Monday, August 25, 2008

Letter from Birmingham Jail 6

Paragraph 16 exerts a strong appeal to logos. How can you express King’s argument (s) in a series of syllogisms?

2 comments:

MinJae Lee said...

A: "A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God." (Sentence 3)
A: "Any law that uplifts human personality is just." (Sentence 6)
B: "To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law." (Sentence 5)
B: “Any law that degrades human personality is unjust." (Sentence 7)
X: "All segregation statues are unjust BECAUSE segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality" (sentence 8)

From the paragraph 16 a sequence which shows the logos behind it can be seen from the following passages. Martin Luther King Jr. sets forth his idea of what is just and unjust by the knowledge he has regarding A and B. A syllogism is an argument which leads the audience to believe something through the facts set before. In paragraph 16 it is show as following, if A is this and B is that then X must be that. Through this method Martin Luther King Jr. leads the reader into seeing why he justifies his actions by the way he regards the laws set in the United States of America by the 1950s.

Silver WO said...

Major Clause: All laws that degrade human personality are unjust.
Minor Clause: Segregation laws degrade human personality.
Conclusion: Segregation laws are unjust.

Major: Separation is sinful.
Minor: Segregation is separation.
Concl: Segregation laws are sinful.

Major: Laws are unjust if they are inflicted on a minority who do not have the right to vote.
Minor: The Black minority do not have the right to vote.
Concl: Laws inflicted on the Black minority are unjust.

Those are three that I did in my language arts class.