The Book of Fallacies
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~110,000 words · 534 passages
Cite this work
- APAJeremy Bentham. (n.d.). The Book of Fallacies. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/jeremy-bentham/the-book-of-fallacies
- MLAJeremy Bentham. The Book of Fallacies. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/jeremy-bentham/the-book-of-fallacies.
- ChicagoJeremy Bentham. The Book of Fallacies. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/jeremy-bentham/the-book-of-fallacies.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Bentham's catalogue of the arguments used to prevent any reform, sorted by type and each given its proper name.
Context and history
Published in 1824 from his manuscripts. The idea is simple and still serviceable: when someone wants to stop a change and cannot say that it harms him, he resorts to a repertoire of predictable figures, and naming them disarms them. There is the fallacy of ancestral authority ('the wisdom of our ancestors'), the fear of innovation, the 'this is not the time' fallacy, the slippery slope, the imputation of bad motives to whoever proposes, and what he calls the ostrich argument. Bentham classifies them like a naturalist and shows for each how to answer it. It is a useful and entertaining book, and the most approachable of his.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
formed, and in the composition of it some little progress made, when the advertisements brought under the author's notice the posthumous work intituled " Parliamentary LogiCy by the late William Gerard Hamilton," distinguished from so many other Hamiltons by the name of Single-speech Hamilton. Of finding the need of a work such as the present, superseded in any considerable degree by that of the right honourable orator, the author had neither hope nor apprehension : but his surprise was not inconsiderable on finding scarcely in any part of the two works any the smallest degree of coincidence. In respect of practical views and objects, it would not indeed be true to say that between the one and the other there exists not any relation ; for there exists a pretty close one, namely, the relation of contrariety. When, under the title of " Directions to ServantSy' Swift presented to view a collection of such various faults as servants, of different descriptions, had been found or supposed by him liabls to fall into, his object (it need scarce be said), if he had any serious object beyond that of making his readers laugh, was, not that compliance, but that non-compliance, with the directions so humorously delivered, should be the practical result. Taking tliat work of Swift's for his pattern, and what seemed the serious object of it, for his guidance, the author of this work occasionally found in the form of a direction for the framing of a fallacy, what seemed the most convenient vehicle for conveying a conception of its nature : as in some instances, for conveying a conception of the nature of the figure he is occupied in the description of, a mathematician begins with giving an indication of the mode in which it may be framed, or, as the phrase is, generated.…