Rhetoric and Emotion (original) (raw)

2007, Worthington/A Companion

If you wish to consult an ancient Greek or Roman discussion of the emotions, the place to look is not-as one might have expected-in a treatise on psychology, or in classical terms, 'On the Soul' (for example, Aristotle's De anima), but rather an essay on rhetoric. First and foremost, on the Greek side, there is Aristotle's own Rhetoric, with its detailed treatment, in Book 2, of a dozen or more different passions. In Latin literature, Cicero examines the emotions in his youthful De inventione, as well as in other essays on oratory, although he also treats them at some length in his philosophical dialogue, The Tusculan Disputations (especially Books 3 and 4). As late as the third century AD, a certain Apsines-if that is his true name 1-surveyed the emotions in elaborate detail as part of an extensive handbook on rhetoric (only a portion survives, chiefly the part dealing with pity). It is not difficult to see why the emotions were of interest to writers on rhetoric. If an orator was to be convincing, he had to know how to arouse or allay the passions of his audience, whether in the courtroom, the Assembly, or some other public forum, and the composers of manuals duly undertook to catalogue the best ways of doing so. This, in turn, required at least an elementary understanding of what emotions are and how they function. The emotions may also affect human behavior in general, which is why they are discussed at least to some extent in treatises on ethics, for example Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. But the close connection between rhetoric and the emotions in ancient Greece was not merely an accident of scientific compartmentalization. Classical Greece was an intensely verbal culture, and from the very beginning of Greek literature it is words that are the stimuli to emotion: Achilles' great wrath in the Iliad is a consequence of what he considers an intolerable insult on the part of Agamemnon, and the events that lead to Achilles' fateful withdrawal from the battle at Troy take the form of speeches. The intimate connection between emotion and discourse, in turn, contributed decisively to the way the Greeks conceived of and defined both emotion in general and the several specific passions. Richard Lazarus, one of the founders of the modern 'appraisal theory' of the emotions, which takes Worthington / Companion to reek Rhetoric 1405125519_4_027