this has little to deal with substantive part of your post (addressing
issues of wwII) but as a rhetoric teacher, i felt compelled to share a
brief alternative to what your english teacher taught you.
the three "ways of forming an argument" you mention-- logos, ethos, and
pathos-- should not be looked at as three separate entities or choices
in writing. i, and many others, usually refer to this "trinity" as the
rhetorical triangle. every argument (and i would argue any form of
communication) features all three of these qualities. the trick as a
writer is to be aware of you goal/purpose of writing and know who your
audience is (even though you may not be sure what choices you're going
to make to "achieve" your goal).
as a general rule of thumb, it's best to keep this triangle balanced.
adding too much to one of these "ways" necessarily affects the other
two, sometimes adversely, because they're all connected. for example, an
argument that is steeped in logical, straightforwardness may present the
writer to the audience as credible because he/she sounds like an
authority (i.e., a formal, detached style), the writer possessing ethos
(which i prefer over "ethics"); but, at the same time, the audience may
feel that the writing is extremely dull, offering no connection to the
message, not compelling or exciting, with no appeal to the reader's
sympathy for the argument. in other words, there is little pathos
(which i prefer over "emotion").
not to sound too much like aristotle, the goal of all communication is
persuasion at some level, argumentation being the highest. logic is
just as manipulative as emotion. pirsig is a perfect example of this
(i'll let this speak for itself). an argument which employs strong
logos convinces the reader because he/she can follow the writer's line
of reasoning. such writing shows connection (know as transitions)
between sentences and between paragraphs. argumments that are
coherrent-- defines its terms, are organized, have a sense of flow--
will be more likely to persuade the audience to understand or accept the
writer's argument (sometimes a call to action), especially if ethos and
pathos are present (but it depends on the audience). an illogical plan
rarely gets accepted; but it may if it is steeped in pathos ("sappy,"
the checker's speech) and/or ethos ("controling," James Jones comes to
mind, the cult of personality, or charisma; my favorite is from the
commercial "i'm not a doctor, but i play one on tv.").
sorry this is such a long "lecture." i truly didn't intend it to be. i
apologize for my verbosity or any "correcting" tone that may accompany
it.
jamie
ps can anyone find the elements of the rhetorical triangle at work here?
Mary wrote:
>
> Hi David & MD,
>
> I really don't know where this subject is going to end up, but I can't help
> interjecting some comments on your recent post, David.
>
> In an English class one time we discussed 3 different ways of forming an
> argument. Logos is an appeal to logic, ethos an appeal to ethics or values,
> and pathos is an emotional appeal, such as Nixon's Checkers speech. We learned
> that an appeal to logic is the only one of the 3 that doesn't have some
> manipulative element to it.
>
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