How to Persuade: Reason

Reason is the form of logic and rationality or evidence offered to the audience. Logos is Aristotle's word, the root of the word 'logic.'

Examples of Reason from famous speeches:

"Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand."

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

"You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default."

J.K. Rowlings, Harvard University, 2011

Sagan gets straight to the heart of the matter in this portion of his narration of the Pale Blue Dot. There is no evidence of other life; no where we could escape a truly global catastrophe. His statements are completely rational; indeed, we have no ability even a quarter of a century later to settle other extraterrestrial locales. We're stuck here.

This part of Rowlings' graduation speech at Harvard starts with Credibility, regarding the well known troubles of her past. She follows with Reason: "it is impossible to live without failing," something few people could reasonably disagree with. Likewise, she probes deeper, asking indirectly for the audience to consider how risk-averse they may be; and then she tells them the consequences for being too cautiously.

Reason backs up all that Empathy and Credibility set up. The speech itself must be rationally organized, letting the audience keep track of what is happening. and statements of apparent truth cannot simply be presented without some sort of reason. No matter the background of a speaker, telling the audience that the sky is green simply will not sit well, and cause consternation in the audience. Having a rambling story line with no apparent connection between paragraphs will also lose the audience. Keep Reason in mind with each sentence written. Does it properly and rationally connect with the other parts of the speech? If it is not truly true, then it must be eliminated.