Sophistic & Logic
-todo
Original text
When your opponent uses a merely superficial or sophistical argument and you see through it, you can, it is true, refute it by setting forth its captious and superficial character; but it is better to meet him with a counter-argument which is just as superficial and sophistical, and so dispose of him; for it is with victory that you are concerned, and not with truth. If, for example, he adopts an argumentum ad hominem, it is sufficient to take the force out of it by a counter argumentum ad hominem or argumentum ex concessis; and, in general, instead of setting forth the true state of the case at equal length, it is shorter to take this course if it lies open to you.
Sophistic & Logic
This stratagem relies on a original form of the "ad hominem" fallacy.
Original text
Another trick is to use arguments ad hominem, or ex concessis.14 When your opponent makes a proposition, you must try to see whether it is not in some way - if needs be, only apparently - inconsistent with some other proposition which he has made or admitted, or with the principles of a school or sect which he has commended and approved, or with the actions of those who support the sect, or else of those who give it only an apparent and spurious support; or with his own actions or want of action. For example, should he defend suicide, you may at once exclaim, "Why don't you hang yourself?" Should he maintain that Berlin is an unpleasant place to live in, you may say, "Why don't you leave by the first train?" Some such claptrap is always possible.
14.) The truth from which I draw my proof may be either (1) of an objective and universally valid character; in that case my proof is veracious, secundum veritatem; and it is such proof alone that has any genuine validity. Or (2) it may be valid only for the person to whom I wish to prove my proposition, and with whom I am disputing. He has, that is to say, either taken up some position once for all as a prejudice, or hastily admitted it in the course of the dispute; and on this I ground my proof. In that case, it is a proof valid only for this particular man, ad hominem. I compel my opponent to grant my proposition, but I fail to establish it as a truth of universal validity. My proof avails for my opponent alone, but for no one else. For example, if my opponent is a devotee of Kant's, and I ground my proof on some utterance of that philosopher, it is a proof which in itself is only ad hominem. If he is a Mohammedan, I may prove my point by reference to a passage in the Koran, and that is sufficient for him; but here it is only a proof ad hominem.