In this paper, I would like to present the lecture manuscripts on eristic dialectics, which are still unknown. Thus, in Schopenhauer’s Berlin Lectures, one finds not only a very early form of argument maps but also a unified diagrammatic theory of logic, sophistry and eristic dialectics. With the help of the diagrams introduced in logic, Schopenhauer wants to develop a unified technique in order to visualise and evaluate justified as well as unjustified arguments. Schopenhauer is not concerned with recommending how to be right in a dialogue at all costs, but with presenting such dialogue situations in order to easily recognise and protect oneself from unjustified arguments (Gutenberg et al. Whereas diagrams are applied in logic to represent the relationship of concepts, to evaluate the truth of judgements and to prove the validity of inferences, diagrams in eristic dialectics show how arguments are used to represent a dialogue without claiming formal truth or validity. This treatise on logic is followed by manuscripts on sophistry and finally by an eristic dialectics, which also employ these logic diagrams. In the scope of an entire book, Schopenhauer first developed in the Berlin Lectures a logic in the vein of the diagrammatic approach of Leonhard Euler (Moktefi 2020). These lecture manuscripts were written for an academic audience and were underpinned by innovative diagrammatic techniques (Dobrzański and Lemanski 2020). On the other hand, researchers have pointed to hitherto unknown lecture manuscripts by Schopenhauer that shed new light on his oeuvre: In the 1820, Schopenhauer wrote long treatises on logic, sophistry and eristic in his so-called Berlin Lectures (Schopenhauer 1911–1942, vol. Researchers from various fields have, on the one hand, modernised Schopenhauer’s book fragment on eristic dialectics in a positive way and successfully used it in fields such as jurisprudence (Stelmach and Brozekh 2006), artificial intelligence (Fouqueré and Quatrini 2012), pedagogy (Hordecki 2021), argumentation theory (Nickerson 2020) and many others. In recent years, however, this image of Schopenhauer has been greatly revised. The very well-known book fragment and the only short and insignificant passages and chapters on logic have shaped the image of Schopenhauer as a cynical and misanthropic irrationalist (Rocha et al. For this reason, the eristic dialectics was misunderstood for many years as a sarcastic-prescriptive ‘art of (always) being right’ and instrumentalised by some politicians, managers and entrepreneurs. Those who use these stratagems, therefore, do not want to win an argument by rational means, but they deliberately use false arguments only to get their way. For it presents 38 stratagems that are logically incorrect but have the potential to be argumentatively convincing. ![]() At first glance, the popular book fragment underlines the prejudice that Schopenhauer was an opponent of logic and rational argumentation. This text was written around the year 1830 and translated into English in 1896. ![]() Apart from a few short passages on logic, the best-known text in which Schopenhauer deals with argumentation is an unfinished book fragment on eristic dialectics. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer was long regarded as an irrationalist and to some extent even as an enemy of logic and rational argumentation.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |