Pathos persuades through emotion — moving the audience to feel something. Ethos persuades through the speaker's credibility and character — giving the audience a reason to trust them. With logos, which persuades through reasoning, these are Aristotle's three modes of persuasion.
The core difference
Two of the three classical appeals, distinguished by what they work on.
- pathos — the audience's feelings: a photograph of the aftermath.
- ethos — the speaker's standing: "in thirty years of practice…"
- logos — the argument itself: evidence and reasoning.
Pathos elsewhere
Outside rhetoric, pathos means a quality that evokes pity or sadness — "the pathos of the closing scene". That everyday sense is more common than the rhetorical one, and it is narrower: it points specifically at sadness rather than at emotional appeal in general.
The related words
Pathetic shares the root and has drifted a long way — it once meant moving or affecting, and now usually means feebly inadequate. Empathy and sympathy come from the same pathos, feeling. See also ethos vs logos.
