Are the Eleatic arguments sophistical according to Aristotle?
Résumé
This paper investigates whether the Eleatic arguments, in particular the demonstration of monism, were considered as sophistical fallacies by Aristotle. I first show that the Eleatics, in particular Melissus and Zeno, are mentioned more often than any other thinker in the Sophistical Refutations. However, when he analyses the argument for monism and Zeno's paradoxes, Aristotle does not describe nor criticise them as logical fallacies, but he rather indicates that those thinkers lacked the proper distinctions that would allow them to discuss the subject properly. I then examine whether those arguments may be considered as eristic fallacies in the sense of some incorrect use of principles within a science, and finally examine the kind of historical connection Aristotle may have seen between the Eleatics and the sophists.
The sophists play a major role in Plato's works, whether as characters in the dialogues, as defenders of specific theses like relativism or immoralism, or as a topic of discussion, in particular in the Sophist. On the opposite, while giving a major role to the examination of the thought of his predecessors, Aristotle shows much less interest in the sophists. The main treatise where he appears to deal with them is the Sophistical Refutations (SR). But just as Plato's Sophist, the SR are not dealing with individual sophists: while Plato tries to establish what a sophist in general is, but only refers once en passant to a specific sophist, i.e. Protagoras (232d9), Aristotle investigates not so much the nature of the sophist's occupation, but rather the kind of reasoning that is associated to him, which he calls, often in an undifferentiated manner, sophisms, eristic arguments or fallacies. 1 In so doing, Aristotle presents many examples of fallacies, both to develop his taxonomy and to show how one may solve their difficulties. But it is remarkable that historical sophists rarely appear. 2 By contrast, the Eleatics, in particular Parmenides's followers Melissus and Zeno, are mentioned more often than any other thinker, as we shall see in my first section. This is quite unexpected, since Aristotle usually seems to regard the Eleatics as worthy philosophers, 1 We find those various expressions used in the SR: 'sophistical refutations' (the treatise starts with περὶ τῶν σοφιστικῶν ἐλέγχων, an expression that gave it its name), 'eristic reasoning' or 'refutation' (ἐριστικὸς, in particular in chapter 2), 'paralogism' (παραλογισμός, which we may translate with 'fallacy'), 'apparent reasoning' or 'refutation' (συλλογισμὸς καὶ ἔλεγχος φαινόμενος, for example in 165a18-19). Aristotle sometimes distinguishes between those various types (for example in 171b25-27), but he most often uses them as synonyms: see Schreiber 2003, 173-76 and Lemaire 2021.
2 Cf. Dorion 1995, 32-37 for an analysis of the few passages where the sophists are mentioned. He shows that in almost none of them does Aristotle blame the sophists for one of the fallacies that are described in the SR.
whose main default was to rely too much on deductive arguments without taking the appearances into consideration, 3 not to produce sophistical fallacies.
In this paper, after examining, in a first section, the association of the Eleatics with sophistic or eristic reasoning, within or outside the SR, I shall focus on one specific argument i.e. the demonstration of monism, and examine whether Aristotle regarded it as a case of sophistical fallacy. I will show that he does not blame them directly for a fallacy by homonymy (section 2), but rather indicates that they did not possess the proper conceptual tools to make the appropriate distinctions (section 3). I will then apply this analysis to the criticism of Zeno's paradoxes (section 4). In section 5, I will examine another meaning of "eristic", which refers to incorrect scientific demonstrations, and wonder whether the Eleatic arguments could be considered as this kind of fallacy. I will conclude on the reason why Aristotle associated the Eleatics with sophistical refutations.