Persuasion

Persuasion is the end toward which Rhetoric is the means. In Kyle’s corpus the Rhetoric page defines classical rhetoric as “the study of the means by which the classic authors deployed the arts of persuasion” — ethos, pathos, and logos. That framing makes persuasion the underlying capacity rhetoric trains: the craft of moving an audience by character, emotion, and argument. It anchors Kyle’s essay We Need a Renaissance of Rhetoric, where the decline of these persuasive arts is treated as a lost skill that “leaves us exposed,” and where language sharpened into perspective is the battleground. Persuasion sits alongside neighboring concepts in the wiki — Storytelling and the Ethos, Pathos, Logos triad — as the practical aim those tools serve.

Context: Persuasion is the art of influencing beliefs, attitudes, or actions through communication. In the classical tradition it is the explicit object of rhetoric, formalized in Aristotle’s three appeals: ethos (credibility), pathos (emotion), and logos (logic).

Where this appears

• Rhetoric — defines rhetoric as the arts of persuasion (ethos, pathos, logos); persuasion is the end that rhetorical craft serves