be measured relative to the observer, and we see that there are as many times as there are motions. Yeah, chew on that one for a while. I've spent hours over the last few weeks reading this stuff, and you get it condensed into one neat, hopefully comprehensible paragraph. You're welcome.

Intro to New Testament: "Apocalyptic" is not a word that means "scary," "destructive," or "catastrophic." The Greek word apokalypsis means "the remove the veil, to uncover, to reveal." That's why the Book of Revelation in your granny's old Bible is called "The Book of Apocalypse." We associate that word with the above-mentioned adjectives because, upon a surface reading of the text, we see an awful lot of earthquakes and fires and wrath and famines and plagues and such. These things are secondary to the real core of apocalyptic literature: someday, God is going to right the wrongs in the world, and vindicate those who have been faithful to Him. Sure, that's going to entail a bit of carnage for those who haven't been faithful, but let's not focus on the Four Horsemen so much that we forget the New Jerusalem and the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.

Aristotelian Logic: The more I study logic, the more I become convinced that it ought to be a required subject in high schools. Back in the day, it was part of the basic trivium of grammar, rhetoric, and logic that any person would have to learn before moving on to other subjects; the assumption was that you wouldn't have the ability to understand anything else if you didn't have a grasp of these three. I've found the study of logic to be a great aid to my own thinking. Imagine how different society would be if everyone were well-guarded against fallacious arguments?

The Week in Review: Syllogisms in Flight

Those of you who are attentive to patterns may have noticed that I tend to make two posts per week: one at the weekend describing the previous week's goings-on, and another at mid-week on some topic or other that I felt like expounding upon; you may have further noticed that a mid-week post from me was lacking in the last week. My apologies: it was a busy week, and I didn't have time to work out something decent. I will try to not let that happen this week. Can't let the public down. Either of you.

Apart from the cycle of class-homework-class-work-homework-work-class-etc. that I've settled into, there were a few events of note over the last week. On Tuesday the school put on another Philosophy Movie Night event, in which DSPT student Caleb Brown led the audience through the viewing of a film, pointing out  the storytelling and movie-making techniques being used by the filmmaker to convey the movie's message. That night we watched WALL-E, the Disney/Pixar film about a trash-cleaning robot who falls in love, saving humanity on the way and teaching us something about what it means to be human. I don't want to give too much away for those who haven't seen it, but for those who have seen, and for others when you do see it, think of Noah's Ark, and the movie may take on a whole different meaning for you. (By the way, the writer/director said Noah's Ark was specifically in his mind when writing the story.)

On Thursday I went with a few friends to see Flight, starring Denzel Washington. You may have seen the previews: a pilot makes a daring and amazing emergency crash landing, and admits to having had "a few drinks" the night before the flight. The commercials give the impression that the film might be about some sinister element trying to frame this hero, but really (and I don't think I'm giving too much away), the movie is about this man dealing with his addictions. There's a thread throughout about God acting in people's lives, but it's kind of subtle. Be warned: there are scenes featuring nudity and drug use. The movie can be tough to watch, but I thought it ended with a good message.

I also happened to have a nice little chat with the president of the DSPT, Father Michael Sweeney, OP, earlier this week. We were both in the school's kitchen, eating lunch, and he commented on the weather; we were soon discussing our love of the Pacific Northwest (he's from British Columbia and was pastor of a parish in Seattle for many years), and he asked me about my current studies and future aspirations. Unfortunately, I had to cut the conversation short (I was nearly late for work), but I appreciated the time he took to talk a bit with one of his school's students.

Highlights from class this week:

Philosophy of Nature: It's funny how, when scientific paradigms shift, some can be so derisive of what came before, only to be derided themselves by later generations. Some ancient models of the cosmos placed the earth at the center of the universe. Then someone came along and laughed and said, "How silly; of course, the sun is the center of the universe." Then someone came along and laughed and said, "You fool! Of course, our solar system is on the periphery of the real center of the universe." Then Einstein came along and argued that, according to his relativity theory, there actually is no center of the universe, or just as accurately, that everything is the center of the universe in relation to everything else. Let's us remember humility in the face of the great mysteries which we are trying to unravel.

History of Ancient Philosophy: It's amazing how varied are the backgrounds of ancient philosophers. Socrates was the son of a stone cutter. Aristotle was the son of the court physician to Philip of Macedon. Epictetus was born as a slave. Marcus Aurelius was born a noble and became emperor of Rome. Clear thinking and insight are not birthrights.

Introduction to New Testament: Our professor re-presented a theory of his about which I have written previously, but I realized I left something out. Do you remember the story where Jesus expels from a man demons who call themselves Legion, and they are sent into a herd of swine which then run to the shore and cast themselves into the sea, dying? I had earlier mentioned my professor's theory that this may be an allegory for driving out the Romans, since the standard of the 10th Legion stationed in Judea was a boar's head, and the demon called itself Legion. I omitted this important point: Jesus is the Messiah. The Messiah is one who rights wrongs, who punishes injustice, who re-establishes God's order. There are many references to God casting his people's enemies into the sea, or saving his people "from the raging waters"--think of the Exodus and the parting of the Red Sea. Historically for the Jews, too, the sea was symbolic of danger and chaos: storms, floods, and the invading Phoenicians, Macedonians, and Romans. Put this together with the boar's head of the 10th Legion, and we see this event, not as a political statement, but as a theological one: Jesus is the Messiah, driving the enemies of God's people into the sea.

Aristotelian Logic: We've begun discussing the form of logical argument, the syllogism. A syllogism is an argument with two premises that lead to a conclusion, like:

All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

The class "men" is identified with a characteristic, mortality; since Socrates belongs to this class, he also posses that characteristic.

Beware of arguments, though, that look good, but are really false, like:

All U.S. presidents have been male.
Lincoln was male.
Therefore, Lincoln was a U.S. president.

All three statements are true. And we have a class of people identified with a characteristic, then an individual named as part of that class. It would seem to be like the previous example. But it ain't. Try inserting another person's name in there and see if it works:

All U.S. presidents have been male.
Charlie Chaplin was male.
Therefore, Charlie Chaplin was a U.S. president.

The problem is with the term "male." While it is true that all U.S. presidents have been male, the reverse is not true: not every male has been a U.S. president. This problem is called "the undistributed middle" (perhaps I will tackle distribution in a later post.) If we made that first statement into a negative proposition, then the middle would be distributed, and the syllogism would be valid:

No U.S. president has been a Frenchman.
Napoleon was a Frenchman.
Therefore, Napoleon was not a U.S. president.

Universal negative statements like that have distributed terms (meaning what is said of one is said of all): it is true of every Frenchman that he has not been a president, and it is true of every president that he has not been a Frenchman. Universal affirmative statements do not have distributed terms: It is true of all U.S. presidents that they have been male, but it is not true of every male that he has been president.

Yeah, I should probably go over distribution more in depth at some point. But I hope that made some sense.

The Week in Review: Artists and Cynics

In the balancing act between school and work which I've undertaken, I'm still wobbling a little at times, but I think I'll make it to the other side safely. For some people, having a limited amount of time in which to finish their work sends them into a nail-biting panic. They run in circles and wring their hands and spend an ironic amount of time telling people about how little time they have. Deo gratias, I am not usually that sort of person. Generally, I find that having less time available to me helps to focus me: "OK, I have only two hours to do this reading today" makes me buckle down more than, "OK, I have... all day to do this reading... but it's only three hours until lunch, so... I better just lie down for a bit." It does leave less time for leisure, but there's a positive effect there, too: the less leisure time you have, the more you can appreciate it and enjoy it.

I was nearly social on a couple of occasions this week, but plans fell through. This allowed me to catch up through season 4 of Mad Men; I can see why the show won four consecutive Emmys for Best Drama. I also took the opportunity to watch The Artist, which I thoroughly enjoyed. A film like that is an empirical datum supporting that study which found that 94% of human communication is non-verbal, and an exemplar of the old adage "Actions speak louder than words." Just think of how often you can glean a person's mood, attitude, or reaction to something from their posture, facial expression, or eye contact. Amazing, really.

Highlights from class this week:

Introduction to New Testament: Our professor has expressed his dismay at our class's lack of biblical literacy. I was able to pleasantly surprise him, though, when, one day before class, I was sitting and reading from the Gospel of Mark. The professor walked into the room, saw me reading, and said to me, "Of course, you're reading the Bible," his joke that, naturally, that's what one would be reading before a Bible class tinged by his earlier lamentations (pun intended--get it, it's a book of the Bible!). Then after glancing down at my reading material, said with surprise, "Oh, you are reading the Bible." Happy to oblige.

Aristotelian Logic: A few weeks ago I told you about the logical process of obversion, a process for clearing up confusing language (e.g. turning "No man is a non-factor" into "All men are a factor"). We also recently learned about a related operation, conversion. It sounds pretty simple at first: "No man is an island" also means "No island is a man." "Some Irish are red-heads" also means "Some red-heads are Irish." BUT a universal affirmative statement (e.g. All X are Y) cannot be converted simply, as those others were: "All sparrows are birds" does not mean "All birds are sparrows;" at most we can say that "All sparrows are birds" means that "Some birds are sparrows." You'd be surprised at how often people make a mistake in their thinking by assuming that a universal affirmative can be converted simply. It happens to the best of us.

Philosophy of Nature: We began class by taking a quiz, a highly unusual exercise for this class. There were about twenty statements dealing with Aristotle's philosophy of substantial change, and we were to label them true or false. As we began to correct the quiz, many of the students were getting the answers wrong, and they began to complain that the statements were vague, imprecise, and confusing. The professor simply responded, "Actually, I didn't write these questions, you all did; these are statements taken from your homework assignment from last week." He had contrived the whole thing as an exercise in teaching us to be more precise with our language. My friend and I after class said to each other, "That... was... awesome!" Never have I been so amused by being so humbled.

History of Ancient Philosophy: You're probably familiar with the term "cynic" meaning "a person with a negative or pessimistic outlook." Did you know that there was an ancient philosophical school called the Cynics? And did you know that the name has nothing to do with pessimism? The name derives from the Greek word kynikos, meaning "dog-like." There are a few different theories on how they got stuck with that name, but it's quite possibly connected with their mindset of eschewing conventional social behavior in favor of doing whatever comes naturally, which manifested itself in lewd public acts intended to shock others. You know, like teenagers.

A Very Unique Post

Many know me to be a stickler for correct usage in language. For example, if you use "further" in reference to a physical distance, I will inform you that the word you wish to employ is "farther," but I'd be happy to discuss it further with you. If I ask you where John is and you tell me that "Him and Jack went to the store," I will cringe, mourn the loss of the nominative pronoun, and ask you to let me know when he and Jack get back.

Yeah, I'm that guy. I'm not proud of it. Recently I've tried to curtail my corrections to those instances that actually hinder understanding, as opposed to every case of impropriety. But my purpose in this brief post is different. Today, I aim my fire at the hyper-correcter.

You know these people. These are the ones who think that "me" can never be used in conjunction with another noun, and will chastise you for saying, "He gave a dollar to Sam and me." "Uh, I'm sorry, but it should be 'Sam and I,'" they'll say, the wattage of their condescending smile powered by the energy of their own sense of self-satisfaction. Next time that happens, you may politely inform them that since sentence calls for an object pronoun, "me" is correct; you can further enlighten them with the rule-of-thumb of dropping the conjoined noun and seeing how one would construct the sentence then: "'He gave a dollar to me.' Oh. I see."

Another example is on my mind at the moment. It may prove controversial, but I think it speaks to a deeper philosophical and theological truth.

"This is a very unique blog post."

Scoff McOvercorrecter would see that sentence and start having involuntary spasms. "Excuse me, but 'unique' means 'one-of-a-kind,' 'nothing like it,' so there's no way to qualify that: something is either unique or it isn't."

I think that's wrong. I think that's wrong in an important way.

Take the following number sequences:

12345
12234
12223

Each of these sequences is unique in comparison to the others because no two sequences are exactly alike; they are different, unrepeated. And yet it would be perfectly sensible to say that the first sequence is "more unique" than the other two because it repeats no numbers within itself, whereas the second and third sequences repeat the number 2. The last two share a characteristic with each other that they don't share with the first, and yet they are truly unique despite that commonality.

Or say you had three golden retrievers in front of you. Each one is a different entity, and is unique in that sense; there is no other dog that is that dog. Yet one dog is considerably bigger than the other two and has a scar on its snout from a fight with a raccoon. All of the dogs are unique, but that one is more unique than the others; if it had six legs, it would be very unique among dogs.

When we use the phrase "more unique" or "very unique," we are recognizing that the thing we are describing 1) is an individual which belongs to a set (it's a species in a genus, for you Aristotelians), 2) shares many traits with other things in that set, but 3) that thing also has features which set it apart from that set. We are acknowledging the gradations of likeness and unlikeness between things.

The over-correcter would like to say that "unique" means "one-of-a-kind" in an absolute sense, but only God could properly be described in this way. God does not belong to a genus or species. God has no equal. And yet, God is still "like" other things in some ways; or rather, things are like God in some ways. Anything that exists has some relation to other things that exists. This is called "the analogy of being." It is because of the analogy of being that we can have any knowledge of God, or really, any abstract or conceptual knowledge of anything.

If anything were truly "absolutely unique," if no analogy could be made between it and anything else, you could not know it. You would have no mental categories in which to place it. You would have no way to describe or define it. After all, when someone asks you to describe something, what do they say: "What's it like?" That's asking for an analogy. Saying something is unique only prompts the question, "As compared to what?" If you take away the ability to compare (analogy), you then take away the ability to call something unique. It's a self-defeating proposition.

So, to conclude: if you're one of those people who say that you can't qualify "unique," like saying "very unique" or "more unique," the consequence of your position is that we can have no conceptual knowledge of anything, and no knowledge of God. Do you really want to say that? I doubt many people would take that position; if you did, you'd be very unique.

(There may well be a hole in this argument that a baby elephant could comfortably hide in, as I have not had a coursework in epistemology or metaphysics as of yet, and may be a little out of my depth, but it makes sense to me. Please do feel free to charitably point out any errors you spot.)

The Week in Review: Angelic Research

Dear Readers (both of you),

I'm afraid there isn't too terribly much to report this week. No classes met this week, as it was what the school has termed Reading Week, ostensibly intended to give students a wee bit of time and space to do research for big end-of-semester projects, or perhaps to just catch up on reading for classes. 

I was able to get a good deal of work done on two of my impending projects. In Introduction to New Testament, I'm doing a bibliography project (meaning I have to research and find twenty or so books and/or academic articles concerning my topic and write a brief paper on how I would proceed were I to be writing a full paper) on the way in which angels serve as models for human behavior in the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. That is, in Luke and Acts there are many instances in which angels appear and do or say things, then people go and do likewise. Consider things like: the angelic host praising and adoring God that appears to the shepherds, followed by the shepherds going to the Christ-child and... praising and adoring God; or the angel who ministers to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, followed by... Mary standing by Jesus at the cross; or the two angels appearing to the women at the tomb telling them that Jesus had risen, followed by the women... going to the Apostles and telling them that Jesus had risen; or Stephen preaching God's word, God's message (making Stephen a messenger, or angelos), and the text of Acts saying, "His face appeared like an angel's." There's a lot there, I think, as did my professor, apparently, who suggested the idea. I have to keep digging.

My other project is a long research paper for Philosophy of Nature. I'm writing on the development between the time of Aristotle and Aquinas of the idea that the celestial bodies (i.e. planets and stars) were moved by some sort of "intelligent substances," which Aquinas deemed to be angels. This wasn't just some poetic notion, "Oh, the stars are pushed along by fat baby cherubs." Not at all. It actually begins with a very sensible principle. Aristotle believed that all motion was for reaching some end or purpose; in essence, motion is for getting somewhere. Seems reasonable enough, right? He thought that things had their natural places toward which they would tend when set in motion. So, cannonballs, being made of "earthy" substances, would tend toward the earth, while fire or heat would rise toward the heavens, toward the eternal fires burning up there. But this presented a problem when dealing with the movements of the heavens, because they just seemed to keep going round and round, not reaching any sort of destination. If natural motion always goes towards some destination, and the heavens weren't moving toward a destination, then their motion couldn't be natural motion; something had to be pushing them, something that had its own purpose, so it had to be intelligent. Aquinas, with no sound scientific reason to reject Aristotle's physics, saw this notion of "intelligent substances" moving the heavens, took the Christian notion that God governs creation via the angels, and put two and two together: these "intelligent substances" moving the spheres must be the angels! Now fast-forward 800 years, with the advances in astronomy and physics made by Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein, and we're pretty sure that the planets and stars move due to their following the paths shaped by the way in which space-time is warped by the mass of other bodies, that is, gravitation. Angels aren't needed as agents of motion in the heavens... but that doesn't mean they don't still exercise some governance over them. There's a great depiction of this idea in C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. Check them out some time.

The attentive reader may have noticed that both of my research topics involve angels in some way. They suggest here that one use their papers and projects to develop potential thesis topics. I'm considering doing something or other on angels, but I've still got a few years before I have to nail anything down definitively. I could research my roommates contention that "Every time the San Francisco Giants lose, an angel gets its wings" (he's a big Dodgers fan), which I find to be theologically problematic in a number of ways, but there may not be too much scholarship on the subject. (For the sarcasm-detection-impaired, I clarify that that was a joke.) We'll see.

Well, I managed to crank out more than I anticipated. Hope it makes some sense to you.

The Three Methods of Persuasion

Aristotle, he of such nicknames as “The Stagirite” (which refers to his birthplace, Stagira), “The Philosopher” (which St. Thomas Aquinas calls him in his works, but only when he agrees with him), or “Ari” or “Telly” to his friends, wrote on nearly every topic one could imagine: ethics, physics, metaphysics, biology, zoology, poetry… I’m surprised he didn’t release a cookbook. Today’s focus will be on another area, rhetoric, and specifically on the three ways or “proofs” into which Aristotle classified all persuasive speech. Then you’ll be able not only to use these yourself, but to defend yourself against the persuasive attempts of others, be they politicians or used car salesmen (but I repeat myself).

Aristotle said that all persuasive speech can be divided into three categories:

Logos, “the appeal to reason”: We could perhaps also call this, “Use your head!” In this sort of appeal, the speaker uses facts, figures, arguments, graphs, charts, principles, axioms, and any other method aimed at the gray matter between your ears to persuade you to adopt the speaker’s viewpoint.

Pathos, “the appeal to emotion”: We could call this, “Have a heart!” Here the speaker’s objective is to tug at your heartstrings, to incite an emotional response in you, to make you feel what they feel (or, more cynically, what they want you to feel). The aim is not to induce your head to make a calculation, but rather to put you in the emotional state the speaker thinks will compel you to adopt the speaker’s viewpoint.

Ethos, “the appeal to the integrity of the speaker”: We could perhaps call this, “Listen to your gut.” Strangely, this method often has little to do with the subject matter at hand, but instead adduces the speaker’s own trustworthiness as the criterion of persuasion. “Trust me,” “You know who I am,” “We’ve been through a lot together,” and other such phrases are typical of this type of appeal. Aristotle says that this appeal is the most powerful method of persuasion.

Let’s use a concrete example to illustrate these: taxes! Who doesn’t love a good ol’ debate on tax policy, right? It has all the excitement of a root canal and all the clarity of Gabby Johnson’s speech from Blazing Saddles. But let’s examine some typical persuasive speech on tax policy and see what we can see.

Logos: “If we keep taxes low, it will encourage businesses to grow, which means hiring more workers, which means more incomes to tax, which actually means more revenue for the government. After all, what’s a larger number: 45% of 100, or 36% of 200?” (The speaker argues that, granted his premise that low taxes means more hiring and thus more income to be taxed, that a smaller percentage of a higher number produces a greater result than a higher percentage of a lower number.)

OR: “My opponent’s numbers don’t add up. Besides, it is not guaranteed that lower taxes will necessarily make businesses hire more people, so we ought not to rely on that.” (The speaker counter-argues by challenging that premise, saying that there is no logically necessary connection between low taxes and increased revenue.)

Pathos: “The middle class is suffering in this country, while the rich take advantage of loopholes to pay less. Companies make higher profits than ever before, while you struggle to put food on the table, or send your kids to college. Enough is enough! The wealthy need to pay their fair share!” (The speaker is appealing to the listener’s desire for justice, or the speaker is trying to stir up feelings of envy.)

OR: “The government is trying to take away your hard-earned money to feed the bureaucratic fat cats in Washington! Your money belongs to, not to the federal government! What’s fair is for you to be able to keep as much of your earnings as possible.” (The speaker is appealing to the listener’s desire for security, or the speaker is trying to stir up feelings of fear.)

Ethos: “I’m a businessman with 30 years of experience, and I’ve successfully run a state, a hospital, a prison, and in one case, a state prison hospital. I know what it takes to be successful, to balance a budget.” (Here the speaker, appealing to his past success, asks you to trust him in making decisions.)

OR: “According to the non-partisan Institute for the Advanced Study of Things and Stuff, my opponent’s plan will increase the debt by eleventy-gajillion dollars by next Thursday.” (Here the speaker appeals to the prestige of an institution as a reason to trust what he says.)

After looking at these examples, can you tell why is ethos the most persuasive type of argument? Logos relies on the audience’s ability or willingness to follow a complex argument, or apprehend a large amount of data, or accept the premises of your argument as true: many times an audience is unwilling or unable to do this, or they get lost in the attempt. With pathos, one must realize how slippery it can be to try to manipulate someone’s emotions: you may not produce the effect you intended. With ethos, the task is somewhat simpler: all you have to do is get the audience to trust you. They don’t have to wade through a morass of syllogisms and propositions; they don’t have to be carefully led to the proper emotional state; they simply have to believe that you would tell them the truth. And when people trust you enough, they’ll go along with what you say, whether or not they totally understand it, as a child with a parent, a student with a teacher, a novice with a mentor. And because it is so powerful, when it backfires, things can go horribly, horribly wrong. If the audience finds that the speaker was lying to them, that betrayal can diminish the audience’s ability to trust anyone. If the an immoral speaker uses that trust to manipulate people, we can see evil on the scale of Nazi Germany, the genocide in Rwanda, or that of Charles Manson or Jim Jones, all of whom led people to do the unthinkable.

To quote Father Christmas in the film version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, “These are tools, not toys. Bear them well.” You can appeal to someone’s reason validly, or you can use fallacious arguments to trick them. You can appeal to their emotions to make them feel the true weight of the matter at hand, or you can manipulate them into a malleable state, ready to do your bidding. You can appeal to someone’s trust in you to make them see when they wouldn’t otherwise understand, or you can use it to stab them in the back. Be careful how you use them.