Is the persuasive use of emotions a form of manipulation? Should our public institutions, assemblies, and committees discourage passionate speech? Or is that politically harmful, silencing the most vulnerable? On what principled basis might persuasive emotional speech be defended? Recent decades have seen a resurgence of interest in Aristotle’s views on the emotions. But most of the new research has neglected his original purpose in analyzing them: persuasion. How does emotional persuasion work, according to Aristotle? And how can the arousal of emotion be defended as a beneficial part of public deliberation? This talk offers a picture of Aristotle’s understanding of how persuasion is achieved through emotion-arousal. It identifies two mechanisms that Aristotle seems to have in view. In one the representational contents of emotions provide premises for arguments. In the other, the emotions serve to fix the subject’s attention on their objects. We will consider the prospects for defending each of these against the charge that using emotions in this way is manipulative.
Jamie Dow is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leeds. He is a specialist in Ancient Philosophy and Applied Ethics. He has played a leading role in the development and growth of the IDEA Ethics Centre in Leeds since 2006, soon after its inception. After graduating from Oxford with a degree in Classics, he worked in management in the textiles industry and then in management consultancy, and continues to be interested in those sectors. He then undertook graduate work in philosophy at King’s College London, and the University of St Andrews. His main research interests are in ancient rhetoric and psychology, and in the ethics of leadership, persuasion, and influence in our own time. He is working on two books, one on ancient rhetoric, the other on the ethics of leadership today. His previous work includes Passions and Persuasion in Aristotle’s Rhetoric (OUP 2015), and numerous articles in various scholarly journals and collections.
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