Aristotle, Ethos, and Tiger Woods

Ethos in Action

Here's the thing. If you're still here after reading my last blog post on Aristotle, there has to be a reason for that. Maybe (I hope)  you found value in what I had to say. Maybe you felt an emotional attachment to the material (even if it was just giggling at pictures of Doctor Who). Or maybe you felt like you got a sense of me as a person, and you decided you wanted to hear more. From that person. The "me" of the blogosphere.

Ta-da! You've just defined ethos.

Ethos is one of Aristotle's basic rhetorical categories, and any argument that hinges on the character of the speaker is using it. Aristotle puts it like this: "We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is..." In other words, we believe good men because they are good, not because they are experts. And this gets really interesting in modern culture. Consider, for example, the curious case of Tiger Woods.