The Book of Fallacies
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~110,000 words · 534 passages
Cite this work
- APAJeremy Bentham. (n.d.). The Book of Fallacies. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/jeremy-bentham/the-book-of-fallacies
- MLAJeremy Bentham. "The Book of Fallacies." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/jeremy-bentham/the-book-of-fallacies.
- ChicagoJeremy Bentham. The Book of Fallacies. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/jeremy-bentham/the-book-of-fallacies.
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.
able to do little more than arrange the papers, and strike out what was redundant.— In preparing the work for the press, Mr. Bentham has had no share ; — for whatever therefore may be esteemed defective in the matter, or objectionable in the manner, the Editor is solely responsible. Still, he thought it better that the work should appear, even in its present shape, than not appear at all; and having devoted to it such portion of his time as could EDITORS PREFACE. V be spared from the intervals of a life of labour, he hopes he shall not be without acknowledgement, from those who are competent to appreciate the value of whatsoever comes from the great founder of the science of morals and legislation. M. Dumont's work contains an examination of the declaration of the Rights of Man, as proclaimed by the French Constituent Assembly. This forms no part of the present volume, to the subject of which, indeed,— Fallacies employed in debate, — it is not strictly pertinent. But, in fact, the original papers have been mislaid, and they seemed to lose so much of their spirit in a translation from the French, that the contents of the additional chapter would not compensate for the additional bulk and expense of the book. CONTENTS, INTRODUCTION. Page. Sect. 1 . A Fallacy, what 1 As to the impression and disposition the production of which might happen to be desired, whether the impression were correct or deceptions, whether the disposition were with a view to the individual or community in question, salutary, indifferent, or pernicious, was a question that seemed not in any of these instances to have come across the author's mind. In the view taken by them of the subject, had any such question presented itself, it would have been put aside as foreign to the subject ; exactly as, in a treatise on th