Rhetorica:
What in the World
Is a Topos?
By Gabriel Blanchard
With the topoi or "common topics," we branch further into the logos of rhetoric and in some degree transcend it, seeking a patterned, and pattern-making, wisdom beyond syllogism.
Logical and Rhetorical Argument
For some weeks now, we have been discussing the rhetorical appeals, ēthos, pathos, and logos. Under the third heading, we have alluded to deduction—the technique of which we’ve outlined in an independent series here at the Journal—and sketched a few of the more important forms of inductive reasoning as well. But those familiar with our Author Bank may, all this while, have been haunted by a mounting, uneasy feeling that certain names on it, although writing about controversial matters to which the rigors of logic and the sciences properly pertain, show a tendency to … well, their style is such that—no, that isn’t coming out right … okay: From a certain point of view, oh goodness no, this is a straight-up quotation from Obi-Wan’s worst character moment in the whole series, that won’t go well.
Alright—better just put it bluntly. Are some of these writers, though brilliant and beloved, nevertheless bad reasoners?
Take the following passage:
… We can hear skepticism crashing through the old ring of authorities, and at the same moment we can see reason swaying upon her throne. Insofar as religion has gone, reason is going. For they are both of the same primary and authoritative kind. They are methods of proof which cannot themselves be proved. And in the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum. With a long and sustained tug we have attempted to pull the miter off pontifical man; and his head has come off with it.
—G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Chapter III: The Suicide of Thought
It is a compelling paragraph, from a justly celebrated book; but, in the name of that clarity which proceeds from honesty, let us set aside our affection for a moment and ask an uncomfortable question (at least, it is uncomfortable for those who, like the present writer, are quite fond of Chesterton): Is the argument here expressed a valid one, or fallacious?
The question is uncomfortable because once it has been raised, even if we absolve this particular passage, we can hardly fail to perceive that from time to time, Chesterton’s vivid rhetorical powers resemble our descriptions here at the Journal of fallacies like bald assertion, cherry-picking, or poisoning the well; and we don’t like thinking of someone we look up to as a shoddy reasoner. It makes the “looking up” part pretty challenging, and leaves us feeling like fools.
It is crucial not to rush here. You need not wallow in it; but being able to sit with your discomfort at least long enough to articulate that you feel it—and ideally, also about what and why—is one of the less-recognized techniques we sometimes need to use to keep ourselves honest.
Infinite patterns opened
in the sovereign chair's mass
but the crowned form of anatomized man,
bones, nerves, sinews,
the diagram of the style of the Logos,
rose in the crimson brass.
The Bad News
Let’s rip off the bandage: Chesterton’s reasoning is not always sound. That said, the same is true of literally every other writer throughout recorded history; nor are the specific issues alluded to above uniquely Chestertonian. Anyone immersed in our Author Bank is going to find themselves confronting views they may rightly find irrational and arguments they may rightly consider silly. A conversation held among, say, Hesiod, Lucretius, St. Gregory of Nyssa, Avicenna, St. Anselm, Lady Julian, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Karl Marx, Anna Julia Cooper, Virginia Woolf, and Albert Camus might be many things, including very interesting; what it would assuredly not be is unanimous from start to finish.
But stick with me—this is a bad-news-first situation, not a bad-news-only one. We’ve now covered the bad news! Which means we’re ready for the complement of the bad news, which is, of course,
The Confusing News
This next part of the subject is not extra difficult, but it can take some time and attention to master, because the standard term for this element of rhetoric is the hopelessly generic-sounding word (and strikingly google-resistant search term) “topic.” Like logic, its counterpart, rhetoric has its own argumentative structures—patterns that in a sense do for rhetoric what syllogisms do for logic. And for some reason, Aristotle chose to name these structures τόποι [topoi]. Probably the best translation for the word nowadays would be “commonplaces” (especially in the sense “tropes, clichés”). However, we started talking about Aristotle’s Rhetoric long before the Modern period of English vocabulary, and several important Greek terms acquired conventional, nigh-universally used renderings that became fixed (“virtue” for ἀρετή [aretē] is a comparable example1). So we usually still call them “the common topics.” For clarity’s sake, however, in this series we’ll instead be using the Greek word topoi, or topos in the singular.
Unlike syllogisms, however, the topoi do not have rigid modular forms. Where logic is concerned (directly) only with validity—that is, with relationships that necessarily exist among things—rhetoric is all about content. Accordingly, none of the topoi are valid or invalid by their form alone; they cannot be evaluated by rote; only insight will do. While Chesterton isn’t perfect, this is often what’s really going on with his writing—he is making use not of a fallacy, but of a topos.
The Elemental Topoi
We will be exploring the topoi in greater depth in subsequent posts; for now, it will suffice to enumerate them. There are four (or in some lists five, but we’re keeping it simple). The first three are essentially logical topoi (as in, topoi that rely mainly on the rhetorical appeal logos), while the last is more of an ethical appeal.
- Definition, whether in the sense of the meaning of a term or that of the inherent nature of something.
- Similarity, sometimes referred to as resemblance or analogy; “relation” is also used, but is not preferred, as it risks confusion with …
- Cause and Effect, with one important subtype that’s sometimes classed as an independent topos, that of circumstance.
- Authority, which is sometimes called testimony instead, and has many subtypes—our Great Conversation series on authority hints at them.
1A handful of other such terms include “art” for τέχνη [technē], “wisdom” for σοφία [sofia], and “happiness” for εὐδαιμονία [eudaimonia].
Gabriel Blanchard is CLT’s editor at large. He lives in Baltimore, MD.
Thank you for reading the Journal. We’ll be continuing to plug along while school’s out, so tune in any time, wherever you are—and have a great summer!
Published on 29th May, 2025. Page image of a 1482 reproduction of a map from Ptolemy’s Geographia, created in the city of Ulm in southwestern Germany.