Tracking the history of pathos as a rhetorical concept . . .
The concept of pathos necessarily begins with Aristotle’s system, which is oriented around the idea of the proofs (pisteis) common to rhetoric. Aristotle famously indicates three different modes of artistic proof. Over time, these three modes have become known as ethos, pathos, and logos. While the three pisteis are often identified by their different characteristics and qualities, Aristotle more specifically differentiates them in terms of spatialization. That is, the proofs are distinct insofar as they exist in different spheres.
As George Kennedy explains, “Aristotle’s system . . . divides the artificial proof into three types: that found in the character of the speaker, that found in the state of mind produced in the hearer, and that found in the speech itself insofar as it proves or seems to prove” (90). This spatialized explanation of the proofs likewise resonates in Kennedy’s translation of Aristotle’s Rhetoric. “Of the pisteis provided through speech there are three species: for some are in the character [ethos] of the speaker, and some in disposing the listener in some way, and some in the argument itself, by showing or seeming to show something” (Rhetoric 1.2; 37). Each individual proof (ethos, pathos, or logos) is found in a particular place—the speaker, the listener, or the speech. This spatialized discourse makes it quite easy to conceptualize the proofs as distinctly located apart from one another
coming tomorrow . . . pedagogy and the spatialization of pathos
