The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

answer is the business not of
a man who is showing something, but of one who is holding an
examination. For the art of examining is a branch of dialectic and
has in view not the man who has knowledge, but the ignorant
pretender. He, then, is a dialectician who regards the common
principles with their application to the particular matter in hand,
while he who only appears to do this is a sophist. Now for
contentious and sophistical reasoning: (1) one such is a merely
apparent reasoning, on subjects on which dialectical reasoning is
the proper method of examination, even though its conclusion be
true: for it misleads us in regard to the cause: also (2) there are
those misreasonings which do not conform to the line of inquiry
proper to the particular subject, but are generally thought to
conform to the art in question. For false diagrams of geometrical
figures are not contentious (for the resulting fallacies conform to
the subject of the art)-any more than is any false diagram that may
be offered in proof of a truth-e.g. Hippocrates’ figure or the
squaring of the circle by means of the lunules. But Bryson’s method
of squaring the circle, even if the circle is thereby squared, is
still sophistical because it does not conform to the subject in
hand. So, then, any merely apparent reasoning about these things is
a contentious argument, and any reasoning that merely appears to
conform to the subject in hand, even though it be genuine
reasoning, is a contentious argument: for it is merely apparent in
its conformity to the subject-matter, so that it is deceptive and
plays foul. For just as a foul in a race is a definite type of
fault, and is a kind of foul fighting, so the art of contentious
reasoning is foul fighting in disputation: for in the former case
those who are resolved to win at all costs snatch at everything,
and so in the latter case do contentious reasoners. Those, then,
who do this in order to win the mere victory are generally
considered to be contentious and quarrelsome persons, while those
who do it to win a reputation with a view to making money are
sophistical. For the art of sophistry is, as we said,’ a kind of
art of money-making from a merely apparent wisdom, and this is why
they aim at a merely apparent demonstration: and quarrelsome
persons and sophists both employ the same arguments, but not with
the same motives: and the same argument will be sophistical and
contentious, but not in the same respect; rather, it will be
contentious in so far as its aim is an apparent victory, while in
so far as its aim is an apparent wisdom, it will be sophistical:
for the art of sophistry is a certain appearance of wisdom without
the reality. The contentious argument stands in somewhat the same
relation to the dialectical as the drawer of false diagrams to the
geometrician; for it beguiles by misreasoning from the same
principles as dialectic uses, just as the drawer of a false diagram
beguiles the geometrician. But whereas the latter is not a
contentious reasoner, because he bases his false diagram on the
principles and conclusions that fall under the art of geometry, the
argument which is subordinate to the principles of dialectic will
yet clearly be contentious as regards other subjects. Thus, e.g.
though the squaring of the circle by means of the lunules is not
contentious, Bryson’s solution is contentious: and the former
argument cannot be adapted to any subject except geometry, because
it proceeds from principles that are peculiar to geometry, whereas
the latter can be adapted as an argument against all the number of
people who do not know what is or is not possible in each
particular context: for it will apply to them all. Or there is the
method whereby Antiphon squared the circle. Or again, an argument
which denied that it was better to take a walk after dinner,
because of Zeno’s argument, would not be a proper argument for a
doctor, because Zeno’s argument is of general application. If,
then, the relation of the contentious argument to the dialectical
were exactly like that of the drawer of false diagrams to the
geometrician, a contentious argument upon the aforesaid subjects
could not have existed. But, as it is, the dialectical argument is
not concerned with any definite kind of being, nor does it show
anything, nor is it even an argument such as we find in the general
philosophy of being. For all beings are not contained in any one
kind, nor, if they were, could they possibly fall under the