
If you want to draw a conclusion, you must not let it be foreseen, but you must get the premisses admitted one by one, unobserved, mingling them here and there in your talk: otherwise, your opponent will attempt all sorts of chicanery. Or, if it is doubtful whether your opponent will admit them, you must advance the premisses of these premisses; that is to say, you must draw up pro-syllogisms, and get the premisses of several of them admitted in no definite order. In this way you conceal your game until you have obtained all the admissions that are necessary, and so reach your goal by making a circuit. These rules are given by Aristotle in his Topica, bk. viii., c. 1. It is a trick which needs no illustration.
The Art of Controversy - Schopenhauer
- 01 - Extension
- 02 - Homonymy
- 03 - Generalize your Opponent's Specific Statements
- 04 - Conceal your game
- 05 - False propositions
- 06 - Postulate What Has To Be Proved
- 07 - Yield Admissions through questions
- 08 - Make Your Opponent Angry
- 09 - Questions in Detouring Order
- 10 - Take Advantage of The Nay-Sayer
- 11 - Generalize Admissions of Specific Cases
- 12 - Choose Metaphors Favourable to Your Proposition
- 13 - Agree to Reject the Counter-Proposition
- 14 - Claim Victory Despite Defeat
- 15 - Use Seemingly Absurd Propositions
- 16 - Arguments Ad Hominem
- 17 - Defense Through Subtle Distinction
- 18 - Interrupt, Break, Divert the Dispute
- 19 - Generalize the Matter, Then Argue Against it
- 20 - Draw Conclusions Yourself
- 21 - Meet him With a Counter-Argument as Bad as His
- 22 - Petitio Principii
- 23 - Make Him Exaggerate his Statement
- 24 - State a False Syllogism
- 25 - Find One Instance to The Contrary
- 26 - Turn The Tables
- 27 - Anger Indicates a Weak Point
- 28 - Persuade the Audience, Not The Opponent
- 29 - Diversion
- 30 - Appeal to Authority Rather Than Reason
- 31 - This is Beyond Me
- 32 - Put His Thesis Into Some Odious Category
- 33 - It Applies in Theory, But Not in Practice
- 34 - Don't Let Him Off The Hook
- 35 - Will is More Effective Than Insight
- 36 - Bewilder Your opponent by Mere Bombast
- 37 - A Faulty Proof Refutes His Whole Position
- 38 - The Ultimate Stratagem
- Intro I - Logic And Dialectic
- Intro II - Controversial Dialectic
- Intro III - The Basis Of All Dialectic