Rhetoric Part 6: Ad Hominem—Appeal to the Man

The following is the sixth in a series of posts on teaching rhetoric.

After laying much groundwork to understand what the three modes of persuasion are, as well as what an appeal is, we are now ready to begin exploring particular appeals and their fallacious counterparts! We will do this by exploring a number of concrete, real-world examples that incarnate an appeal being used as a reason for acting in a certain way in a particular circumstance. First up:

“ad hominem / appeal to the man”:  When a person’s (or thing’s) character is used as a reason for doing or not doing something.

This appeal is an ethical appeal that attempts to use a person’s character as a basis for whatever choice or judgement is being made. A person’s character is in many ways an accumulation of their past choices and behavior, which is why the longer we know a person and spend time with them, the more we can predict their behavior or reactions about certain things; they become familiar. There exists then, a relationship between an object’s character/ethos and its subsequent predictability or trustworthiness that can guide our interaction with it.

When you stop and think about it, knowing a person’s character can (and should) change the sorts of things we say and do around them. For example, if you know that a particular person is a gossip (that is their character/ethos), then you would be foolish to say things around them that should remain private; or you should refrain from talking about topics that might lead them into speaking badly of another person. If you are meeting a new person for the first time, but you know that they have an interest in music (they have a musical character/ethos), then you might try to steer the conversation towards something musically oriented to make both of you more comfortable. Real people, like people in books, are characters, and they have unique characters. Those unique compositions of characteristics are part of what makes each person unique and interesting, and getting to know a person is basically just getting to know their characteristics—the things that make them them.

It is important to note that the better we know a person’s characteristics, the more effectively we can love—or hurt—them. It is because I know my wife’s character deeply that I can know which words will encourage—or devastate—her. Letting people get to know your character is always an act of vulnerability, but this is a prerequisite to relationship and love. This is another reason we must be so careful with our words: they bring life and death to others.

Making particular decisions based on a person’s (or thing’s) ethos is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and we all do it every day in various ways. It can, however, be abused. Name-calling is the most common understanding of this fallacy; when a person is unable to make a reasoned argument, they often fall back on the much easier strategy of just calling the other person a derogatory name—which is essentially attacking their character instead of engaging with the issue at hand. There is, however, a very good and right place for naming something’s character, or “calling a spade a spade.” When we put a name to a person’s character, we may be accurately identifying some feature or characteristic about them that is indeed true, but because they do not like it, or because it is a fault, they may perceive that naming as an insult or an attack. But just because something is true does not mean that it needs to be said. As always, love must be the compass which guides our utterances. Spitefully calling out and naming someone’s weakness, especially publicly, can be one of the most hurtful things a person can do to another because it draws upon most people’s deepest fear: public humiliation.

Note that you can also include objects here; even though they aren’t “men,” they still have  characters that can influence your choice in how to interact with them.

Basic examples in which a person or thing’s character or characteristics (ethos) is used as a reason for doing/not doing something:

-A group of high school girls who are pretty and popular do not invite the new girl in their class to sit with them at lunch because she is a weird home-schooler.

-A quiet child does not want to go play at another boy’s house because he is a bully.

-When a pencil pouch spills onto the floor during a class change, one student stops to help pick up the contents because she is kind, while another student laughs and deliberately kicks a pen down the hall because he is cruel.

-Congress impeaches a president because they think he has done something dishonest.

-An employee is fired because he has been stealing.

-An employee is fired because, although the accusation is untrue, he has been accused of stealing.

-A man is denied a job because he is a convicted felon.

-A child says “thank you” because he is polite and well-trained.

-A girl turns down a date with a boy because he is too short.

-A girl does not go on a footbridge because it looks rickety and rotting.

-A girl is interested in a boy because he is good at sports.

-A student is given a scholarship because he is skilled at art.

-A student is skilled at art because he is hard-working and disciplined.

-A conscientious teacher holds a student after class to tell him to stop being lazy.

-A boy in a wheelchair gets made fun of because he looks different from the other kids.

-A news anchor gets a job primarily because she is very beautiful.

-A group of lazy students do not want to take responsibility for their actions, so they accuse the teacher behind her back of being a witch.

-A woman does not go on Twitter because it is divisive and unhealthy.

-A woman divorces her husband because he is a glutton.

-A boy dislikes a song because it is too upbeat for his tastes.

-A man buys his wife a bouquet on her birthday because he knows she loves flowers.

-A friend recommends a movie to you because he knows the types of films you enjoy.

These examples may be mundane and obvious, but that is precisely why they are so useful—they can train us to recognize ethical appeals that we are already making but of which we are unaware because they are so obvious. You should go about your day, or have your students go about their days, keeping a list in a notebook of all the examples you can find of yourself or others making decisions based on ethos.

You may also have noticed that each of these examples, although primarily ethical appeals, draws upon pathetic and logical elements as well. Every appeal is some admixture of all three modes of persuasion, with one emerging as the primarily persuasive reason for action in each situation. The pretty, popular high school girls in the first example feel a pathos of ‘disdain’ or ‘disgust’ or even ‘apathy’ for the home-schooler, and the unspoken logos of their action (sort of like an enthymeme) is something along the lines of “If a person isn’t cool, or immediately attractive and interesting to me, then they are not worth talking to and I have no responsibility to reach out to them or love them.”

Once we have begun to notice and identify common, everyday examples in our lives where people do or don’t do things based upon someone or something’s character, we can then start digging into the complicated, sticky examples where we try and figure out whether those appeals are actually appropriate or not. This means that we must always be conscious of the relationships that exist between the parties involved in our examples, and the ethic of love and respect must be the guide or ruler that we use to evaluate and judge propriety in each case. This does not mean that we will all come to the same conclusion, but that when we do come to a conclusion, we have a better idea of why we judge it to be appropriate or not. When we can identify the source of our disagreement with another person, we are most able to have a productive conversation to try and understand why that person thinks the way they do.

Bigger, Real-Life Examples

My wife, when she was a young girl, wrote down on a slip of paper all the qualities and characteristics (ethoi) that she expected and desired in her future husband. There were two columns: negotiables and non-negotiables. She still has this list in a box somewhere, and to this day we laugh about it; I hit more of the negative qualities on her list than I do the positive ones—and yet somehow she fell in love with me, and now we both look back on the list and thank God that He did not give her the sort of man she wanted then.

Similarly, in a far more shallow manner, my own life carries a similar story: for some reason, when I was growing up, I just always assumed that I would marry a blonde girl. For this stupid reason, I sat for a full semester in college next to my now-wife and did not see her at all—because she did not conform to the picture in my imagination of what a girl I would be interested in would look like; I had an assumption about the physical characteristics of the girl that I would end up with, and the result was that, in a way, I could not notice my future wife for the diamond that she was. My shallow, fallacious ethical-based desires and assumptions changed how I saw her and every person around me. Thankfully, I discovered this fallacious reasoning before I missed out on the most beautiful and important human relationship in my entire life.

Both of us, rightly, had desires and assumptions about the kind of ethos of the person we would end up with, for how can a person not? But for us to have stuck stubbornly to those ethical assumptions (both physical and moral) about our future spouse in a dogmatic way would have been harmful to us both.

I have a friend who refuses to vote in American elections, because he believes that the voting system is corrupt, rigged, and not actually representative of the will of the people. He often quotes a bumper sticker that reads, “The ballot is the slave’s suggestion box.” This potent analogy implies by way of enthymeme that, because of the corrupt character/ethos of the system, there is no real purpose in casting a vote because it will not be counted anyway. For him to be persuaded to vote, he would need to be somehow convinced that the character of the governmental system is not the corrupt one that he thinks it is, but rather healthy, dependable, and trustworthy.

I have had many students come to me over the years asking for grace and time extensions for assignments. One of the primary factors that I examine when considering such a request is the character of the student over the course of their time in my class. Students who have established an ethos of hard work, diligence, and interest in my class are much more likely to get the extension they have asked for, while students who have established an ethos of laziness, apathy, and procrastination are much less likely to get the extension. Of course there are always extenuating factors with each situation, but the character of the student absolutely factors into my decision-making process when it comes to that sort of thing.

An anonymous letter of complaint was once written about the toxicity of the work environment in a political office by people who had worked there, saying it was abusive and hostile. Rather than rebutting these claims with proof that the office was not a toxic workspace, the spokesperson called the people who wrote the letter “cowards,” presumably for their desire to remain anonymous. If the issue at hand is the relative health or sense of security in a particular workspace, drawing the attention to the supposed moral failings of those who are making the complaints seems to be avoiding the issue by trying to sully the character of the accusers. Whether the person(s) who wrote the letter are indeed cowards or not seems irrelevant. On the other hand, I supposed that one might argue that, for an accusation to really hold water, a person ought to be willing to put their name beside their claim if it is valid. Either way, the appeals to ethos and character figure heavily into this example.

Various politicians have been caught in adulterous relationships in American politics, which always elicits an uncomfortable question: Does the behavior of a politician in private have any connection to his behavior in office? If a person cannot keep their word to their spouse to remain faithful, in other words, if they have proven themselves to be dishonest in their marriage, then how likely are they to exhibit honesty in their political work? Some argue that a person’s private life has nothing to do with his professional life, and some argue that you cannot separate the two; one views a person’s behavior and character as being sort of compartmentalized, and the other views one’s character as being uniform across various spheres. Given that no one is perfect in their personal or professional life, where do we draw the lines between acceptable moral failure and unacceptable moral failure in the social sphere? Precisely how trustworthy should a person’s character be in a given profession? Does it vary from job to job? And how should we determine that?

There is a proverb that says, “You become what you behold.” The things we spend our time looking at, paying attention to, and thinking about, inevitably will exert a kind of influence on us that will transform us in some way. This can be seen on the small scale in the way that listening to a frenetic, screaming, blaring death metal song can immediately change my pulse and mood, or on a larger scale in the way that reading a certain book many times over the course of years can change your perspective about the world. This simple, obvious fact is one that is worth paying attention to: Humans are creatures who become, and much of who we will become (our character) depends on the character of the persons and things that we surround ourselves with. Many parents try to control who their children hang out with when they are younger because they realize that their own children will inevitably be influenced by their peers—for good or ill. The proverb, “If you lie down with dogs, you will wake up with fleas” draws upon this idea. There is not just a negative aspect here, but a positive one as well: Surrounding yourself with people with characters that you admire and look up to can be a powerful force for positive transformation. We are fundamentally imitative, so the people we spend time with and pay attention to will inevitably leave their mark on us. Our own character is a source of constant, quiet influence to those around us as well, which is why it is so important that we pay attention to the cultivation of our own character.

This principle of being influenced by the character that surrounds you even applies to architecture and interior aesthetics: the character of our surroundings can influence us in profound ways. A messy house incarnates an ethos of chaos and fracture, while a clean house incarnates an ethos of order and beauty; to various degrees, the state of cleanliness in our own home affects the moods of my family and me. My oldest son, when he gets done cleaning his room and putting everything in order, often stretches out on his bed afterwards and breathes a heavy sigh of contentment, saying something like, “Ahh–isn’t it nice to have everything put where it belongs.” An ordered room brings a sense of order (however fleeting) to the soul. This is probably the heart of the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson’s assertion that the road to self-improvement should begin with something simple like getting your room in order. The ways we order, or disorder, our homes have a great (albeit subtle) impact on us.

Hopefully this is helpful for revealing just how powerful and ubiquitous appeals to character are, and you will start to see them in your life more frequently. Next up, another ethical appeal: Ad Fontem!