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The word enthymeme comes from the Greek enthymeme which means “piece of reasoning”. In rhetoric, enthymeme is the name given to a syllogism in which one of the premises or the conclusion has been omitted, because it is considered obvious or implicit in the statement. The enthymeme is also known as a truncated syllogism or rhetorical syllogism .
Origin of the term
Aristotle, the Greek philosopher who created the syllogism in the West, was also the one who established the concept of enthymeme, proposing two notions. The first refers to the syllogism based on similarities or signs that indicate a property and that performs the function of a syllogistic middle term, for example, “from a woman who produces milk it can be inferred that she has just had a child.” The second refers to an incomplete syllogism in the sense that a premise is not expressed, but is taken for granted since it is implicit in the reference.
At present, the enthymeme is considered an abbreviated syllogism, that is, an argumentative statement that contains a conclusion and where one of the premises is implicit in the other premise. A statement like the following would be considered an enthymeme: “You must be a socialist because you favor an income tax.”
Here, the conclusion “he is a socialist” has been deduced from the express premise, “he favors an income tax,” and from an implicit premise which may well be that “anyone who favors an income tax is a socialist”, or that “a socialist is anyone who favors an income tax”.
The enthymeme and the syllogism
The syllogism is the reasoned chain that is established between two given premises and a conclusion made by the reader through a logical deduction. In the enthymeme, on the other hand, the reader must provide one of the parts for the proposition to be accessible, that is, here one of the premises is not declared, which generates a bit of conflict to deduce what the statement manifests.
The virtue of the enthymeme lies in the vivacity that it produces in the speech, but at the same time it is a mechanism that can disguise fallacies or produce misunderstandings. At least there is something in it that is not made explicit, and then the reasoning can succeed more through the use of humor than through the consistency of its premises.
Enthymemes are generally used for three reasons:
- Because the premises are obvious.
- Because the premises are doubtful.
- Because the premises attend more to desire than to reason.
For this reason and in any of the cases, a part is always deleted.
types of enthymemes
Enthymemes are divided into first-order and second-order enthymemes. In first-order enthymemes the main proposition that makes up the syllogism is not stated; on the contrary, the secondary premise is absent and is inferred in the enthymemes that are of second order, which are called rhetorical enthymemes .
It was Aristotle who proposed this classification; however, some scholars propose that there are third-order enthymemes, which refer to those where a conclusion is missing. Aristotle also stated that enthymemes can be true or apparent, and the latter are also known as fallacious.
Examples and observations
These are some examples of enthymemes that can help to better understand this concept:
| rhetorical example | Possible analysis or conclusion |
| Drunk driving harms innocent people. | Drunk driving is wrong. |
| Julius Caesar refused to accept the crown. | Julius Caesar is not ambitious. |
| Since Socrates is human, he is mortal. | Humans are mortal. |
The persuasive power of the enthymeme
Aristotle appreciated the persuasive power of the enthymeme by being aware that when it comes to speaking and writing, an argument does not have to be airtight to be taken seriously. In his treatise On Rhetoric, he offered three important pieces of advice for being persuasive:
- What your audience thinks of you really matters, if they don’t trust you, you’re toast to the sun.
- What you say or write has to make people feel something.
- Your argument should be crafted with a particular audience in mind , because using different arguments aimed at each target inevitably loses them all.
Sources
- Allen, J. 2007. Aristotle on the Disciplines of Argument: Rhetoric, Dialectic, Analytic. In Rhetorica 25 . 87–108.
- Corbett, Edward PJ, Connors, RJ (1999). Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, 4th ed.
- Image designed by Ana, in V de Vigueras .
