Response 6 Rhetoric
Posted by chriskurz on April 16, 2008
Chris Kurz
ENG 121
Response 6
Rhetoric and the art of persuasion is an art form that not everyone can execute. For some people, they find it boring in its debate-like manner. For others they are too easily trapped in their own words and thus unable to persuade others. There are those, however, that truly excel in the art of rhetoric. We call these people stubborn.
In order to become the best at anything a person must have a little bit of a competitive nature. Otherwise, it is too easy to accept losing or not performing well. True rhetoricians do not accept that they are unable to persuade people. They will learn everything they can about a variety of subjects so they are armed with more intellectual defenses than the people they choose to try to persuade. As Han Fei Tzu wrote, “On the whole, the difficult thing about persuasion is to know the mind of the person one is trying to persuade and to be able to fit one’s words to it” (558). Once you know the mind you are up against it is just a question of manipulating that mind properly. Sometimes this calls for the rhetorician to argue a point that he knows to be false.
This ability to work around may be the whole truth in order to prove a point is key to rhetoric. It also involves being stubborn enough to persuade somebody to listen to an argument even though this argument may be false. Experts in rhetoric are able to pull this off without getting trapped in their appeals to each person’s ego. They are able to manipulate the mind of the person they are trying to persuade by making them feel like they are right even when they are wrong. If a rhetorician does get caught they must staunchly defend their stance or their credibility with that person is forever doomed. This requires even more stubbornness; however, if the person is really good at what they do it is hard to realize they are acting this way. That is enough to make me crazy for the rest of the day.
