What is Rhetoric?

My definition of rhetoric is a part of english that concentrates on the writing and language of persuasion of an audience. I’m honestly not quite sure or positive that that’s the correct definition of rhetoric, but to my knowledge it’s the author’s persuasion of english. I took a class in philosophy last semester and I realized that the philosophers wrote rhetorically during the majority of their writing. While reading Aristotle, Hume, Descartes, and Mill for example, I noticed that they all at some point tried to persuade their audience by making them doubt their own beliefs. I’ve come to the conclusion to understand rhetoric in the way that I do because of taking the philosophy course last semester. By taking this course, it showed and taught me a lot about rethinking my own beliefs based on the factors to persuade my own decisions that were made from my upbringing and prior knowledge, “a priori”. During these essays, the philosophers purpose is to make people feel confused and question their own beliefs to maybe even change them. This encourages mental space to think about if your beliefs are really the right and/or correct beliefs. Most of the time after reading these lengthy and confusing essays, I often had to take time to understand why the philosophers were not only going against my own beliefs, but opposing their own as well. Tying this all back to the understanding of rhetoric, I think that reading many essays from well known philosophers helped me understand why rhetoric is used. Philosophy is all about not settling for one specific opinion and belief you have of a chosen topic. It’s about broadening your knowledge and creating unbiased beliefs. I’m hoping that this class will help me understand rhetoric in a non philosophical way. While I enjoyed understanding ancient philosophy, it was also very hard to read. So I’m hoping the readings in this class will help me see rhetoric in a different way that will be easier to comprehend.