In Rhetoric, Aristotle makes it plainly clear that rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic. Rhetoric is the art of persuasive speaking using argumentative modes of discourse. Enthymeme is a term Aristotle uses to represent a manner of reasoning from a premise that is only probably true. Enthymeme and example makeup the components of rhetorical argument. According to Aristotle, “Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion” (Bizzell 153).
There are various modes of persuasion, but not all of them belong to the art of Rhetoric from Aristotle’s perspective. Of those that do belong to the art of rhetoric, Aristotle proposes three elements or divisions the speaker must bring to the rhetorical argument: ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos has to do with the ability of the speaker to bring credibility to his speech. Pathos is the ability of the speaker to set the emotional tone of his audience. Logos represents the degree of truth the speaker is able to lend to his argument through proof “Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker, the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind, the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself” (Bizzell 153).
The connection of rhetoric to philosophy is that the enthymeme is akin to the rhetorical syllogism while the example is a rhetorical induction “When we base the proof on a number of similar cases, this is induction in dialectic, example in rhetoric; when it is shown that, certain propositions being true, a further and quite distinct proposition must also be true in consequence, whether invariably or usually, this is called syllogism in dialectic, enthymeme in rhetoric” (Bizzell 154). One of the challenges of rhetoric is th
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