Metanoia in the context of rhetoric

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...

 is a device used to retract a statement just made, and then state it in a better way. As such, metanoia is similar to correction

Correction

Correction may refer to:* An euphemism for punishment* Correction , the posting of a notice of a mistake in a past issue of a newspaper* Correction , in financial markets, a short-term price decline...

. Metanoia is used in recalling a statement in two ways—-to weaken the prior declaration or to strengthen it.

Weakening

The use of metanoia to weaken a statement is effective because the original statement still stands, along with the qualifying statement. For instance, when one says, "I will murder you. You shall be punished," the force of the original statement ("I will murder you") remains, while a more realistic alternative has been put forward ("you shall be punished").

Strengthening

When it is used to strengthen a statement, metanoia works to ease the reader from a moderate statement to a more radical one, as in this quote from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations

Meditations

Meditations is a series of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor 161–180 CE, setting forth his ideas on Stoic philosophy....

I still fall short of it through my own fault, and through not observing
the admonitions of the gods, and, I may almost say, their direct instructions (Book One);

Here Aurelius utilizes metanoia to move from a mild idea ("not observing the admonitions of the gods") to a more intense one ("not observing... their direct instructions"); the clause "I may almost say" introduces the metanoia.