In the first section of Book 2, Aristotle discusses the various emotions which he feels speakers must be familiar with in order to “affect the giving of decisions” in their audience (Ch 1, Para 2). Aristotle was keenly aware that emotions play a huge role in our evaluation of reality, noting that “when people are feeling friendly and placable, they think one sort of thing; when they are feeling angry or hostile, they think either something totally different or the same thing with a different intensity." (Ch 1, Para 2). Thus, it is the duty of the orator to “put his hearers… into the right frame of mind” (Ch1, Para 2).
Then, Aristotle proceeds with his categorization: He describes various emotions, each with its various components and its counterpart. Interestingly, Aristotle diverges considerably from his predecessors, Plato and Socrates, who were generally critical of the exercise of civic rhetoric, and especially contemptuous of it being practiced in a manipulative way. Aristotle, on the other hand, crafted a sort of “how-to guide” for manipulating the audience’s emotions. Aristotle’s appreciation for the emotions reminded me of the introduction to the Longaker-Walker chapter on Affect. Just as Aristotle diverged from his peers with his more amenable attitude toward rhetoric, we see modern groups of psychologists, neurologists and anthropologists diverging from the preexisting consensus that our judgments are (or should be) guided solely by logic.
For each emotion that he identifies-Anger(Calm), Friendship(Enmity), Fear(Confidence), Shame(Shamelessness), Kindness(Unkindness), Pity(Indignation) and Envy(Emulation)- Aristotle gives his readers hints about how to arouse these emotions in their audience. While there's potential for a good moral debate over whether it was admirable of Aristotle to give these “weapons” to rhetors in the first place, I’m most interested in his thoughts on pity.
Aristotle defines pity as “a feeling of pain caused by the sight of some evil, destructive or painful, which befalls one who does not deserve it, and which we might expect to befall ourselves or some friends of ours, and moreover to befall us soon.” (Book 2, Ch 8, Para 1). He feels that pity is only attainable when we are “capable of supposing that some evil may happen to us or some friends of ours” (Ch 8, Para 1). This doesn’t match up well with my concept of pity. Specifically, I agree with everthing quoted above except the necessity of a prospect that the person feeling pity might at some point suffer the same hardships as the one they pity. For example, for our enargeia assignment I chose to write about Desiree Jennings, a once-beautiful cheerleader who had suffered a crippling neurological disorder as a result of a flu shot. I can’t imagine fearing, even on an unconscious level, that I would ever be in Desiree’s circumstances. I seldom get flu shots, and I lack a number of things that I would need to be a professional cheerleader. Did I still pity Desiree? I think so.
Here’s another example: When earthquakes struck Haiti and Chile early last year, philanthropists from developed nations responded instantly. Within 4 days of Haiti’s disaster, over $4.5 million had been given to Oxfam for relief. However, within 3 days of Chile’s disaster, Oxfam had received only $55,300, about a tenth of that donated for Haiti. William Winter notes that “other philanthropic organizations have reported similar outcomes.” (Winter, para 2). Why such a discrepancy? After all, the magnitude of the Chilean earthquake was over ten times higher on the Richter Scale. Winter attributes this to the fact that Chile is much wealthier, with a per capita GDP more than ten times greater than that of Haiti. (Para 3). I would argue that these donations are largely a product of pity. People, we might assume, donated money because of a “feeling of pain caused by the sight of some evil, destructive or painful, which befalls one who does not deserve it…”. But did they do so because we expect that such evil “might… befall ourselves or some friends of ours, and moreover…soon.”? (Ch 8, Para 1). Did they do so because Haitians are “like us in age, character, disposition, social standing, or birth”? (Ch 8, Para 3). Given their respective per capita GDPs, we resemble Chileans more than Haitians.
Aristotle’s version of pity seems to be limited to empathy. I disagree with his general idea that we only pity people who are in circumstances which we could reasonably fear for ourselves-that version of pity is too self-serving for me (it’s more like an emotional insurance policy than true compassion). Our society is radically different from ancient Greece. Perhaps people were generally more selfish in those days. Doubtlessly, the importance of demographic stratification was remarkably greater to ancient Greeks than it is to us. Nonetheless, I pity Desiree, and the Haitians, and I’m not planning on throwing on a cheerleading uniform or practicing voodoo anytime soon.
Works Cited
Aristotle. Rhetoric. Trans W. Rhys Roberts. New York: Dover Publications, 2004.
Winter, William. “Chilean earthquake sees less fundraising than continued Haiti effort.” The
Tufts Daily.Tufts University. 17 Mar. 2010. Web. 31 Jan. 2011. <http://www.tuftsdaily.com/features/chilean-earthquake-sees-less-fundraising-than-continued-haiti-effort-1.2193752>
You captured really well what I felt a few times while reading-- a lot of his assessment of emotion was very self-serving. I hope that was because he was writing a how-to guide and not because these were his personal feelings all the time!
ReplyDeleteIn terms of the Haiti & Chile earthquakes, I would think the timing has a lot to do with it, too-- the Haitian earthquake was a month earlier, and donations had already been free-flowing before disaster struck Chile. I would be as inclined to blame emotional overexposure, so to speak, as I would GDP for people having less pity-- there is a limit to how much misery our brains can process, and how much emotion we can expend, before the mind steps in to protect itself and we get desensitized.
I really like your point about how Aristotle basically tells his readers how to manipulate people. He does, at one point, say that ideally an orator would make his point using just the bare facts... then continues anyway.
ReplyDeleteWhile thinking of this, I re-read some of his other work. Particularly his writings on paternalism (which he supported), and came to wonder if he was writing this to serve those purposes, and not for the common man.
Either way, it's something to think about.
So perhaps Aristotle's definition should be expanded to include sympathy as well as empathy. I wonder though, how much the differing reactions were due to media coverage instead of how much we pitied those involved in the disasters. I might be wrong because my memory has been known to be less than stellar, but I remember there being significantly less coverage of the Chilean earthquake than the one in Haiti. For Haiti we were receiving vivid images of rubble and disaster, dramatic stories of search and rescue, and video of people left homeless and destitute by the earthquake. The coverage for the Chilean earthquake was nowhere near that caliber. Could the lack of emotional images have effected our response the Chilean disaster? Anyways, just something interesting to think about.
ReplyDeleteI like your examples of how we can pity someone without fearing that their situation could happen to us. While in some instances, I can see where Aristotle is coming from, ex. feeling pity for someone who is homeless; but his view does seem to take on more of a selfish component. You are right though that Greeks were living in a much different time then us. With cities being much more enclosed and dangers being extremely prevalent, there may have been a greater chance that the undeserved evil that was done to someone you know would be done to you as well. In a sense, we can almost view pity as an evolutional product. Those who pitied others may have survived more because they took extra precautions after seeing the pain and suffering that others went through.
ReplyDeleteI thought your thoughts on pity and compassion were exceptionally compelling. I wonder what you think that is fundamental or universal about feelings that provoke pity? Or what causes varying degrees of compassion to be evoked by different experiences?
ReplyDeleteDo you think that Aristotle is not correct though that events which seem like they could more likely occur to us are more affective? For example it seems the elements writers put into characters to make them easier to identify with, bring them down a level and hit closer to home evoke stronger responses by audiences. I think you're write to say it is wrong to be exclusive about the scope of what we can feel in such a dogmatic fashion because the human imagination can imagine being in nearly any situation.
@JP Miller: To answer your question, of course. I think that events which could occur to us are more effective(at arousing pity/compassion) precisely because they're more affective(they elicit a knee-jerk emotional reaction. And the tendency to make a story's protagonist relate-able is certainly connected to our predisposition to feel compassionate toward those like us. I'm just arguing that the world has changed. Barbarians aren't storming the gates(to borrow from Donah's insight), so our well-being doesn't necessarily depend upon a self-serving version of pity. No doubt, that sort of pity is easier to emotionally elicit, but I think an new, more genuine version of pity has more bearing on the modern world-one in which our only connection with the pitied is our mortality, or our sentience.
ReplyDeleteI think you make a good point about Aristotle's definition of pity being limited to empathy and also about what others have said about Greek life influencing his definition. Aristotle does say in line 1386 that "generally, we feel pity whenever we are in the condition of remembering that similar misfortunes have happened to us or ours, or expecting them to happen in future" (Aristotle 77). Given Greek life during Aristotle's time, I think his assessment is not that far off although it's certainly a bit dated for today's standards.
ReplyDeleteI think an important point that Aristotle makes about pity is that "In order to feel pity we must also believe in the goodness of at least some people; if you think nobody good, you will believe that everybody deserves evil fortune" (Aristotle 77). I'm inclined to think this point is still true today; I don't think I'd pity a child molester who got hit by a bus.