In this weeks reading, Aristotle acknowledges that rhetoric can be either helpful or harmful, depending on how it is used. He believes that rhetoric inherently favors moral and just arguments because “things that are true and things that are just have a natural tendency to prevail over their opposites.” He classifies different kinds of arguments, appeals, and tools that can form the basis for persuasive arguments. For instance, he talks about how in a court room during a trial the primary focus for the attorneys is to try and persuade the person, whether is be the judge or the jury who will be making the decisions on the case, to believe what they are saying about the person being convicted is true or not. He claims that persuasion is clearly a sort of demonstration, since we are most fully persuaded when we consider a thing to have been demonstrated. That’s why in many cases the attorneys will demonstrate what it is they are trying to prove with witnesses or arguments that will back up what they are saying.
In my own opinion and by my own experiences I have to agree with this. Recently a girl knocked on our door and was advertising what my husband thought was a carpet cleaning service and asked us when was the last time we had our carpet cleaned and if we would be interested in getting a demonstration. She stated it was free of charge with no obligation to by the product but soling wanted to do a demonstration since they were just opening up a store nearby and wanted to get her credits for promoting the product, so of course we said yes. So she said ok that she would be right back with the guy that would be doing the demonstration, and about 20 minutes later she came back with the guy who was caring along with him a Kirby vacuum. Right then and there we new exactly what it was and knew we had just been trapped into something that was going to be hard to get out of because those Kirby people are persistent. We were also very familiar with the vacuum and what it could do because my grandmother had one and my parents bought one about 5 years ago that we always borrowed to shampoo the carpet and it works great not to mentioned it still worked, but we let him do the demonstration anyway. So anyway to make a long story short after about and hour of the guy demonstrating to us how this “magnificent” Kirby vacuum worked and after seeing first hand how it worked we were convinced it was a good buy and purchased the vacuum. Now I can’t say that it wasn’t pricey, because it was, but the bottom line was in the end the guys persuasive manner in demonstration the vacuum to us convinced us it was a good buy.
