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>
