Whoever reads the Sixth Book of the Topica, wherein Aristotle indicates to the questioner Loci for impugning a definition, will see how little this definition of the Sophistic Syllogism will stand such attacks.
The appeal made by Aristotle to a difference of character and motives as the distinction between the Dialectician and the Sophist is all the more misplaced, because he himself lays down as the essential feature of Dialectic generally, that it is a match or contention between two rivals, each anxious to obtain the victory. It is like a match at chess between two expert players, or a fencing-match between two celebrated masters at arms. Its very nature is to be an attack and defence, in which each combatant resorts to stratagem, and each outwits the other if he can. Whether the match is played for money or for nothing — whether the contentious spirit is more or less intense — does not concern the theorist on dialectical procedure. It is indispensable that both the questioner and the respondent should exert their full force, the one in thrusting, the other in parrying: if they do not, the purpose of Dialectic, which is the common business of both, will not be attained. That purpose is clearly declared by Aristotle. It is not didactic: he distinguishes it expressly from teaching,[60] where one man who knows communicates such knowledge to an ignorant pupil. It is gymnastic, exercising the promptitude and invention of both parties; or peirastic, testing whether the respondent knows a given thesis in such manner as to avoid being driven into answers inconsistent with each other or notoriously false.[61] Each party seeks, not to help or enlighten but, to puzzle and defeat the other. As at chess or in fencing, to mask one’s projects and deceive the adversary is essential to the work and to its purpose; each expects it from the other, and undertakes to meet and parry it. The theses debated were always such that arguments might be found both for the affirmative and for the negative.
[60] Soph. El. ii. p. 165, b. 1-5; x. p. 171, a. 32-b. 2. Cf. Topic. VIII. xi. p. 161, a. 25.
[61] Topic. I. i. p. 100, a. 20; VIII. i. p. 155, b. 10-28.
According to Aristotle himself, therefore, the Dialectician is agonistic and eristic, just as much as the Sophist. If the one tries to entrap his opponent for the purpose of victory, so also does the other: the line which Aristotle draws between them is one not founded upon any real distinction between two purposes and modes of procedure, but is merely verbal and sentimental; putting aside under a discredited title what he himself disliked. He admits that the dialectical questioner, whenever the thesis which he undertakes to refute is true, can never refute it except by inducing the respondent to concede what is false; that, even where the thesis is false, he often can only refute it by some other incompatible falsehood, because he cannot obtain from the respondent better premisses; that, where the thesis is probable and conformable to received opinion, his only way of refuting it is by entrapping the respondent into concessions paradoxical and contrary to received opinion.[62] But these ends — fallacious refutation, falsehood, and paradox — are the very same as those which Aristotle (in the Sophistici Elenchi)[63] sets forth as the peculiar characteristics of the litigious Sophist. And the improving intellectual tendencies which he ascribes to Sophistic, are almost identical with those attributed to Dialectic, being declared in very similar words.[64] That there were dialecticians of every degree of merit, in the time of Aristotle, cannot be doubted; some clever and ready, others stupid and destitute of invention. But that there were any two classes of dialecticians such as he describes and contrasts — one heretical class, called Sophists, who purposely and habitually employed the thirteen fallacious refutations, and another orthodox class who purposely avoided or habitually abstained from them — we may most reasonably doubt. If the argument in the Sophistici Elenchi is good at all, it is good against all Dialectic. The Sophist, as Aristotle describes him, is only the Dialectician looked at on the unfavourable side and painted by an enemy. We know that there were in Greece many enemies of Dialectic generally; the intense antipathy inspired by the cross-examining colloquy of Sokrates, and attested by his own declarations, is a sufficient proof of this. The enemies of Sokrates depicted him — as Aristotle depicts the Sophist in the Sophistici Elenchi — as a clever fabricator of fallacious contradictions and puzzles; to which Aristotle adds the farther charge (advanced by Plato before him) against the Sophist, of arguing for lucre — which is an irrelevant charge, travelling out of the region of art, and bearing on the personal character of the individual. If the sophistical stratagems were discreditable and mischievous when exhibited for money, they would be no less such if exhibited gratuitously. The sophistical discourse is not (as Aristotle would have us believe) generically distinguishable from the dialectical;[65] nor is Sophistic an art distinct from Dialectic while adjoining to it, but an inseparable portion of the tissue of Dialectic itself.[66] If the Sophist passed himself off as knowing what he did not really know, so also did the Dialectician; as we know from the testimony of Sokrates, the most consummate master of the art. The conflict of two minds each taking advantage of the misconceptions, short-comings, and blindness of the other, is the essential feature of Dialectic as Aristotle conceives it; to which the eight books of his Topica are adapted, with their multiplicity of distinctions and precepts both for attack and defence. There cannot be a game of chess without stratagems, nor a fencing-match without feints; the power of such aggressive deception is one characteristic mark of a good player. Those who teach or theorize on the game do not seek to exclude stratagem, but furnish precautions to prevent it from succeeding. Mastery of the art assumes skill in defence as well as in attack.
[62] Topic. VIII. xi. p. 161, a. 24.
[63] Soph. El. iii. p. 165, b. 14.
[64] Compare Topic. I. ii. p. 101, a. 26-b. 4, with Soph. El. xvi. p. 175, a. 5-16.
[65] Soph. El. ii. p. 165, a. 32; xxxiv. p. 183, b. 1.
[66] Plato, Apol. Sokrat. p. 23, A.