ERISTIC, ANTILOGY AND THE EQUAL DISPOSITION OF MEN AND WOMEN (PLATO, RESP. 5.453B–454C)

Abstract

Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations (= Soph. el.) seeks to uncover the workings of apparent deductive reasoning, and is thereby largely devoted to the caricature of dialectic that the ancients called eristic (ἐριστική), the art of quarrelling. Unlike antilogy (ἀντιλογία), which refers to a type of argumentation where two arguments are pitted against each other in a contradictory manner, eristic takes on in Aristotle an exclusively pejorative meaning, as is made clear, for example, by this passage from Soph. el.: ‘For just as unfairness in a contest is a definite type of fault, and is a kind of foul fighting, so the art of contentious reasoning is foul fighting in disputation.’