This paper discusses two issues that have challenged interpreters of Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations : the criteria behind Aristotle’s classification of linguistic fallacies; the interpretation of the opening passage of SE 4. Although Aristotle never clarifies the principles underlying his classification, I contend that his list of six linguistic fallacies in SE is not arbitrary, but relies on a precise rationale which lies in his conception of λέξις as expressed mainly in Poetics 20. The disclosure of this rationale allows in turn (...) for the reconstruction of the “proof through συλλογισμός sketched in SE 4, which is supposed to prove that Aristotle’s list of linguistic fallacies is exhaustive: the proof is not a συλλογισμός in the sense of deductive argument, but a diairetic συλλογισμός a division. (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)