This paper considers the use that Plato makes of the Principle of Non-Contradiction in his engagements with eristic refutations. By examining Plato’s use of the principle in his most detailed engagements with eristic—in the Sophist, the discussion of “agonistic” argumentation in the Theaetetus, and especially the Euthydemus—I aim to show that the pressure exerted on Plato by eristic refutations played a crucial role in his development of the PNC, and that the principle provided him with a much more sophisticated means (...) of demarcating philosophical argumentation from eristic than he is generally thought to have. In particular, I argue that Plato’s qualified formulation of the PNC restricts the class of genuine contradictions in such a way that reveals the contradictions that eristics produce through their refutations to be merely apparent and that Plato consistently appeals to his qualified conception of genuine contradiction in his encounters with eristics in order to demonstrate that their refutations are merely apparent. The paper concludes by suggesting that the conception of genuine contradiction afforded by the PNC did not just provide Plato with a way of demarcating genuine from eristic refutations, but also with an answer to substantive philosophical challenges that eristics raised through their refutations. (shrink)

Cicero, Lucullus 38: ‘…non potest animal ullum non adpetere id quod accommodatum ad naturam adpareat …’ From earliest childhood every man wants to possess something. One man collects horses. Another wants gold. Socrates has a passion for companions. He would rather have a good friend than a quail or a rooster. In this way, Socrates begins his interrogation of Menexenus. He then congratulates Menexenus and Lysis for each having what he himself still does not possess. How is it that one (...) gets a friend, Socrates asks? Since the nineteenth century many who have read these lines have found them repulsive. Scholars have damned the Lysis for its selfish egoism, for regarding persons as personal belongings. At the turn of the century some sought to discredit the dialogue as a forgery and a calumny. Others debated the dating of the dialogue as Socratic or Platonic, seeking whom to blame rather than whom to credit. And those who have regarded the dialogue as Platonic have tried to redeem it by detecting hints of Plato's theory of Forms. A few have attempted to salvage reputations by understanding the argument of the Lysis as a reductio of egoism, or else by invoking the loyalty of Socrates' friends and the history of Plato's friendship for Dion of Syracuse to speak up for their defence. Guthrie has condemned the dialogue as a failure of method and presentation , and Vlastos has pronounced it a failure of love: ‘The lover Socrates has in view seems positively incapable of loving others for their own sake, else why must he feel no affection for anyone whose good-producing qualities he did not happen to need?’ The Lysis appears to make no positive contribution to the Greek tradition on friendship when compared to the Symposium or the Phaedrus. And in the subsequent tradition, whatever Aristotle might have borrowed from the dialogue he uses for his own purposes. Aristotle too is quite critical of specific points raised in the Lysis. Now it might seem that Aristotle made a place for the selfish love of the Lysis in his own theory, as an inferior grade of utility love. But even this cannot be so, if we are to agree with recent studies of Aristotle's ethics. According to Aristotle, if a client is friendly to his benefactor because of the latter's usefulness, this utilitarian motive must accompany a genuine concern for the benefactor's own interest in that relation, if they are to be friends. Inferior and genuine friendship may differ in purpose but not in regard for the well-being of the beloved. This respect for the object of one's love has no parallel in the Lysis, according to the standard reading of the dialogue. (shrink)

My dissertation is devoted to an examination of the resolution of fallacy in Plato's Euthydemus. It is a familiar claim that the Euthydemus champions Socratic argumentation over sophistical or eristic reasoning. No consensus however exists regarding either the nature or philosophical significance of Socrates’ treatment of the fallacies he confronts. I argue that a careful reading of the dialogue reveals that the Socratic response to fallacious reasoning is conducted at two different levels of philosophical sophistication. Socrates relies upon the resources (...) of Socratic dialectic in responding to sophisms due to ignorance of refutation. Insofar as Socratic dialectic is grounded in a grasp of the nature of genuine refutation, the objections it raises to false refutation are fully explanatory. On the other hand, Socrates employs various self-refutation arguments against theses which depend on false assumptions regarding the nature of predication---for example, the thesis that false speaking is impossible. It is however characteristic of Socratic dialectic that this method of examination cannot explain why the sophists’ theses are false. The Socratic response to fallacy in these cases is non-explanatory in this sense. On the other hand, these limitations on Socratic expertise are overcome in other passages in the dialogue which are replete with clues to the reader that point to a genuine explanation and resolution of the sophists’ arguments for their various theses. In particular, the reader is invited at every turn to modify, clarify, or reject various assumptions made by the brothers regarding the nature of predication. Here Plato implicitly relies on the results of what I call higher dialectic. This theory, which receives explicit formulation in the Sophist, is conceptually rich enough to expose and dispose of the various false assumptions upon which the sophists’ theses rest. I conclude that the Euthydemus is concerned to identify Socratic dialectic as only a part of philosophy, and to locate and strictly delimit its epistemological status as lying above eristic and the rhetorical arts, but below that of dialectic as that is conceived in the Republic and even later dialogues---thus anticipating the Sophist’s conception of Socrates as the practitioner of a ‘noble sophistry’, and the elenchus as a propaedeutic to philosophy, which purges the soul of false beliefs. (shrink)

L'objet principal de l'ouvrage d'Aristote intituléRéfutations sophistiquesest la théorie de la réfutation apparente, c'est-à-dire de l'argumentation qui, se développant dans le cadre d'un échange dialectique, masque quelque erreur. Aristote propose une taxinomie des réfutations apparentes d'après laquelle elles se rangent en deux groupes: celles qui relèvent du langage et celles qui n'en relèvent pas. Dans le premier groupe tombent six types de réfutation, l'homonymie, l'amphibolie, la liaison, la séparation, la forme de l'expression et l'accent; dans le deuxième l'accident, la conséquence, (...) l'ignorance de la réfutation, la fausse cause, l'interrogation multiple, la pétition de principe et la confusion de l'absolu et du relatif. Il s'agit de la fameuse table des treize paralogismes oufallaciœque la tradition a consacrée. Dans le cadre de ces treize types de sophisme le texte d'Aristote nous offre la discussion de maints exemples parmi lesquels certains étonnent pour leur difficulté, d'autres pour leur trivialité. (shrink)

Les réfutations sophistiques ont joui, au cours du Moyen Âge, d’une considération peut-être même supérieure à leurs mérites, mais par un juste retour des choses, elles ont été presque complètement négligées pendant l’époque contemporaine. Cet ouvrage — dont l’analyse avait été plus l’occupation préliminaire des médiévistes que l’intérêt central des aristotélisants — est maintenant l’objet d’une excellente étude par Louis-André Dorion, une étude qui réintroduit cet ouvrage «dans le courant de la recherche», fournissant une introduction tant historique que systématique, une (...) traduction fidèle et lisible à la fois et un commentaire constitué de quatre cent quatre-vingtune notes qui abordent des problèmes philosophiques, linguistiques, logiques et philologiques avec une compétence admirable. L’introduction traite de plusieurs questions qui nécessitaient une mise au point: l’origine et la signification du titre, la place originale des RS parmi les œuvres logiques d’Aristote, la chronologie, le contexte historique et culturel, la division du texte des RS, les problèmes liés à la taxinomie des paralogismes, les dettes d’Aristote à l’égard de Platon, etc. (shrink)