“Age of Ethos”: Exploring Rhetorical Practices in Early Chinese Society

Yong-Kang Wei

doi:10.34257/gjhssavol21is14pg1

Abstract

The essay explores the notion of collective ethos by looking closely at some of the key aspects of rhetorical and discourse practices in early Chinese society, such as ethos-as-spirit, the oneness of ethos/logos, and wei-yi (威仪; authority and deportment) among others, with a conclusion about the ethocentric nature of the traditional Chinese discourse system, rhetoric and philosophy included. To put things in perspective, it also discusses Western theories on ethos, including those by noted postmodernist theorists such as Bourdieu and Foucault. However, it does not argue that the Chinese tradition is the right path to rhetoric in general and ethos in particular but, rather, points out that rhetoric varies across cultures for an array of reasons, hence the necessity of approaching and understanding ethos differently from the model formulated by Aristotle.

Highlights

Introduction to Histories of EthosHumanities 7: 78.drawing on the findings, and followed by a 7
Plato’s “true” or “good” rhetoric is not flat in another, the need to see “the history of Aristotle’s cup of tea, all the more so if we look at rhetoric as culturally situated and embedded
It is worthy of note that, in the achieved by what the speaker says, not by what people last few decades, scholarship has devoted a think of his character before he begins to speak” (1990, considerable amount of attention and energy to Rhetoric, p. 153)

Summary

Definition of Ethos

As a mode of persuasion, ethos has been traditionally, and conveniently, described as the ethical appeal (to the rhetor’s character), but there is more than that, if we look closely at what Aristotle writes of ethos: “Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. It is worthy of note that in the Confucian doctrine they function like an ethical appeal, but they are of xiu ci li qi xin, the emphasis is placed on the language markedly different from the Aristotelian ethos, in that the itself (as in “cultivating words to build trust”) rather than latter is a mode of persuasion, artistically concocted and on the personal character of a rhetor, the latter being the subject to manipulation. It appears that one thing is with the ultimate good (至善; zhi-shan) of the Dao certain: “human agency, in the form of asserting an (Way), but in early Chinese thought, the Dao (Way) autonomous individual self, is out of the picture in the represents the cosmic order of the universe on Confucian tradition, which values and puts to use the which “ten thousand things” are based. The “inevitable changes and emendations introduced” in the process of transmission still “warrant the notion of collective holistic rather than individualistic” and “constructed authorship” (Li 2017, p. 363)

23 The Four Books

Shanghai

Introduction