Rhetorica:
How to Do Ethos Good
By Gabriel Blanchard
What makes a man credible?
Lights, Camera, Ēthos
Teaching rhetorical technique, just as such, is not the purpose of the Rhetorica series—but without some amount of analysis of technique, the full meaning of some important parts of rhetoric won’t “land.” The ethical appeal in rhetoric, as we’ve said, is of two types, the intellectual and the moral. Let’s begin with the latter this time, as it is the more fundamental of the two.
The moral side of rhetorical ēthos is primarily concerned with establishing one’s trustworthiness: that is, one’s possession of the three fundamental virtues of honesty, courage, and clarity. Only a person who is practicing those virtues (to whatever extent they are called for at the moment) can be relied upon to tell the truth. Admittedly, we frequently don’t need to rely on people to tell the truth; many truths, like whether we’re out of paper towels, are both easily ascertained and of limited moral gravity, so that we hardly need to invest anyone with our personal confidence in obtaining an answer to them. It is as we draw close to greater subjects, be they grim or fair—the laws of the city, the rites of the temple, the manners of the home, the rules of the academy, the form of the battlefield, and what, if anything, lies behind the veil of death—that the pricelessness of that “little trinity” of honesty, courage, and clarity begins to shine through its own veil.
To genuinely possess these virtues is the first essential. That exercise, however, must be left to the reader.1 The rhetorical problem is principally how to exhibit them once possessed. In this respect, the moral and ethical sides of this appeal are at one. We therefore turn to that, before discussing their shared problem.
Compos Mentis2
In addition to being morally worthy of trust, there is also such a thing as being correct, with or without good character; and correct-ness is simply a description of how well an idea lines up with reality. Being correct is—usually—a function of observation, insight, and memory, which are influenced by one’s moral character but not controlled by it.
Yet you speak the truth, that is plain: the Men of the Mark do not lie, and therefore they are not easily deceived.
The reason being correct is only “usually” a function of a skilled mind is that it can be a matter of luck. There are some questions about fact, the answers to which only happenstance would put anybody in a position to learn the answers to. Taking an example from the forensic sphere of rhetoric, one can have full confidence about the motive of a given crime only if one happens to be the criminal. This example neatly illustrates how our observation, insight, and memory are neither wholly controlled by our character, nor wholly disconnected from it. Most criminals’ bad character does not cause them to forget what happened; yet, a criminal’s bad character may color the details of memory, and will almost certainly move them to evaluate what happened in a morally distorted way.
But to return to rhetoric! On the whole, we prefer the kind of correctness that comes from a general tendency to be correct. This is itself born of attentiveness in observation, depth of insight, and persistence of memory—whether these qualities are natural gifts or the accomplishments of training. (It may be worth mentioning at this juncture that the mind is exactly like the body: While differences in “raw strength” do exist between one mind and another, any mind gets better the more it is used and trained; and by no other means.)
Ēthos Speaks Louder Than Words
So how do we project our intelligence and good character? The answer to that depends overwhelmingly upon our audience. Some rhetorical “moves” that would be impeccably correct with one audience would be a mark against us with another and fall flat with a third. Take eye contact. To many people in our culture, making eye contact while speaking with someone is a basic act of good manners, indicating that you are giving them your full attention. However, not only is this not true in all cultures, it isn’t even true of everybody in ours; many neurodivergent people tend to avoid eye contact, not because they are inattentive but because they find it too intense to maintain. The great rule of ēthos, then, is that you must know your audience’s “social language“—the gestures and postures, forms of dress, tones, vocabulary, timing, and so on that your audience will perceive the truth through best.
Bearing that in mind, a few principles do obtain fairly reliably across audiences, and even across cultures to some degree. There are traits that every culture values and respects. Confidence may be the most important example—and yet an example we must immediately qualify! For the term confident is often taken to mean things like “incapable of being convinced by any argument whatever,” or “haughtily dismissive,” or “aggressively expressing loathing for the views of others,” or “willing and desiring to debate anyone at any moment,” or a host of other things. But the qualities just listed, in order, are more scientifically known by the adjectives stubborn, vain, intolerant, and quarrelsome. In reality, confidence is the opposite of anxiety—a quality the stubborn, the intolerant, and the quarrelsome often have in spades. A confident person is not anxious about being convinced by a new argument (though they may not expect to be thus convinced), and can therefore move among arguments with ease. A confident person does not need the support of haughtiness or the defense of dismissiveness. A confident person does not feel threatened by mere difference,3 and can therefore practice courtesy. A confident person does not need to beat someone in an argument to feel satisfied with their own beliefs (a satisfaction which is of itself rather nasty, and also as a rule short-lived; hence the tendency to go back and back to it).
But we could not list all the ways of exhibiting ēthos well, and to repeat the few we have gone over would only be beating the proverbial dead horse. In two weeks’ time, after the Easter holiday, we will turn instead to that which tends to break down confidence with the greatest ease: pathos.
1“But no man may deliver his brother, nor give a ransom unto God for him (for it cost more to redeem their souls, so that he must let that alone for ever)”—Psalm 49:7-8.
2This Latin phrase, which means “of sound mind, sane, legally responsible” in judicial contexts, literally meant “having power over one’s mind” in classical antiquity.
3Of course, it is only fair to add that vanity and intolerance are not the only things which might move someone to consider some particular view too stupid or disgusting to merit discussion.
Gabriel Blanchard is CLT’s editor at large. He lives in Baltimore, MD.
If you missed the beginning of the Rhetorica series and want to pick it up from there, you can find the introductory post here, and a sketch of the series outline here. Or, if you’d like to dive into our current series on Western history, you can look through our timelines of prehistory, proto-antiquity, Classical Antiquity, and the Early Middle Ages, which link to the more in-depth posts on specific periods and cultures and will bring you nearly up to speed; you’ll then be in a better position to follow our posts on the High Middle Ages in general and on Scholasticism, the religious poverty movements, and the beginning of the Inquisition. Thank you for reading.
Published on 10th April, 2025. Page image of actor Gregory Peck portraying Atticus Finch, the senior protagonist of Harper Lee‘s celebrated novel To Kill a Mockingbird, in the film adaptation of the work.