Enthymeme

Kings and princes are feared for the way they exact punishment. And this happens when their judges and officers are sly and secretive in punishing and enforcing justice, so that the miscreants cannot escape and avoid punishment. Thus it is stated in Aristotle's Rhetoric book 2 [1382 b20], that those who are secretive are more feared than those who are forthright.¹

Obviously this is not a universal truth. The power of this claim rests in particular psychological experience. It is to be felt rather than reasoned through a long chain of premises, something to be grasped readily and intuitively. It's a truth to be appreciated by fans of The Godfather rather than by students of the Posterior Analytics. The author of this statement is not Niccolò Machiavelli, though in its directness it seems to anticipate that humanist master of Realpolitik. The writer was scholastic philosopher Giles of Rome, who wrote a political treatise, De regimine principum (On the Rule of Princes), for the young French prince Philip the Fair around 1277 CE. As he tells us, Giles finds his proof of the emotion of fear, its conditions and its sources, in Aristotle's Rhetoric. But he found more in the Rhetoric: a tool of persuasion to make emotion itself a form of proof. This is the enthymeme. The very form of Giles of Rome's emotionally targeted claim, that we most fear those who dissemble about their intentions, is enthymematic.

As Aristotle explains it, the enthymeme is the core of rhetorical reasoning: he calls it "the body (soma) of persuasion" (1354 a15). The word "enthymeme" (enthymêma) comes from the word thymos, meaning heart, mind, spirit, desire, or soul as manifested through the passions. It signifies the seat of emotions and intuitions, where inferences, judgments, and intentions are made. Thus an enthymeme should be the outcome of an action in the thymos. Closer to enthymêma is the verb enthymeisthai, "to consider," "to weigh." This suggests the kind of judgment involved in rhetorical persuasion. As the key device of persuasion, the enthymeme is a kind of junction box between emotion and deliberation. It is to rhetoric what the syllogism is to logic, but unlike the syllogism used in strict logic, the enthymeme does not have to withstand a high test of probability. An enthymeme can succeed if an audience concurs with its conclusion. Appealing to the beliefs and values of a particular audience (this audience in Philadelphia, that audience in Naples, this court, that comune), the enthymeme is the tool perfectly equipped to translate emotional conditions into the formal character of proof. Logicians might not accept that sly dissemblers are necessarily more to be feared than the quick-tempered, but anyone who has lived in the echo chamber of a royal court, or who has wondered at the self-contained efficacy of Michael Corleone, will readily grasp the force of Giles of Rome's (and Aristotle's) claim about how fear is best produced.

In calling upon heart, body, and intuition, the enthymeme is the most sensuous form of reasoning. Having learned from Aristotle's Rhetoric how the enthymeme delivers emotional reasoning, Giles of Rome stages his advice to princes in enthymematic terms, often eschewing platitudes about virtue, conduct, and loyalty in favor of immediate appeals to the beliefs and conventional values of his audience. No doubt this helps to account for the vast success of his De regimine principum, which reached readers across Europe not only in its original Latin version, but also in multiple vernacular translations, from French to Italian to English, from Hebrew to Swedish. But those audiences were already receptive to the power of enthymemes. It is part of the fabric of public oratory and of homily. In the Gospels Jesus's discourse is largely built of enthymemes. Most famously but also humbly, the eight Beatitudes in Matthew 5:3–10 are framed as simple enthymemes, a conclusion followed by a supporting reason: "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven" (5:3).² The premises are not all spelled out (what minor premise connects the conclusion with the supporting...