Pathos (from πάσχειν paschein, the Greek word meaning "to suffer" or "emotion") is one of the three modes of persuasion in rhetoric (along with ethos and logos). Pathos appeals to the audience's emotions. It is a part of Aristotle's philosophies in rhetoric.

Emotional appeal can be accomplished in a multitude of ways:

• by metaphor or story telling, common as a hook,
• by a general passion in the delivery and an overall amount of emotional items in the text of the speech,
• and as a closing device, where pathos can be particularly powerful.

These are qualities of a fictional or nonfictional work that evoke sorrow or pity. Overemotionalism can be the result of an excess of pathos. See also: Rhetoric

In rhetoric, pathos is the use of emotional appeals to alter the audience's judgement. A common use of pathos in argument is creating a sense of rejection if the audience doesn't agree. Creating a fear of rejection is in essence, creating a pathos argument.

Princeton's Wordnet ^* defines pathos as:

• poignancy (a quality that arouses emotions (especially pity or sorrow))
• commiseration, pity, ruth (a feeling of sympathy and sorrow for the misfortunes of others)
• a style that has the power to evoke feelings

The term is still commonly used in this context by film or theatrical critics, especially in positive reference to the dramatic performances of actors.

However, it is important to note that "pathos" is also a very subversive tool used in the art of manipulating the human senses.

Let us for example take into account the following passage from the astute philosophy of Friedrich Nietzche.

Every elevation of the type 'man' has hitherto been the work of an aristocratic society and so it will always be: a society which believes in a long scale of orders of rank and differences of worth between man and man and needs slavery in some sense or other. Without the "pathos" of distance such as develops from the incarnate differences of classes, from the ruling caste's constant looking out and looking down on subjects and instruments and from its equally constant exercise of obedience and command, its holding down and holding at a distance, that other, more mysterious "pathos" could not have developed either, that longing for an ever-increasing widening of distance within the soul itself, the formation of ever higher, rarer, more remote, tenser, more comprehensive states, in short precisely the elevation of the type 'man', the continual 'self-overcoming of man', to take a moral formula in a supra-moral sense. Beyond Good and Evil, 257

Here we see an almost equisite use of the word pathos which has been used not as a definition of excellence but as a condition of excellence, thereby leading the reader into the illusion that without imposing the condition of "pathos" on human excellence there is no difference between the higher type of man and the lower type of man. Such a "pathos" of distance between man and man is anything if not unnatural. The purpose of the word itself in such terms is designed to make the reader emotionally disposed to the notion that without their own "pathos" of distance they cannot distinguish the Higher man in themselves from the Lower man in themselves. This is clearly an emotionally manipulative excercise in the power of the use of the word "pathos."

Note as above:the term is still commonly used in this context by film or theatrical critics, especially in positive reference to the dramatic performances of actors.

Naturally Critics are still disposed to expressing their own type of Higher critique from that of the Lower critique, hence the appropritaion of "Pathos" as a tool of critical evaluation at a comfortable distance.

Rhetoric

Pathos | Pathos | Pathos | פאתוס | Patos | Пафос (риторика)