The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

question straight away, but say that one puts it from
the wish for information: for the process of inquiry thus invited
gives room for an attack.
    A rule specially appropriate for showing up a fallacy is the
sophistic rule, that one should draw the answerer on to the kind of
statements against which one is well supplied with arguments: this
can be done both properly and improperly, as was said before.’
Again, to draw a paradoxical statement, look and see to what school
of philosophers the person arguing with you belongs, and then
question him as to some point wherein their doctrine is paradoxical
to most people: for with every school there is some point of that
kind. It is an elementary rule in these matters to have a
collection of the special ‘theses’ of the various schools among
your propositions. The solution recommended as appropriate here,
too, is to point out that the paradox does not come about because
of the argument: whereas this is what his opponent always really
wants.
    Moreover, argue from men’s wishes and their professed opinions.
For people do not wish the same things as they say they wish: they
say what will look best, whereas they wish what appears to be to
their interest: e.g. they say that a man ought to die nobly rather
than to live in pleasure, and to live in honest poverty rather than
in dishonourable riches; but they wish the opposite. Accordingly, a
man who speaks according to his wishes must be led into stating the
professed opinions of people, while he who speaks according to
these must be led into admitting those that people keep hidden
away: for in either case they are bound to introduce a paradox; for
they will speak contrary either to men’s professed or to their
hidden opinions.
    The widest range of common-place argument for leading men into
paradoxical statement is that which depends on the standards of
Nature and of the Law: it is so that both Callicles is drawn as
arguing in the Gorgias, and that all the men of old supposed the
result to come about: for nature (they said) and law are opposites,
and justice is a fine thing by a legal standard, but not by that of
nature. Accordingly, they said, the man whose statement agrees with
the standard of nature you should meet by the standard of the law,
but the man who agrees with the law by leading him to the facts of
nature: for in both ways paradoxical statements may be committed.
In their view the standard of nature was the truth, while that of
the law was the opinion held by the majority. So that it is clear
that they, too, used to try either to refute the answerer or to
make him make paradoxical statements, just as the men of to-day do
as well.
    Some questions are such that in both forms the answer is
paradoxical; e.g. ‘Ought one to obey the wise or one’s father?’ and
‘Ought one to do what is expedient or what is just?’ and ‘Is it
preferable to suffer injustice or to do an injury?’ You should lead
people, then, into views opposite to the majority and to the
philosophers; if any one speaks as do the expert reasoners, lead
him into opposition to the majority, while if he speaks as do the
majority, then into opposition to the reasoners. For some say that
of necessity the happy man is just, whereas it is paradoxical to
the many that a king should be happy. To lead a man into paradoxes
of this sort is the same as to lead him into the opposition of the
standards of nature and law: for the law represents the opinion of
the majority, whereas philosophers speak according to the standard
of nature and the truth.
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13
    Paradoxes, then, you should seek to elicit by means of these
common-place rules. Now as for making any one babble, we have
already said what we mean by ‘to babble’. This is the object in
view in all arguments of the following kind: If it is all the same
to state a term and to state its definition, the ‘double’ and
‘double of half’ are the same: if then ‘double’ be the ‘double of
half’, it will be the ‘double of half of half’. And if, instead of
‘double’, ‘double of half’ be again put, then the same expression
will be repeated three times, ‘double of half of half of half’.
Also ‘desire is of the pleasant, isn’t it?’ desire is conation for
the pleasant: accordingly, ‘desire’ is ‘conation for the pleasant
for the pleasant’.
    All arguments of this kind occur in dealing (1) with any
relative terms which not only have