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Pathos reconsidered from the

perspective of classical Chinese
rhetorical theories
a
Mary M. Garrett
a
Assistant Professor of Communication , The Ohio State
University ,
Published online: 05 Jun 2009.

To cite this article: Mary M. Garrett (1993) Pathos reconsidered from the perspective
of classical Chinese rhetorical theories, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 79:1, 19-39, DOI:
10.1080/00335639309384017

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 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH
79 (1993): 19-39

PATHOS RECONSIDERED FROM THE

PERSPECTIVE OF CLASSICAL CHINESE
RHETORICAL THEORIES
Mary M. Garrett

I n a 1984 article Michael Hyde observed that [o]nly a few communication

scholars in recent years have attempted to develop anything even close to a
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systematic philosophical appreciation of emotion."1 More recently Barbara Warnick

noted that "[t]he urge to elevate the logical element of rhetoric and to devalue its
emotive dimensions has been irresistible to many theorists and critics.. . . The
tendency in contemporary rhetorical theory to emphasize logos and deprecate pathos
and ethos has been well documented."2 Arguing along similar lines, Thomas Conley
has claimed that contemporary rhetorical theorists are so fixated on logos (as
represented by the enthymeme) that they have slighted those elements more closely
associated with pathos, most notably style.3 Craig Smith and Michael Hyde have
criticized this bias in rhetorical analysis, noting that "rhetorical scholars, even
Neo-Aristotelians, have been reluctant to analyze appeals to the emotions. Edwin
Black was the first to make note of this deficiency."4
This is not to say that pathos has been utterly ignored in rhetorical studies.5 The
affective element continues to be explored as it arises in the context of such current
topics of rhetorical concern as narrative and metaphor. But outside of a handful of
studies there has been little treatment of pathos in and of itself.6
Perhaps some of this relative neglect is due to the stigmatization of the emotions in
our folk psychology, in which they are associated with the irrational or non-rational,
the involuntary, and the physical. The conflict between emotion and reason, the
heart versus the mind, echoes the conflict between the subjective and the objective.
Many contemporary metaphors for emotional experiences and moods are reminis-
cent of the Greek notion ofpathe as that which one suffers or undergoes passively: we
are "seized by anger," "overcome by jealousy," or "undone by grief." Finally,
thought occurs in the mind (itself more a process than a physical place); while
emotions are often experienced physically, they are grounded in the body, and
(coming full circle) the body is beyond rationality.
Given this negative characterization, it is not surprising that those rhetoricians
who have recently addressed pathos have tended to return to an Aristotelian
conception.7 Aristotle saw the emotions as the foundation of ethical decision-making
since virtue requires that we experience certain emotions to a certain degree in
certain situations.8 Further, in the Rhetoric the emotions become respectable insofar
as they rest on a rational inference and can be conceptualized as syllogistic infer-
ences, as is implied in Book Two. As Alan Brinton has put it, "If there are reasonable
grounds for anger, fear, pity, or other emotions, then a speaker who confronts
hearers with those grounds, thereby producing or modifying the relevant emotions,
can be said to be engaged in a kind of logical or rational activity ('rational' in the
 20
QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH FEBRUARY 1993

sense of reason-giving)."9 Finally, in the Rhetoric Aristotle states that logos, pathos, and
ethos are allpisteis, modes of rhetorical proof.
However, Jane Sutton has raised serious doubts about the wisdom of this return
to Aristotle. She argues that there exists a profound and "unstable tension" between
logos and pathos in the Rhetoric.10 Although in some places Aristotle seems to imply
that all three modes of proof are of equivalent worth, in others he disparages
appeals to the emotions and dismisses concern with style and arrangement. Strictly
speaking a speech need consist only of statement and proof, and style and delivery
are "mere outward show for pleasing the hearer."11 Equally significantly, Aristotle
begins with and spends most time on logos.12
Sutton maintains that it is exactly such a privileging of logos that is largely
responsible for the historically recurring fragmentation of rhetoric's wholeness and
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a correspondingly unbalanced development of various of its parts. She sees this

process mirrored in George Kennedy's history of rhetorical theory, which he
dichotomizes into what he calls "primary" and "secondary" rhetoric.13 "Primary"
rhetoric consists of logos, while to "secondary" rhetoric are relegated such appar-
ently less essential elements as pathos, ethos, style, and delivery. Sutton cogently
demonstrates that the implicit valorization of primary over secondary, of logos over
pathos, explains the tendency to split the canons from each other and to concentrate
on one at the expense of the others.
Rhetoricians thus seem to be faced with an insuperable dilemma. To the extent
that the emotions are regarded as irreducible to the cognitive they are irrational,
uncontrollable, potentially dangerous phenomena. A rhetorical theory that encour-
ages pathetic appeals runs the risk of being considered manipulative; conversely,
one that discourages them may be doomed to ineffectualness. To the extent that the
emotions are construed as cognitive phenomena pathos appeals gain some respect-
ability, but what is distinctive of them is disregarded.
Given this dilemma, we might wish to look to the sister arts and sciences for
illumination. There is by no means unanimity within either psychology or philoso-
phy about the emotions.14 However, in both disciplines the most positive view of the
affective life is found in the so-called "cognitive" theories of emotion. According to
such theories the emotions are comprised of feelings, which are visceral, and
inferences or judgments, which are cognitive. It is important to note here that "the
cognitive activity in appraisal does not imply anything about deliberate reflection,
rationality or awareness."15 However, to the extent that an evaluation or inference
can be reconstructed post hoc and judged reasonable—"I am angry because he
deliberately stepped on my foot"—the emotion also can be considered reasonable.
Further, on this view emotions sometimes can be altered by monitoring and
correcting the inferences they rest on ("I should not be angry; he stepped on my foot
by accident"). So, to the extent that emotions rest on judgments that can be brought
to consciousness, judged reasonable or not, and modified, to the same extent we can
control our emotions and are responsible for them.16
However, even on this more optimistic reading the emotions remain deeply
problematic. Individuals may have very different responses to the same evaluations
or judgments, e.g., hysteria versus depression in the face of ruin, or mild irritation
versus rage in response to a slight.17 The reasons for such variations are still a
 21
QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH GARRETT

mystery. The relation between emotion and feeling is also deeply vexed, since it
seems impossible to predict, on the basis of the feeling, what the person's emotion is,
and vice versa. Further, the feelings (e.g., those associated with anger) can precede
consciousness of the judgment and can also linger after an erroneous judgment has
apparently been corrected. In short, the cognitive theory "only moves the wedge
between reason and passion to a new location."18 The stigmata of irrationality and
uncontrollability remain, having been shifted to the feeling component of emotions.
There is another source rhetoricians might turn to when meditating on the
paradoxes of pathos, a source that has so far been neglected. This source is the
rhetorical pedagogies and theories (whether implied or expressly formulated) of
non-Western cultures. Amelie Rorty has observed that "one of the reasons that the
passions are especially interesting, red dye tracers of the shift in the mind, is that
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they are found in that no-man's land where theories create the experience they
describe . . . and yet also in that area where there are constraints."19 Given this
element of self-fulfilling prophecy in beliefs about the emotions, the rhetorical
theories of cultures that have evolved outside the sphere of the Western cultural
tradition constitute a special source for communication scholars tackling/?a^05. The
differing assumptions, methods, and recommendations of these rhetorics can be of
tremendous heuristic value. They may inspire us to rethink parts of our theories
from different starting points or without particular assumptions, to revive and revise
certain neglected concepts or theories of the Western rhetorical tradition, or to give
more weight to certain aspects of contemporary psychological or philosophical
theories. At the same time such comparisons may also help us come closer to
understanding whatever may be the genuine constraints and cross-cultural univer-
sals involved in pathos appeals.
In this essay I will present one such cross-cultural analysis. The case study here is
of China during its Classical period, from roughly 500 to 200 B.C.E.20 Classical
China provides a good test of this cross-cultural enterprise because its cultural
conditions and level of intellectual sophistication were roughly equivalent to those of
the cradle of Western rhetoric, Classical Greece. The culture was vibrant, pluralistic,
and astonishingly creative, and, as in Greece, the advances of this era of cultural
efflorescence set the tone for much of what was to come. At the same time the
prevailing psychological and epistemological assumptions differed enough from
those familiar to contemporary Western rhetoricians to make them a rich and
suggestive source. What's more, Classical China offers an unusually straightforward
case study insofar as there was no significant intellectual contact with any equally
advanced cultures during this period.
Reflection on pathos inevitably leads into considerations of audience, and the
Classical Chinese conceptions of audience were not those typically assumed in the
Western rhetorical tradition. Thus this case study will open with a brief overview of
the distinctive social and political conditions of Classical China, conditions which
created two paradigmatic audiences, the mass audience and the single-person
audience. After outlining the tenets of human psychology which were most widely
accepted for both audiences I will survey the various schools of thought on how the
mass audience could best be influenced. I will then turn to the more complex
psychological analysis of the single-person audience and the various methods
 22
QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH FEBRUARY 1993

advocated for appealing to the emotions of this audience. In the concluding section
I will draw out some of the implications of this case study for the investigation of
pathos in Western rhetorics.21

T H E RHETORICAL BACKGROUND

The Classical period in China is also referred to as the "Warring States period,"
since it witnessed nearly-continuous and brutal warfare between many city-states
struggling for hegemony, or, less ambitiously, for survival. At the same time a series
of dramatic technological and cultural changes, such as growing literacy, rapidly
increasing urbanization, the buying and selling of land, the introduction of money,
and a shift from feudalistic and familial forms of rule to ever-more impersonal,
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centralized, and bureaucratic governments relying on written laws and procedures,

all weakened the hold of tradition.
Because of the social and political instability of this period there was an especially
intense and self-conscious interest in persuasion, argumentation, and social influ-
ence, and thus a great concern with human psychology inasmuch as it bore on these.
Though rulers of the city-states were not popularly elected, they were anxious to
gain the support and enthusiastic cooperation of the masses or, at the least, their
compliance. A disaffected populace had a wide repertoire of strategies for causing
their masters grief, from simply ignoring onerous commands to deserting during
battle to packing up and moving away from an intolerable government (the
extensive state walls built during this period were intended to keep the population
of the state in as much as to keep enemies out). Thus the masses—mainly illiterate
peasants but also urbanized craftspeople, merchants, and those in service industries—
were one of the two paradigmatic audiences in Classical China. For those in
power—the hereditary rulers (or usurpers) of the city-states, their advisors, and
those employed in the increasingly large and complex government bureaucracies—
the people's support could be a matter of life and death.
However, this mass audience was rarely the "judge," in the Aristotelian sense, of a
specific argumentative proposal addressed to it. There were relatively few speeches
conforming to the familiar Greco-Roman paradigm in which one person argues to a
large audience.22 And as one might expect, there were no prescriptive manuals or
theoretical works concerning persuasion in such abnormal situations.
There are a number of reasons why the Greco-Roman speech situation was
atypical for this cultural context. For a Chinese ruler the very act of openly pleading
or arguing with his subjects was an unacceptable social statement, implying that he
no longer merited obedience. (Since only about ten percent of population was
literate, written communication could not reach the greater part of the population
directly either.23) Furthermore, most of the literate elite held highly paternalistic
views of the common people. In the words of the Master, Confucius, "The populace
can be made to follow it [the right Way], but they cannot be made to know it."24
Perhaps most important, what those in power desired was not assent to one
proposal, but a deep imprinting of particular attitudes, loyalties, and predilections
in the entire population so that pleading or coercion on specific occasions would not
be necessary, only the issuance of directives and occasional exhortations. This goal is
considerably more ambitious than that of most Western rhetorics, and from a
 23
QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH GARRETT

Western standpoint this aspect of Chinese rhetoric might seem closer to persuasion
campaigns, propaganda, or social engineering.
Many writers offered methods for accomplishing this end. Almost all of them
elaborated their advice in what are commonly referred to as works of Chinese
"philosophy." However, this label is potentially very misleading. There is no
Classical Chinese term for "philosophy," and during this period there were no
groups of individuals who saw themselves as engaged in a disinterested search for a
transcendental Truth. Instead, the burning intellectual issue was how to achieve
social and political order, and most Classical Chinese works of "philosophy" were
tracts on governance in the broadest sense of the term—governance of one's self
and of others. They were usually meant to be read by those capable of holding office,
and they attempted to advise this elite on how they should lead their lives, how best
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to manage the civil and military bureaucracy, and how to control the populace.
Their prescriptions were often grounded in more abstract theorizings about cosmol-
ogy, epistemology, language, and ethics, hence the labelling of such works as
"philosophy." However, the extreme practical orientation and the reliance on
pragmatic tests of truth throughout these works suggest that they might more
accurately be considered works of applied politics and ethics. Because of this
emphasis, and because persuasion of the mass audience was conceived so compre-
hensively, each writer's views on influencing the mass audience are an integral part
of his total socio-political program and must be abstracted from it.25
The second significant audience in Classical China was the complement of the
mass audience, that being the one-person audience, which was usually assumed to
be the ruler himself. This audience was uniquely significant because the person who
could gain the ruler's ear and offer proposals for winning the hearts and minds of
the mass audience could be rewarded with great power and wealth. The single-
person audience was usually addressed face-to-face, often in a private or semi-
private setting.
There survive many examples of speeches purportedly delivered to this audience.
Some were recorded (or recreated) in the moralizing historical records of the
period, such as the Tso-chuan and the Kuo-yu.26 The first dynastically-sponsored
history, Ssu-ma Ch'ien's Shih-chi (c. 90 B.C.E.) contains much material transcribed
from earlier records, and its biography section includes many speeches from the
Warring States period.27 There were also compilations of exemplary persuasions;
the book Chan-kuo ts'e [Records of the Warring States] consists entirely of some five
hundred such speeches.28 A shorter collection of such material can be found in Han
Fei-tzu.29
There also survives a body of reflections on argument and persuasion addressed
to this one-person audience. In some cases a writer's view must be reconstructed
from occasional remarks and isolated passages scattered throughout his work.30
Other writers devoted separate chapters to the subject, most notably the "Difficulties
of Speech" and "Difficulties of Persuasion" chapters of the Han Fei-tzu.31 Similarly,
many of the short essays in the book Lu-shih ch'un-ch'iu [Annals of Mr. Lu] concern
such topics as standards for speeches and defects in the audience.32 There even
survives a book-length treatise on persuasion of the single-person audience, the text
Kuei-ku-tzu [Master of Demon Valley].33 Its anonymous author explicitly grounds his
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QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH FEBRUARY 1993

rhetorical observations and prescriptions in Taoist cosmological and epistemologi-

cal principles.

HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY IN GENERAL

Certain psychological principles were assumed to apply to both the mass and the
single-person audiences.34 But before plunging into this subject I would like to
mention an intriguing interpretive problem that their mode of expression presents.
Clifford Geertz has remarked that "anthropologists often spin notional complexities
they then report as cultural facts through a failure to realize that much of what their
informants are saying is, however strange it may sound to educated ears, meant
literally."35 This seemingly charitable move to "rescue" the native view by taking it
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metaphorically pervades well-nigh all translations of ancient Chinese texts into

Western languages.36 In my translations and interpretation in what follows I will
deliberately seek to correct for this bias by attempting to recover and convey the
literal sense as much as is possible.
In the Chinese psychology emotions were attributed to movements of the heart
Qisiri). As motions of the heart, emotions are forms ofch'i, "configured energy," as is
everything else in the cosmos. In this dynamic world-picture, the more slowly
moving ch'i is denser and manifests as matter; the more quickly moving ch'i is more
subtle and rarified and manifests as wind, breath, or spirit. The human body itself is
nothing other than the various types of ch'i that permeate and circulate through it.
People feel an emotion when one particular variety of "configured energies" comes
into contact with the heart (hsin) and causes it to move—for example, when we feel
fear and anger, the heart skips, jumps, or pounds furiously; when we feel joy, the
heart soars.
Cognitive activities were also assumed to involve physical movements of the heart
(hsin)—hence the increasing popularity of the translation "heart/mind" for hsin.
The difference seems to have been that the movements of the heart associated with
"liking and disliking, joy and anger, pleasure and sorrow" are more physically
palpable than those of thinking and planning, are more overt manifestations otch'i,
than those of "thinking and planning."37 The special responsibility of the heart is to
make sensory perceptions intelligible and to think, but it also remembers, is anxious,
wills, intends, and dreams.
Western notions of a pathos appeal sometimes assume a qualitative difference
between cognition and affect. But insofar as the Chinese distinguished between
thought and emotion they seem to have assumed this was a matter of degree, not
essence. It is true that a phenomenal similarity was recognized among types of
emotions as against types of mental activity. On the one hand, "liking and disliking,
happiness and anger, pleasure and sorrow" were often listed together; on the other
hand, the terms "thinking and planning" were commonly paired.38 But these two
categories were not construed as sharply dichotomous or mutually exclusive.
Instead, the cognitive and the affective functions tended to be considered together.
For instance, when the philosopher Hsiin-tzu stated that "explanations, reasons,
happiness and anger, sorrow and pleasure, loving and hating, and desire, are
differentiated by the heart (hsin)" he felt no need to set off the first two items from
the others.39 (We might note in passing that not only did this psychology not
 25
QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH GARRETT

encourage a sharp differentiation between thinking and feeling, within it the

body/mind opposition could hardly arise.40)
Because the movements of the heart were caused, directly or indirectly, by
movements of ch'i, they were, in a certain sense, natural; there was no sense of
inherent evil in desire or its motivating emotion. Indeed, it was widely believed that
there were normative movements of the heart. Normal people could be expected to
feel love and solicitude for their own flesh and blood, or alarmed concern upon
seeing a child teetering on the brink of a well. On this view, an inappropriate
response was sometimes taken as a sign that something was physically wrong with
the heart (just as bodily disorders are sometimes identified as the cause of emotional
disorders in modern Western medicine).
Not only were human emotions normal, certain of them were essential for being
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fully human, as was implied by the widely shared notion that "humaneness is
human."41 Humans were distinguished from animals not only by their superior
cognitive functions, but also by their capacity to experience certain emotions which
other animals did not. Distress at the sight of a parent's corpse being devoured by
animals, respect for elder siblings, or the varieties of aesthetic experience—such
were instances of uniquely human capabilities. Conversely, there were certain things
that animals might actually do but people could not even bear to contemplate, such
as eating their own children, and here again people who actually engaged in such
activities were considered not fully human.
But it was also widely recognized that the emotions and the desires that accompa-
nied them could be dangerous for the individual and for the society, that they could
be bad in a pragmatic sense. If emotions were indulged and desires pursued without
limits, this would harm the person by causing illnesses and shortening the lifespan.
Selfish behavior was also nearly universally regarded as a threat to the social order.

SHAPING THE PSYCHE OF THE MASS AUDIENCE

There were several schools of thought on what might be dubbed "the rhetorics of
social influence." The first could be summarized as "accept and exploit." In a
proto-behaviorist way, the basic human fears and fondnesses were intentionally
played upon so as to ensure stability and to augment the power of the state. In
addition to rewards and punishments, such symbolic inducements as ranks and
titles and the graded status distinctions of the sumptuary laws were also applied.
This approach was primarily associated with the so-called "Legalist" school (fa-chid)
of Han Fei-tzu and Shang-chiin, though when the Confucians gained power they
found themselves employing certain of its methods.
A radically different approach, associated primarily with the so-called "Taoist"
school of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, saw the people's basic emotions as artificially
inflamed, and it regarded many of their desires as created by the seductions of their
modern society. For this "reduce and simplify" school of thought, the key to
achieving long-term cooperation of the populace was to reform their psychology by
reforming their environment. Specifically, these writers recommended a kind of
primitivism, a return to the simple life which supposedly characterized the golden
past. In this imagined Utopia a rudimentary material and intellectual culture
satisfied the people's basic emotional and physical needs without tempting them to
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QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH FEBRUARY 1993

injurious excesses. Since the folk were content with their lives they naturally
behaved as they should and no persuasive appeals were needed.
A third approach, which could be summed up as "channel and shape," recom-
mended a more sophisticated exploitation of cultural mechanisms to channel and
direct the populace's emotions. The primary such mechanism was the li, the code of
ritualized behavior, which allowed both individual and society to steer clear of the
Scylla and Charybdis of excess and deficiency. The recurring comparison was to
control of rivers; just as water should be neither allowed to overflow its banks nor
dammed up so that it bursts forth violently, so too through resort to the li the
various ch'i would be neither allowed free rein nor repressed so that they erupt. To
give but one example, mourning for one's parents was strictly regulated: not just the
length, but also the mourner's clothes, diet, demeanor, habitation, occupations,
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pastimes, and thoughts. The goal was not just to encourage the proper amount of
sorrow, but also to prevent individuals from harming themselves through excessive
grief. The li were elaborated in often tortuous detail to cover every possible action
and situation through one's life. In theory, this extension to the minutiae of
everyday social relations enabled ordinary people to invest their pedestrian lives
with a semi-sacred quality, to endow them with meaning and beauty through
ceremony. Since acceptance of one's prescribed social role and fulfillment of the
corresponding duties was a fundamental principle of li, through this means the
people's cooperation was assured.
For all three schools of thought the people's entertainments and, especially,
musical performances, were a source of special concern. Music was most obviously a
form of ch'i, energy, whose contact with the ear, body, and heart was palpable. Over
time it functioned as a form of emotional education, for good or for ill. Degenerate
and lascivious music was not only a symptom of a social system in decay, it also
caused the like behaviors in those continually exposed to it. Good music, on the
other hand, would "influence and move the people's excellent hearts, and cause the
perverse and foul ch'i to have no way to reach them."42
To summarize, for all three approaches to the mass audience, pathos involved not
so much creating, exploiting, or countering emotions on one particular speech
occasion, but a long-term, comprehensive molding of the audience's predilections
and passions. This was accomplished primarily by continuous manipulation of the
material environment and the cultural symbol systems, including discourse, to a
point that could well be considered indoctrination.

T H E PSYCHOLOGY OF T H E ONE-PERSON AUDIENCE

The single-person audience enjoyed a more sophisticated and flattering treat-

ment. Rather than being talked about, this audience was talked to, and it was told
that it would comprehend and judge discourse best when it was in one particular
state of being. Three overlapping terms were commonly used to describe this ideal
state: the audience's heart should be "empty" (hsti), "unified" (yi), and "still" (ching)
or "unmoving" (pu tung). Though these terms were widely shared they were
interpreted with varying degrees of literalness.
The "unified" heart is the most clearly metaphorical and hence the least problem-
atic of these three terms. Such a heart/mind is not "duplicitous" (erh, literally
"doubled" or "two") and does not vacillate between various proposals, but instead is
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firm in its feelings and fixed on its goal. Thus it was said of the perfected sage that
"he is unified in his true nature; although there are desirable sorts of things, his
spirit is not moved by them."43
With "emptiness" the tendency toward the literal interpretation led into a logical
dilemma. In its most literal sense "emptiness" meant having no thoughts, desires, or
emotions "accumulated" in the heart, all of which might block it up or sway the will
and intention. But taking the imperative to "be empty" at face value landed one in a
double-bind akin to the Buddhist paradox of desiring to be without desire: "those
who think that emptiness means being without any thought or actions usually are
intent on not forgetting emptiness. This is being controlled by trying to be empty."
One solution was to redefine "empty" more comprehensively: "empty refers to one's
intention not being controlled by anything."44 Another was to deny that emptiness
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was literally possible, as did the thinker Hsiin-tzu: "Goals are what is stored up [in
the heart]. Still, there is what's called 'emptiness.' Not letting what has already been
stored up [goals] harm what's going to be received is what is meant by 'emptiness'."45
With the "unmoving" heart the interplay between the literal and figurative poles
of meaning became even more complex. The social thinker Meng-tzu (Mencius)
asserted that his heart had not moved since he was forty and that it would not "be
stirred" even should he achieve his dream of political influence. He clearly had
physical motion of the heart in mind, since he went on to discuss those who attained
an "unmoved heart" in the face of danger—they did not feel their hearts pounding
with fear or anger, as most people would.46 Other writers asserted that the cognitive
functions of the heart could also be stilled.
Again Hsiin-tzu denied that such a state is possible, but not because thinking and
feeling are not physical movements of the heart. Rather, he denied that it was
possible to stop these activities, though he retained the notion of "unmoving" by
redefining it.
When the heart is asleep, then it dreams; when it is idle, then it moves of itself; when one
employs it, then it plans. Thus the heart has never not been in motion. Still, there is what's
called stillness. Not letting dreams and fantasies disorder the intelligence (chih) is what is
meant by "stillness."47

But others asserted that such literal quiescence of the cognitive functions was indeed
possible.
As for those who know how to govern other men, their thinking and planning are still; as for
those who know how to serve nature, their orifices are empty [of desires]. Thinking and
planning are still; thus one's powers of attraction do not diminish. One's orifices are empty;
thus the harmonious energies (ch'i) enter daily.48

If one continues in this way, then "one's spirit (shen) is still," one's plans come to
fruition, one controls all things, is ever-victorious in battle, and so on.
How could the claim that "stilling one's thinking" led to such results be taken
seriously? This is because the Classical Chinese conceptualized perception and
thought in terms of various kinds of recognition, matching, and testing through
observation of correlations. For the person who is skilled at pattern perception the
process may happen almost instantaneously, and so apparently without any (men-
tal) effort—without the heart moving.49
Thus, if the audience's heart is unmoving, empty, and unified as it listens to a
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speech, it will assuredly react correctly. Most writers assumed that the audience has
both the capability and the responsibility to put itself into this state. And all
presumed that it was a long-term process demanding extensive preparation. As one
essayist put it,
People are only able to listen to speeches if they have trained their hearts to some degree. If
they have not trained their hearts, they should train them by study and questioning. From
antiquity to the present, there has never been anyone who was able to listen to speeches
without having studied.50

But notions of exactly how one should "train" the heart and what one should
"study" varied widely. At the one extreme was an approach which relied heavily on
monitoring cognitive processes and exercise of the will. First the audience, that is,
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the ruler, must reduce his desires to the "essential desires," apparently by brooding
about the consequences of doing otherwise. He must also carefully think through his
general principles of action and his specific standards for speeches. This done, "once
he has set up his principles of acceptance and rejection, then though he sees things
he is fond of, they are not able to pull him."51 Holding fast to these principles will
also enable him to avoid the temptation of the seductive powers of language, to
avoid the trap of "finding beauty in the sound of the style and the parallel phrasing
of arguments and persuasions."52 Finally, he must somehow "do away with likes, do
away with dislikes, so the throngs of ministers see only a blank. If the throngs of
ministers see only a blank, then the great audience will not be screened."53
This approach was summed up in a series of rhyming couplets on "the way to hold
audience":
Emptiness, stillness, and inaction are the essential nature of the Way;
aligning, grouping, and comparing are the forms of affairs.
Align them as a way of comparing things;
group them as a way of matching up with emptiness.. . .
Move them, bestir them;
be actionless yet improve them.
If you are happy with them then they'll be busybodies;
If you hate them then you'll create resentment.
So get rid of happiness, get rid of hatred;
use your empty heart as a lodging place for the Way.54

Should the audience not be capable of maintaining this state, it runs the danger of
being swayed by speakers who construct their speeches so as to appeal to its plans,
wishes, and weaknesses. Then the only recourse is simply to pretend, to feign the
state of emptiness and stillness by revealing as little as possible.
Other schools dealt with such audience preparation through more long-term,
transformative processes. One such approach advocated detachment from one's
emotions and desires. This was achieved through reflecting on the relativity, and
thus the unreality, of conventional linguistic distinctions and conceptualizations.
When the individual fully appreciates the arbitrariness and the conditioned nature
of emotions and desire they will lose their power. For example, by dissolving such
distinctions as defeat and victory one could maintain an unmoving heart in the face
of danger.55 The method sometimes seems to have involved some sort of medita-
tion.56 For the master of this method even the seemingly deepest, most natural
emotions could be deconstructed in this way; for instance, Chuang-tzu admitted that
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when his wife died he felt grief, but he dissipated it by reflecting on her life as but
one evanescent phase in a cosmic cycle of transformations.57
Complementary to this approach, and sometimes practiced with it, was manage-
ment of the heart through management of the body. Breathing exercises (since
breath is a form oich'i), control of diet to refine the ch'i, stretching routines and yogic
postures to move and balance the ch'i, all were ways to reach the same end, the
unified, empty, and unmoving heart. With "the body like a withered tree and the
heart like dead ashes," such individuals could not be moved by any external event.58
They would, a fortiori, be immune to any pathetic appeal whatsoever.
The third school of thought on this issue was that associated with the Confucians
(ju). They disagreed over whether one needed to reduce the number of desires or
simply to moderate their pursuit. But all believed that the desires, the emotions, and
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the thoughts—in short, all movements of the heart—must be made to conform to

moral principles, and that the way to attain this was through education. This
education involved much more than just acquisition of knowledge and skills. It
demanded that students refine their perceptions, intuitions, and habits of the heart
(thinking and feeling). This was done by modeling themselves on a teacher so as to
internalize the teacher's way of being in the world, by memorizing and mastering
the classics so that one incorporated their patterns of thought and response, by
practicing the six arts of the gentleman (chiin-tzu), which included physical training
through music and dance, and by mastering and embodying the li, the code of
ritualized behavior, in every aspect of one's life.
The goal was a trained spontaneity of response in every life situation, a response
that was immediate and unerringly right. Though most of these gentlemen-scholars
would have rejected so banausic a comparison, it was a state of second nature like
that of the practiced master craftsman or superior athlete. The student's inclinations
and responses were to be transformed so that finally "power and profit are not able
to tilt him, the coteries of ministers are not able to shift him, and the world is not able
to shake him."59 Such a person, armed with moral rectitude, is unflinching when in
the right, but will feel his heart move with fear when he is in the wrong. And if he is
always in the right, his heart will never move.
For all the approaches outlined above, if the audience had truly attained the
empty, unified, and unmoving heart all the speaker need do was describe the
rhetorical exigency and lay out the reasons why his proposed course was best, and
the audience would respond correctly. But it was widely recognized that most
audiences fell far short of this ideal state of receptivity. The commonest shortcom-
ings were encapsulated in a series of metaphors: the audience's heart could be
"blocked" (se) or "obstructed" {yung); it could be "screened" (pi); or it could be
"tilted" (ch'ing) or "inclined" (ts'e).
The metaphors of blockage and obstruction concern difficulties in getting informa-
tion to the audience and in being heard out. The most common cause of "blockage"
is that the audience is unwilling to be criticized or to hear bad news. Related to this is
refusing to let in information because it is inconsistent with one's likes and dislikes.
In other cases, the persuasion is "blocked" by the strength of the audience's desires
to do otherwise. In some cases such "blockage" refers to what we might call a
cognitive error rather than an inappropriate affective state—the listener assumes he
already knows it all.
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The word pi literally means "a screen," and thus "to be prejudiced," "to be
misled," or "to be partial to." In an essay devoted to this problem, the thinker
Hsun-tzu distinguished three types of partialities.60 First is inordinate trust in a
particular person or persons and a consequent unwillingness to listen to others. The
second kind of partiality is desire, especially the desires for power, territory, and
material goods. The third is a fixation on one idea to the exclusion of others, such as
judging all doctrines by a utilitarian standard. Though in modern terms this might
be construed as a cognitive error, it could also be considered an affective shortcom-
ing, an excessive "fondness" for one perspective.
Finally, the audience's heart may be "tilted" or "leaning." This metaphor is
elucidated by comparing the heart to a pan of water. If the pan is level and still, it
mirrors objects accurately, but if a slight wind ruffles it, the water is stirred so that
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nothing is reflected. Likewise, if the heart is pulled towards things outside it by its
desires for them, then "the heart will be inclined on the inside" and cannot judge
accurately, cannot mirror reality.61 (Naturally enough, the worst form of incorrect
position is to be completely upside-down.)
Although those who contributed to blockage, partiality, or tilting of the audience's
heart were castigated, the final responsibility was laid on the audience itself. Even
when an advisor or confidant deliberately whipped up a ruler's pride or appealed to
his baser instincts, it was the audience that was ultimately at fault for permitting this
to happen. The presumption here was that the audience bore a heavy responsibility
to maintain its heart in the correct state for attending to all discourse.

MOVING T H E HEART OF T H E ONE-PERSON AUDIENCE

There were two major, and conflicting, schools of thought on how to "move" the
less-than-perfect audience's heart/mind. In the terms of Western rhetoric, these
could be considered two distinct perspectives on how to create pathos appeals and
the ethics of doing so. At the one extreme there was what could be considered an
"instrumental" or "no-holds barred" approach. The speaker was advised to analyze
the audience's psychology and then tailor his appeals to whatever happened to be
the audience's values, desires, and feelings.
This method could be applied to the single occasion persuasion, and hundreds of
examples of this genre survive. But because of the focus on the ruler-advisor relation
those advocating the instrumental approach often described it as a long-term
process lasting months and even years, a careful cultivating of trust in which appeals
to the audience's goals, desires, and prejudices were critical throughout. This
sensitivity and adaptation to audience easily slid into duplicity, as when the spartan
reformist thinker Mo-tzu was depicted as donning rich garb and playing music to
soften the heart of an entertainment-loving ruler.62 Similarly, persuaders were
urged to pander to the audience's interests and to approach emotionally distressing
conclusions indirectly, through a graduated series of examples or analogies. In
short, the speaker was advised "to recognize where you can use your persuasion to
match up to the audience's heart" by "decorating what he's proud of and diminish-
ing what he's ashamed of," putting the best possible light on his plans and goals,
praising those like him, taking care not to point out his shortcomings, creating the
illusion he has reached proposed conclusions on his own, and, of course, flattering
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him.63 This process required continual monitoring of the audience's state and subtle
adjustment to it.
Should a persuader succeed in fostering trust by these means he might, very
cautiously, venture to express unwelcome suggestions. However, the proponents of
these methods did not guarantee success in all cases. An audience might be utterly
unreadable. And even the most carefully constructed relationship might suddenly
deteriorate because of outside circumstances.
The instrumental approach was severely condemned. These criticisms were not
directed at the rousing of emotions per se—there was no blanket condemnation of
pathos appeals as such. Rather, the sticking points were, first, the reinforcement of
the audience's weaknesses, such as greed, vanity, and self-satisfaction, by construct-
ing appeals to them and, second, the hypocrisy and deceit this method often
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entailed. Confucius summed up his repugnance thusly:

Cunning words, an ingratiating face, and utter servility, these things Tso-ch'iu Ming found
shameful. I, too, find them shameful. To be friendly toward someone while concealing one's
hostility, this Tso-ch'iu Ming found shameful. I, too, find it shameful.64

Instead, such critics advocated ch'eng, "sincerity, authenticity, being true." Ch'eng
denoted not just faithful expression of one's thoughts and feelings, but also assumed
a correspondence between them and the world. The man who is ch'eng can be
trusted because he is right. But for those of this school, "right" conflates both the
factual and the ethical, since the universe itself embodies an ethical order. The
consequence is that the way for a person to be ch'eng is to be "true to himself," but
if he does not understand goodness, he cannot be true to himself. Hence being true is the
Way of Heaven; to reflect upon this is the Way of man. There has never been a man totally
true to himself who fails to move others. On the other hand, one who is not true to himself
can never hope to move others.65

At times the palpability of this "moving" is emphasized. Citing the story of a man
who sensed a musician's grief by the way he struck the stone chimes, an essayist
commented that
the sadness was in the heart and the wood and stone responded to it. Thus the gentleman is
ch'eng in this [his heart] and is understood through that [the wood and stones], is touched
within himself and is manifested in other people. What need is there to make a forcible
persuasion?66

For the "sincere" speaker the goal is to move the audience's heart as it ought to be
moved according to a prescribed ethical vision of the universe. Thus, what would be
considered pathos appeals might be absolutely necessary in some cases. However, no
differentiation was made between cognitive and affective appeals in theory, nor was
one observed in practice. Thus, from this perspective argument ad hominem was not a
fallacy but the argument par excellence, since the ch'eng speaker was, by definition,
right.
How did one learn how to move the audience's heart through ch'eng? This was
achieved through the same process of study, with its essential core of moral
cultivation, which enabled one to become a perspicacious listener. The assumption
was that the person of sincerity could rely on his moral force to convince, without
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any necessity to resort to technical skills. There was no felt need for manuals
dedicated to persuasion; indeed, reliance on them was a sign that one did not
embody ch'eng and had to resort to technique by default.
The fatal flaw of this approach is that not every heart could be touched by ch'eng.
The audience, whether one person or an entire generation, might be so degenerate
as to be beyond the reach of goodness. However, this did not license calculated
appeals to such an audience's debased passions and predispositions, as it would in
the instrumental approach. By definition, ch'eng, "sincerity, authenticity," could not
be used in such a way, and no other approach was acceptable.
To sum up, appeals to the emotions of the single-person audience were in and of
themselves morally neutral. Rather, it was the nature of the appeal and of the
audience's state that determined whether pathetic appeals were a matter of neces-
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sity, indifference, or criticism. For the "instrumental" approach pathos appeals, like
all other modes of proof or manipulation, were judged entirely from an ends-
oriented perspective—did they work? Diametrically opposed was the approach
based on ch'eng, which necessitated pathos appeals in some cases, but only those
appeals to emotions that would bring the audience into the state to judge and act
rightly, both morally and veridically.

IMPLICATIONS

This overview of Classical Chinese views about appeals to the emotions suggests
several points d'appui for reconsidering pathos. These include: the definition of
human; the definition of appeal to the emotions; the educability of the psyche,
including the emotions; the nature of such education; and, the ethical responsibility
of the audience in the discourse situation. Here I will briefly recapitulate the
relevant Chinese tenets and sketch out some of the directions for further investiga-
tion toward which they point.
The first issue this case study calls attention to is the significance of how being
human is defined. This issue is crucial for rhetoricians not just as it bears on pathos
but also because the nature of the answer has serious ramifications for the integrity
and significance of the discipline, as Sutton has pointed out. Until recently the
definitional challenge in Western thought was to distinguish (in both senses of the
word) the human species from other animals. This usually entailed a turn away from
that which we share with animals—the affective, feelings and sensations, instincts,
the physical—to such singular elements as reason, the soul, or the power of speech.
With the "linguistic turn" in twentieth-century thought this last capability, the
seemingly uniquely human ability to create and use symbolic means of communica-
tion, has been especially favored. But even this focus on language use still retains,
albeit less egregiously, the same relative devaluing or even effacement of the
emotions and the body in human life, and thus perpetuates, if only by default, the
negative connotations of appeal to the emotions.
Most Classical Chinese conceptions of the human, by contrast, regard the affective
dimension as essential to being human. What's more, they show that such a view
need not entail blurring the line between human and animal. Our distinctiveness
lies, in part, in particular emotions and patterns of sentiment not shared with
animals, that is, the human capacity for certain social, moral, and aesthetic re-
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sponses. Secondly, humans, unlike other animals, can civilize and "humanize" the
expression and satisfaction of our desires and emotions through cultural constructs
(such as the li). However, the creation and actualization of such cultural systems is
critically dependent on humans' distinctive cognitive and social capacities, on our
abilities to plan and to imagine, to make distinctions, and to form groups and act
together. Both affective and cognitive functions are equally valuable and valued.
The Chinese case suggests that we may best approach pathos by reconceptualizing
our view of what it is to be human and by seeking definitions that construe our
humanness in a way that embraces all our capabilities without privileging some at
the expense of others. This would seem to involve, at the least, an equal affirmation
of the affective life and perhaps also an emphasis on the interdependence of our
faculties. Such a position would appear to go beyond merely granting that the
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emotions are foundational in how humans experience and share their senses of the
world to a celebration of their richness and significance. Such a project might also
entail taking our "embodiment" more seriously and exploring rather than ignoring
our physical being-in-the-world. Here there are striking parallels with certain
strands of phenomenology which might well repay further exploration.67
A definition along these lines might also suggest a shift in the relation between
rhetoric and other disciplines. Equal regard for the affective entails that rhetoric
would be the counterpart of psychology as well as dialectic. This, in turn, would
seem to have implications for present-day disciplinary boundaries, boundaries that
have evolved, in part, from historical accidents and contingencies.68 For instance,
the deliberate exploitation of emotions and values has become part of a subfield of
the wider discipline of communication, belonging to what is now called persuasion
studies. Style, on the other hand, has been largely appropriated by English and
comparative literature studies. A comprehensive and sophisticated redefinition of
what it is to be human along the lines sketched so far would dissolve much of the
rationale for these arbitrary divisions.
The Chinese case study also raises another definitional issue—how to delineate
the boundaries of appeals to the emotions? In the case of the mass audience Chinese
thinkers assumed without debate that the best way to instill the desired attitudes was
not primarily through direct exhortation but by manipulating the cultural and the
material environment. This was envisioned as an unending process extending to
most aspects of the populace's everyday life—their behaviors, thoughts, attitudes,
dress, speech, and even recreations.
This assumption that environment is extremely powerful and that audiences are
always being psychologically shaped to some degree by the cultural environment
might suggest a somewhat different emphasis for rhetorical studies of pathos. From
the Chinese perspective our emotional responses and desires are already being
shaped, albeit haphazardly and inconsistently, by such agents as popular culture,
the mass media, religious doctrines and practices, sports, community mores, the
education system, and the home environment. The modern concepts of subcon-
scious and unconscious influence, when coupled with the notion that the emotions
may involve some degree of self-fulfilling prophecy, reinforce the insidious and,
perhaps, pernicious quality of this process. What kind of audiences are being
created? And how does such conditioning influence their reception of particular
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rhetorical discourses? Further, are these the sorts of audiences that should be
brought into existence? In other words, can and should rhetorical critics engage in
ethical criticism in this area?
From the Classical Chinese perspective, the logical next step, at least with regard
to the elite audience, is to go beyond critique to reform, to seek to improve the
audience's (emotional) responses. Such a goal presumes that the psyche, the
heart/mind, is educable and that both thinking and feeling can not only be managed
and guided but also improved. This position rests on a belief that the emotions are to
some extent learned, a view that is quite similar to that of the social constructivists.69
However, many Classical Chinese thinkers went beyond most social constructivists
in wholeheartedly taking the next step, that of advocating the deliberate guiding of
emotional development within the total educational project.
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Few contemporary rhetoricians have pursued this idea in depth, though one or
two have raised the possibility. Craig Waddell, after arguing that rhetoricians must
"expand the concept of rationality to include emotional as well as logical
appropriateness,"70 stressed that in a democracy it is crucial that there is "education
of the democratic audience." However, he does not elaborate on how democratic
audiences could or should be educated so as to judge "emotional appropriateness."
Alan Brinton mentions in passing that "some of the recent philosophical literature
has made the very important point that emotions are as much a function of our level
of attention to cognitions or thoughts as of the content of the cognitions or
thought,"71 but he does not go on to investigate this notion with respect to speech
situations.
The concept of education of the emotions has received somewhat more attention
in modern philosophy and psychology, and these would seem to be the natural
places to turn to should rhetoricians wish to explore these ideas further. Here, too,
certain of the notions developed by the Chinese could be a useful foil for such an
investigation.
In general, philosophers' approaches tend to be consistent with Brinton's empha-
sis on increasing awareness. For instance, Robert Solomon grants that "we cannot
simply have an emotion or stop having an emotion, but we can open ourselves to
argument, persuasion, and evidence. We can force ourselves to be self-reflective, to
make just those judgments regarding the causes and purposes of our emotions, and
also to make the judgment that we are all the while choosing our emotions, which will
'defuse' our emotions. . . . To come to believe that one has this power is to have this
power."72 Cheshire Calhoun has proposed a similarly cerebral approach, stating
that when it comes to the emotions "striving for the ideal of rationality may be
largely a matter of bringing to light and articulating our [subconsciously held]
cognitive set"73 and then rejecting those ideas that the conscious mind no longer
assents to.
Solomon's resort to the language of force betrays the fatal flaw of this approach—
its reliance on strength of the will. Similarly, Calhoun's echoing of the Freudian
"where there was Id, let there be Ego" is subject to the same limitations as insight
therapy: as in Calhoun's own example, a person might realize that her repugnance
at discovering that a friend is homosexual is an unexamined vestige from her
childhood upbringing, yet still be unable to dispel the feeling. What's more, insofar
as philosophers think of educating emotional responses, they tend to think of
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controlling or dispelling the emotion rather than improving its quality. Predictably,
the same biases pervade the therapeutic method aptly dubbed "cognitive therapy."
The focus on controlling or dispelling also underlines many psychological theories,
since so much psychological research and therapy has focussed on the abnormal and
the dysfunctional.
When set against the Chinese notions of emotional education these approaches
appear incomplete or underdeveloped, and this in two ways. First, they remain
restricted to notions of control and elimination rather than envisioning an improve-
ment or refinement of the affective life, as did certain schools of Chinese thought.
Second, where they conceive of control in exclusively cognitive terms, most Chinese
theorists urged more comprehensive strategies that involved the body directly.
Ritualized dance, breathing and meditation exercises, or concentrated attention on
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prescribed posture, gesture, and demeanor in everyday action were just some of the
means of shaping and refining both thought and feeling.
This comparison suggests that rhetoricians may wish to give more attention to
those areas of Western philosophy and psychology that echo the Chinese emphases.
Ethics and, perhaps even more so, aesthetics, insofar as they grapple with such
notions as cultivating judgments, educating intuitions, and increasing sensitivity in
sensory and affective experience, may be rich fields of insights. Similarly, those
schools of psychology and therapy that work with the emotions through body
movement, dance, and art may offer promising avenues for developing a more
integrated approach to emotional development. This need not mean abandoning
the cognitive theories of psychology and philosophy. On the contrary, from this
perspective it is the Chinese psychologies that appear underdeveloped and inappro-
priate for a modern context, given their presumptions of cultural homogeneity and
uncritical absorption of cultural norms.
Finally, the Chinese insistence on the bodily basis of thought and feeling, undevel-
oped though it is by the standards of modern science, suggests that physiological
analyses of thought and feeling need not be feared as inevitably reductionist or
deterministic. Indeed, insofar as the Chinese grounding of both thought and
emotions in the body avoids an extreme dichotomizing of the two and a privileging
of one over the other, such physiological conceptions may allow a way of rethinking
such traditional impasses of Western thought as the mind/body problem.
In the Classical Chinese case an ontology based on ch'i underlay their holistic view
of human thought and emotion. Given the bias of contemporary culture toward the
empirical, it is likely that a more integrated psychology would have to be based in
the biological and medical sciences. This is, in fact, exactly the direction of much
research in these areas. And as the influence of exercise on mental and emotional
health and of meditation on physical well-being have been validated by scientific
studies, the interdependence of mind and body and the management of emotion
through the body have become increasingly accepted in the public mind.
Finally, from the Classical Chinese perspective, given that the audience could
engage in comprehensive self-cultivation so as to put itself into the correct state to
judge discourse, it also had an ethical responsibility to do so (not to mention motives
of self-interest). However, this only held true for the elite audience. The mass
audience was not usually considered primarily responsible for its state qua audience,
since it was in actuality nearly powerless to be otherwise than it was; the bulk of the
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population had neither the time nor the resources for education and extensive
self-cultivation.
This scenario raises a question about audience responsibility in modern Western
industrial societies. Contemporary audiences are much closer to the elite Classical
Chinese audience in their access to resources, especially various forms of education.
To the extent that they are capable of putting themselves into "the correct state to
judge discourse" both emotionally and intellectually and at some level of conscious-
ness they choose not to do so, to the same extent we might judge that such audiences
bear some responsibility for being manipulated, rather than excusing them as dupes
and blaming those who took advantage of them.
More charitably, one could hold that audiences need to be taught to develop their
emotional capacities much as they are now taught arithmetic and are coached in
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music and athletics. Just as critical thinking is taught as part of argumentation, so

too something like "educated feeling" would seem to fall to rhetoric insofar as pathos
is a major element in argumentation, public speaking, persuasion, and rhetorical
analysis. Of course, innovations in pedagogy must be informed by advances in
theory, but perhaps following some of the paths traced out here might help us to
progress.

NOTES
Mary M. Garrett is Assistant Professor of Communication at The Ohio State University. She thanks Tom
Conley, Sonja Foss, Sue Glover, Anne Kinney, Dan Kinney, Josina Makau, Linda Swanson, Ding-jen Tsao,
and the participants at the 1988 NEH conference on "Rhetoric: East and West" for their helpful responses to
earlier versions of this essay.
1 Michael Hyde, "Emotion and Human Communication: A Rhetorical, Scientific, and Philosophical Picture,"
Communication Quarterly 32 (1984): 128.
2
Barbara Warnick, "Judgment, Probability, and Aristotle's Rhetoric," Quarterly Journal of Speech 75 (1989):
299. Interestingly, Warnick's own article falls victim to this very bias.
3 Thomas Conley, "The Enthymeme in Perspective," Quarterly Journal of Speech 70 (1984): 168-187.
4
Craig Smith and Michael Hyde, "Rethinking T h e Public': The Role of Emotion in Being-with-others,"
Quarterly Journal of Speech 77 (1991): 449.
5
Neither has it been neglected in communication studies more generally. However, Hyde notes that "most of
these studies do not concern themselves with the actual experience of emotion" (130). In addition, the empirical
investigation of the emotions tends to be carried out at the micro level: either research on one emotion, such as
fear appeals, or research on emotional factors as one aspect or phase of the persuasive process, such as
motivation.
6
Indeed, pathos does not appear as a term in the Matlon index, and the term "emotion" has only one entry.
Similarly, Craig Waddell has documented a "relative poverty" of articles on pathos in the Philosopher's Index
database. In a 1988 search of its 136,000 records he found 237 citations for logos, 114 for ethos, and a mere 20 for
pathos ("The Role of Pathos in the Decision-making Process: A Study in the Rhetoric of Science Policy," Quarterly
Journal of Speech 76 [1990]: 397, n. 3).
7 Alan Brinton states that "the most relevant and central insights for our topic are to be found already in
Aristotle" ("Pathos and the 'Appeal to Emotion': An Aristotelian Analysis," History of Philosophy Quarterly 5 [ 1988]:
207). See also his "The Outmoded Psychology of Aristotle's Rhetoric," Western Journal of Speech Communication 54
(1990): 204—218. In her discussion of logos versus pathos Jane Sutton states that "the text for the analysis of
rhetoric and the analysis of the analyses of rhetoric is, of course, Aristotle's Rhetoric" ("The Death of Rhetoric and
Its Rebirth in Philosophy," Rhetorica 4 [ 1986]: 206). Waddell assumes an essentially Aristotelian framework in his
"The Role of Pathos." In their "Rethinking T h e Public,' " Smith and Hyde attempt to synthesize Aristotle and
Heidegger.
8
L.A. Kosman explicates Aristotle's notion that "the virtues are dispositions toward feeling as well as acting"
in his essay "Being Properly Affected: Virtues and Feelings in Aristotle's Ethics," in Amélie Rorty, ed., Essays in
Aristotle's Ethics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980) 103-116.
9
Brinton, "Pathos" 209.
l0
Sutton, ' T h e Death of Rhetoric," especially 217-219. The usual explanation of these contradictions is that
they reflect different stages in the composition of the lectures that form the Rhetoric and thus different stages of
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Aristotle's thought on these matters. Regardless of what Aristotle's final view ofpathos was, the account in the text
as we have it now is riven by serious inconsistences.
11 Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.1.1404a6; John Freese, trans., Aristotle: The "Art" of Rhetoric (1926; Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1967) 349.
12
Kosman notes a similar fatal flaw in Aristotle's ethics. In his view, "What we would like, but do not find, is an
extension of the theory of deliberation and practical reasoning to account for the ways in which virtuous persons
might be said to have the proper feelings which they have by prohairesis" (144).
13
George Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980) especially 4-6.
14 Philosophers have not even managed to agree on a definition of the term "emotion," much less how to
distinguish an emotion from a mood, inclination, or feeling. For one listing of the major models of emotions and
central issues facing all of them see Cheshire Calhoun and Robert Solomon, "Introduction," in What is an
Emotion: Classical Readings in Philosophical Psychology, ed. Cheshire Calhoun and Robert Solomon (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1984) 3-40. For references to more recent philosophical work on the emotions, see the
bibliography to Joel Marks's "Emotion East and West: Introduction to a Comparative Philosophy," Philosophy
East and West 41 (1991): 17-30. Psychologists remain divided on much the same points as do philosophers. In
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addition, psychologists take the unconscious much more seriously than do most philosophers, adding yet
another level of complexity to the issues. Cheshire Calhoun's "Cognitive Emotions?" in What is an Emotion,
327-342, is a notable exception to this Achilles' heel of most philosophical treatments.
l5
Richard Lazarus, "Thoughts on the Relations Between Emotion and Cognition," American Psychologist 37
(1982): 1022.
16
Robert C. Solomon's The Passions (1976; rpt. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983) remains
the classic philosophical exposition of this viewpoint. For a cogent argument by a psychologist defending the
opposing position see Nico H. Frijda's "The Laws of Emotion," American Psychologist 43 (1988): 349-358, in
which he argues that "we are subject to our emotions, and we cannot engender emotion at will" (349).
17 This objection is detailed by Stephen Leighton, "A New View of Emotion." American Philosophical Quarterly 22
(1985): 135-137.
18
Cheshire Calhoun, "Subjectivity and Emotion," The Philosophical Forum 22 (1989): 196.
19
Amélie Rorty, "From Passions to Emotions and Sentiments," Philosophy 57 (1982): 171; ellipsis is in the
original.
20
The analysis that follows applies only to this span of some three centuries. The assimilation of Buddhism and
the eventual evolution of Neo-Confucianism involved significant shifts in psychological tenets and also in
intellectual practices and stances.
21
Unless noted otherwise, translations from Classical Chinese are my own. The romanization system used
here is Wade-Giles. Whenever possible, references to the Chinese texts are to the Harvard-Yenching concor-
dance editions.
22
There are some exceptions that conform more closely to the paradigmatic Greco-Roman speech situation,
but most of them are in the Book of History [Shu-ching], most of which is traditionally dated to centuries before the
Classical period. Bernard Karlgren has translated those chapters that he believes are authentic in his The Book of
Documents (Goteborg, Sweden: Elanders Boktryckeri Aktiebolag, 1950). For a less philological translation of the
entire text see James Legge, The Chinese Classics, 5 vols., The Shoo King (1872; Hong Kong: Hong Kong University
Press, 1960) vol. 4. Legge's language is dated, and he used an unusual romanization system, but his rendering is
generally accurate.
23
Written materials were bulky and time-consuming to produce, since most texts were hand-written on
bamboo strips tied together. Silk manuscripts were more convenient but much more expensive. Reading such
texts was also time-consuming since they were customarily read aloud, no doubt in part because of the difficulty
in making out the hand-written characters.
24
Confucius, Lun-yü 14/8/9.
25
Because the Chinese intellectual tradition is overwhelmingly masculine, I use the male pronoun here and
later.
26
For a usually reliable but, again, somewhat dated translation of the Tso-chuan, see James Legge's The Chinese
Classics, Vol. 5, The Ch'un Ts'ew with the Tso Chuen (1872; Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960). There
is no English translation of the Kuo-yu, but one long section of it has been translated into French: see Andre
d'Hormon, Guoyu: Propos sur les Principanlés (Paris: Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises,
1985).
27
For selections, see Burton Watson, Records of the Grand Historian of China, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1961) and Frank Kierman's Ssu-ma Ch'ien's Biographical Attitude as Reflected in Four Late Warring
States Biographies (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1962).
28
The Records of the Warring States has been ably translated by James I. Crump under the title Chan-kuo Ts'e
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970).
29
Han Fei-tzu, Han Fei-tzu chs. 22 and 23. Unfortunately the only English translation of these chapters, in
W.K. Liao's The Complete Works of Han Fei Tzu: A Classic of Chinese Legalism (London: Arthur Probsthain, 1939), is
extremely unreliable.
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30
The best such effort to date is Anthony Cua's "Hsün-tzu's Theory of Argumentation: A Reconstruction,"
Review of Metaphysics 36 (1983): 867-894.
31
See Han Fei-tzu chs. 3 and 12. For a translation of chapter 3, see Liao, Han Fei-tzu; for a translation of chapter
12 which is superior to Liao's, see Burton Watson, trans., Han Fei Tzu: Basic Writings (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1964) 73-79.
32
The only Western-language translation is Richard Wilhelm's into German, his Frühling und Herbst des Lit Bu
Wei (1928; Dusseldorf and Cologne; Eugen Diederichs, 1971).
33
The date of this text is still a matter of dispute. The arguments for a date as late as the fifth century C.E. rest
primarily on the pattern of bibliographic references to the work in other sources. My own view is that the
grammar, historical references, and frame of mind are entirely typical of the Warring States period and that the
argument based on bibliographic citations is an argument from silence that is not conclusive. However, in
deference to the weight of scholarly opinion I have not quoted from the Kuei-ku-tzu here, though it has informed
my interpretation. It has been translated in two doctoral dissertations: Michael Robert Broschat's " 'Guiguzi': A
Textual Study and Translation," diss., U. of Washington, 1985 and Ding-ren Tsao's "The Persuasion of Kuei Ku
Tzu," diss., U. of Minnesota, 1985. The former is more philologically accurate, the latter more readable.
34
More specialized psychologies were developed for such areas as poetry, warfare, medicine, and music. An
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excellent discussion of martial psychology can be found in Mark Edward Lewis's Sanctioned Violence in Early China
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), especially his chapter 6, "The Natural Philosophy of
Violence." For psychology and music see Kenneth J. DeWoskin, A Songfor One or Two: Music and the Concept of Art
in Early China (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 1982), especially his chapter
6, "The 'Book of Music'."
35
Clifford Geertz, "Common Sense as a Cultural System," Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive
Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983) 89.
36
An excellent example, because so obstinately maintained in the face of native insistence to the contrary,
comes from the notes of the great translator James Legge, whose century-old renderings of the Chinese classics
are still widely read and cited. Commenting on the phrase "putting the self in good order (hsiu shen)," Legge
remarks that "I have said above that shen here is not the material body. Lo Chung-fan, however, says that it is:
shen wei jou shen, 'shen is the body of flesh.' See his reasonings, in be, but they do not work conviction in the
reader" (The Four Books, trans. James Legge [2nd ed. rev. 1893; rpt. New York: Paragon, 1966] 326, n. 7). "The
reader" is, of course, the Scottish missionary Legge himself. This tendency toward a rationalized reading persists
even in contemporary scholarship, since so many Chinese and Western sinologists have been trained by scholars
espousing late Ch'ing dynasty Neo-Confucianism. Their rationalist bias leads them to ignore or to take
figuratively whatever might be embarrassing if read literally.
37 The Later Mohists are a striking exception to these generalities. They evolved a radically different
cosmology, psychology, and epistemology. For a detailed treatment of their innovations, see A. C. Graham, Later
Mohist Logic, Ethics and Science (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1978).
38
As far as terms for emotion and thought in general are concerned, the word which eventually came to mean
"emotions, passions," ch'ing, did not begin to take on this meaning until the writings of Hsiin-tzu (c. 310-c. 210
B.C.E.). But A.C. Graham has remarked that even in this case "this is the reference of the word but it may be
doubted whether it is yet the sense" (Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China [La Salle, Ill.:
Open Court, 1989] 245; see also 242). In most cases ch'ing still referred more broadly to whatever was essential to
a being, a thing, or even a situation.
39
Hsün-tzu, Hsün-tzu 83/22/18-19; italics added.
40 Humans were believed to possess two spiritual elements, the hun and the p'o. Neither received much
philosophical attention and they were generally held to become significant only at death, when the former
ascends into the heavens where it receives sacrificial offerings and the latter descends into the earth and
dissipates.
41
Just as in English, this definition of "humaneness" as "human" involves etymological paranomasia in
modern Chinese (jen; jen) and in Classical Chinese (ήt n; ήt n, following Bernard Karlgren's reconstruction in
his Grammata Serica Recensa [1957; Kungsbacka: Elanders Boktryckeri Aktiebolag, 1972] 388a, 388f). The
equation is found, for instance, in the Chung-yung [Doctrine of the Mean] Ssu-pu pei-yao (1927-1935; Taiepi:
Chung-hua shu-chu, 1965) vol. 24 chang 19.12a and at Meng-tzu 56/7b/16.
42 Hsun-tzu 76/20/4.
43
Han Fei-tzu, Han Fei-tzu chi-chieh, ed. Wang Hsien-shen (1896. Rpt. in Han Fei-tzu chi-chieh teng chiu chung,
ed. Yang Chia-lo [Taipei: Shih-chieh shu-chü, 1971] 113.16).
44 Han Fei-tzu 95.11-16.
45 Hsun-tzu 80/21/36-37.
46
Meng-tzu 10-12/2a/2; trans. D.C. Lau, Mencius (Baltimore: Penguin, 1970) 76-80.
47 Hsun-tzu 80/21/38-39.
48
Han Fei-tzu 102.6-13.
49
This is not a notion unique to Chinese thinkers, nor is their reluctance to analyze the process in greater
detail surprising. As Howard Margolis has remarked about recent work in cognitive psychology, "I am not alone
in making the turning of patterns of response to patterns of experience not just an aspect of cognition but the
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central notion. . . . [I]t is essentially universal to concede an essential role to the cueing of patterns and patterned
responses but the articulation of just what is happening when a pattern is recognized is an unsolved problem" (Pattern,
Thinking, and Cognition: A Theory of Judgment [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987] 3; italics added).
50
Lü Pu-wei, Lü-shih ch'un-ch'iu chi-shih, ed. Hsü Wei-yu (1935; Taipei: Shih-chieh shu-chü, 1967) 517.
References here and below are to the continuous Western-style pagination of this edition.
51 Han Fei-tzu 113.15.
52 Han Fei-tzu 204.1-3.
53 Han Fei-tzu 29.11-12.
54 Han Fei-tzu 32.4-15.
55 Meng-tzu 10-12/2a.2; trans. Lau, Mencius 76-80.
56 See, for instance, the description of the progressive abandonment of concepts playfully put into the mouth
of Confucius's favorite disciple, Yen Hui, by the Taoist who wrote Chuang-tzu 6/19/89-93 (translated by A.C.
Graham, Chuang-tzu: The Inner Chapters [Boston: Unwin Paperbacks, 1981] 92).
57 Chuang-tzu 46/18/16-19; trans. Graham, Chuang-tzu 123-4.
58 Chuang-tzu 3/2/2.
59
Hsün-tzu 3/1/48.
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60 Hsün-tzu eh. 21; translated by Burton Watson, Hsün Tzu: Basic Writings (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1963) 121-139.
61 Hsün-tzu 81/21/55-58.
62
Lü-shih ch'un-ch'iu 672. This incident is surely fictitous.
63
For detailed descriptions of this process see Han Fei-tzu ch. 12 and the entire book Kuei-ku-tm.
64 Confucius, Lun-yü 5.25; trans. D.C. Lau, The Analects (New York: Penguin, 1979) 80.
65
Meng-tzu 28/4a/12; trans. Lau, Mencius 123. Similarly, the Chung-yung states that "there is a way to be ch'eng
in one's own person. Those who are not clear about goodness are not ch'eng in their persons. Ch'eng is the way of
Heaven. Being ch'eng about it is the way of humans. Those who are ch'eng hit the center without laboring, attain
without thinking, follow customary ways and achieve the center of the Way; they are sages" (chang 19.15a).
66
Lü-shih ch'un-ch'iu 385-386.
67
Michael Hyde has pioneered investigations into the potential contributions of phenomenology to the
ontological and epistemological groundings of rhetoric, a project that is still in its beginning phases.
68
For a summation of this history and further references see Robert J. Connors, Lisa S. Ede, and Andrea A.
Lunsford, "The Revival of Rhetoric in America," in Essays on Classical Rhetoric and Modem Discourse, ed. Robert J.
Connors, Lisa S. Ede, and Andrea A. Lunsford (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University
Press, 1984) 1-15.
69
The Chinese would have agreed with the spirit of Claire Armon-Jones's remarks that "emotion concepts are
not learnt ostensively via explication of their meanings, moreover that such explication is not a matter of mere
'conceptual elucidation,' but is essentially an activity in which the child learns an emotion by re-enacting those
behaviors, thoughts and situations which are criterial for the prescribed emotion and via which the emotion is
explicated. For example we might argue that the activity of learning an emotion involves both demonstration via
displays of emotions rituals, and explication of the meaning of such rituals" ("Prescription, Explication and the
Social Construction of Emotion," Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 15.1 [March 1985]: 8).
70
Waddell, "The Role of Pathos," 393.
71 Brinton, "Pathos and Emotion" 213; italics in the original.
72 Solomon, "Emotions and Choice," in What is an Emotion 325.
73
Calhoun, "Cognitive Emotions?" 339.