Persuading Aristotle: The timeless art of persuasion in business, negotiation and the media

223 Pages·1998·0.71 MB·English

by  Peter Thompson

PERSUADING
ARISTOTLE
PERSUADING
ARISTOTLE
The timeless art of persuasion in business,
negotiation and the media
PETER THOMPSON
ALLEN & UNWIN
Copyright (cid:211) Peter Thompson 1998
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted
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without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
First published in 1998 by
Allen & Unwin
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Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Thompson, Peter, 1952 –
Persuading Aristotle.
Bibliography.
Includes index.
ISBN 186448 739.9.
1. Persuasion (Psychology). 2. Persuasion (Rhetoric).
3. Interpersonal communication. I. Title.
153.852
Digital processing by The Electric Book Company
20 Cambridge Drive, London SE12 8AJ, UK; www.elecbook.com
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
1 HOW PE RSUASION WORKS: WHAT ARISTOTLE TAUGHT 1
2 THINKING AND ORGANISING 14
3 PERSUASIVE LANGUAGE 38
4 HOW TO PERSUADE DIFFERENT PERSONALITIES 60
5 STEP - BY - STEP BUSINESS PRESENTATIONS 87
6 THE ASTUTE NEGOTIATOR 131
7 DEALING WITH THE MEDIA 166
FURTHER READING 212
INDEX 213
For Lissa - My love
CHAPTER 1
HOW PERSUASION WORKS:
WHAT ARISTOTLE TAUGHT
1. Background 3. `Artistic' persuasion
2. What Aristotle taught 4. John Bell
The fool tells me his reasons. The wise man persuades me
with my own.
Aristotle
Contra negantem principia non est disputandum.
You cannot argue with someone who denies the first principles.
Anon.
EVERYTHING WE KNOW about the art of persuasion today in
our mass marketing era is a legacy of thinkers who lived 2400
years ago. They knew it all! The way we think and persuade today
owes everything to the insights of Aristotle and his contemporar-
ies. We are under the influence of Aristotle each time we turn on
the television. Advertisers organise the text of their 30-second
commercials on the basis of the structures taught at Aristotle's
Lyceum. Directors and film writers structure their plots in the
same way. Film actors spend years learning the same art of
`delivery' that Aristotle taught as a central element of persuasion.
In television news, politicians and other leaders seek to
2 PERSUADING ARISTOTLE
influence public opinion. Those who understand the power of
what Aristotle called `style' and metaphor do best. Television and
radio interviews are conducted in the basic interactive framework
adopted by both Socrates and modern interviewers to discover
the truth.
In business, the corporate doctors known as management
consultants borrow directly from Aristotle's teaching about the
`invention', which is the process of getting to the core question
in the diagnosis of the ills of the company they are studying.
They report to their clients using Aristotle's `arrangement' for
structuring their arguments.
At school and university, teachers and professors transfer the
fundamental learning strategies of Greek logic and thought. Per-
haps they teach in the Socratic style. In the social sciences, the
dialectical system of Aristotle is the basis for testing the different
interpretations of reality. Our courts model themselves on Greek
dialectical methods as evidence is presented to prove a case. The
evidence is tested by Socratic cross-examination.
So, in many different areas of contemporary life, we are still
putting on Aristotle's thinking cap.
Background
Aristotle, Socrates and Plato were the three greatest minds in
ancient Greece. Socrates (c. 469-399BC) left no writings but we
know about him through the dialogues of Plato. His legacy is the
Socratic method of reaching an answer through a dialogue of
questioning or cross-examination, and arriving at the truth by
discerning the differences between opposite points of view. It is,
for example, the prosecution and defence method of our justice
and court system, and the foundation of the method of learning
HOW PERSUASION WORKS 3
pioneered at the Harvard Law and Business Schools and taught
widely in Australian universities.
Plato (c. 429-347BC) was Socrates' great disciple. In the Phaedo,
he described Socrates as `the wisest and justest and best of all
men I have ever known'. At some time in the 380s, Plato set up
a school of learning and philosophy, known as the Academy. His
most renowned student was Aristotle, who joined him at the age
of seventeen and remained until Plato's death. Then Aristotle left
Athens to become tutor to a 13-year-old Macedonian prince, later
known as Alexander the Great.
Aristotle returned to Athens in 338BC and founded his own
school in the gymnasium of the Lyceum in 335BC. There, for
twelve years, he taught under a covered walk, known as a peripatos,
his students becoming known as peripatetics. In the afternoons,
he would teach rhetoric – which he called the art of persuasion,
`an ability in each case to see the available means of persuasion'.
The Greek word rhetor meant public speaker and the origins of
the word rhetorike date back to Socrates' era.
Plato was greatly disturbed by techniques which had the
effect of making the weaker argument the stronger. He was
convinced these means were used to build an unjust case against
Socrates.
He rejected the injustice which flows from verbal trickery,
blaming deceptions on the `wise men' known as sophists, the most
famous of whom, Protagoras, believed that there were no universal
truths. `Man is the measure of all things' was the belief of
Protagoras, `of things that are in so far as they are and of things
that are not in so far as they are not'. If nothing is known for
sure, therefore, the art of rhetoric becomes decisive in swaying
the populace to arrive at conclusions and make judgments. Soph-
ists specialised in teaching the methods of argument.
Socrates was plunged into this dubious moral context to defend
4 PERSUADING ARISTOTLE
his life at a trial which took place in a politically unstable interval
following the conclusion of war with Sparta. Accused of blas-
phemy and corrupting the morals of youth through heretical
teachings, Socrates became something of a scapegoat for the
declining power of Athens. At his trial, arguments honed by the
sophists prevailed and Socrates was condemned to death. He
declined an opportunity to escape and committed suicide by
drinking hemlock. In the Apology, Plato confronts the evil use of
oratory as he records Socrates' address to the judges who have
condemned him:
Perhaps you think, O Athenians, that I have been con-
victed through the want of arguments, by which I might
have persuaded you, had I thought it right to do
and say anything so that I might escape punishment. Far
otherwise: I have been convicted through want indeed,
yet not of arguments, but of audacity and impudence,
and of the inclination to say such things to you as
would have been most agreeable for you to hear, had I
lamented and bewailed and done and said many other
things unworthy of me, as I affirm, but such as you are
accustomed to hear from others . . . But I should much
rather choose to die having so defended myself than to live
in that way.
(Translation from Lewis Copeland and Lawrence W. Lamm (eds),
The World's Greatest Speeches,
New York: Dover Publications, 1973.)
The miscarriage of justice at the trial of Socrates carried profound
lessons about the use of language and emotion for purposes of
evil, as well as good.