Part IV

Aristotle believed that ethos, pathos, and logos represented the three core methods of persuasion, but nevertheless recognized a fourth factor as very important too. This mysterious fourth factor is kairos. This is by far the hardest to translate, but it’s sort of like timing. Well, timing isn’t exactly the best word, because kairos has a sort of aspect that’s the right timing. The Greeks believed that everything had a kairos, a right or just time for everything. So every speech or action has its own fated best time. It’s a little confusing, I’m always wondering if I quite understand it correctly myself. 

Anyways, what kairos implies in terms of persuasion is that the timing of the act of persuasion is critical. Again, this may seem simplistic, but we often miss or overlook those things that are most basic. For example, remember the plane that in DC a while back, an American Airlines flight crashed into a blackhawk helicopter over the Potomac River, killing everyone on board. Luckily, I survived my flight into that airport, DCA, 2 months later. Anyways, it wouldn’t be very wise for American Airlines to suddenly begin heavily advertising the safety of their flights into Reagan National Airport. It would come off as insensitive and would likely spark outrage. On the other hand, keeping with the same situation, if Trump had argued for increased air traffic control regulations, an investigation into DCA, and the like, there would be a significant positive response. I’m not actually sure if this happened exactly, hence the hypothetical. However, the effectiveness of the push would be greatly reduced if there hadn’t just been an accident. Simply put, no one would care. If there were no accidents, why in the world would we need to spend significant amounts of resources increasing safety? So, the timing, kairos, would make a huge difference in how effective the push was. This is kairos, timing, which is really just how an act of persuasion fits into the context of the rest of the happenings in the real world.

_{Cover photo by Jaylan Shuea}