Propaganda and Persuasion

Chapter 1 What Is Propaganda, and How Does It Differ From Persuasion?

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Aristotle, the great philosopher and social interpreter of fourth-century Greece, produced many classical works about the nature of ideas and people. The work that is seminal in the field of persuasion is Rhetoric (L. Cooper, 1932). Although Aristotle studied with Plato at the academy and embraced many ideas that Plato expressed in the Phaedrus, Rhetoric tends to be detached from issues of morality. Rather, it is an amoral and scientific analysis of rhetoric, defined as "the faculty of discovering in the particular case what are the available means of persuasion" (L. Cooper, 1932, p. 7). Yet, in Rhetoric, Aristotle establishes the concept of credibility (ethos) as a form of proof and mode of persuasion. Ethos, an artistic proof established within the discourse itself, provides the audience with insight into the persuader's character, integrity, and goodwill. Other forms of proof are emotional appeal (pathos) and the speech itself, its reasoning and arguments (logos), defined by Aristotle as "when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth from such means of persuasion as are appropriate to a particular subject" (cited in L. Cooper, 1932, p. 9). Central to the study of rhetoric is the audience, which Aristotle classified and analyzed. Logic is established through audience participation in an interactive reasoning process. Known as the enthymeme, this practical device is regarded by many as a syllogism with some part or parts missing. In fact, the enthymeme enables the persuader and persuadees to co-create reasoning by dialectically coming to a conclusion. It requires the audience mentally to fill in parts of the reasoning process, thus stimulating involvement. Aristotle regarded the enthymeme as a way of guarding truth and justice against falsehood and wrong. He believed that audiences could not follow close and careful logical reasoning related to universal truths but could participate in reasoning related to probability in the sphere of human affairs. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle dealt with his expectations for high moral principles and analyzed virtue and vice to provide strategies for ethos, or character of the speaker. With regard to persuasion, he indicated that a crafty person could artfully manipulate the instruments of rhetoric for either honest or dishonest ends. Depending on which end is desired, the use of rhetorical devices is judged accordingly: "If . . . the aim be good, the cleverness is praiseworthy; but if it be bad, it becomes craft" (cited in Browne, 1850, VI, pp. xii, 8). MacCunn (1906) interpreted this to mean that the Aristotelian thesis postulates that "cleverness and character must strike alliance" (p. 298). MacCunn also saw Aristotle's general point of view as judging the means according to the ends sought: "He who would win the harper's skill must win by harping; he who would write, by writing; he who would heal the sick by healing them. In these, as indeed in all the arts, faculty is begotten of function, and definite proclivity comes of determinate acts" (p. 301). Aristotle believed that the ethics of rhetoric could be judged by the speaker's intent, the means used in