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2 MAKING THE WEAK ARGUMENT THE STRONGER The “force” of a phrase is judged by the standard of a genre’s rules, the same phrase is weak or strong depending upon what is at stake.That is why it is legitimate for the weaker argument to be the stronger one: the rules of the genre in which it is placed have been changed, and the stakes are no longer the same. Jean-François Lyotard, The Differend:Phrases in Dispute A study of the argumentation of the Sophists must address early on the most serious charge leveled against their use of argument and treatment of discourse : that they claimed to make the weak argument (or case) strong and the strong argument weak. In many accounts this is linked to a further charge that the Sophists traded in no more than eristics. In this chapter we will explore both these charges, showing that each, at least as we have come to understand them, has been founded on a misconception of sophistic practice. A PROBLEM OF TRANSLATION In chapter 24 of book 2 of the Rhetoric, dealing with so-called fallacious enthymemes ,Aristotle specifically attacks the strategy of arguing from probabilities or eikota.1 In the example there cited, if a weak man is charged with assault, he should be acquitted, because it is not probable that a weak man would attack another person. But likewise, if he were a strong man, he should also be acquitted, because it is not likely that he would have committed the assault, for the very reason that he would know that suspicion would be directed at him according to the general sense of what is probably the case. Aristotle writes:“Both alternatives seem probable, but one really is probable, the other so not generally, only in the circumstances mentioned.And this is‘to make the weaker seem the better cause.’Thus, people were rightly angry at the declaration of Protagoras; for it is a lie and not true but a fallacious probability and a part of no art except rhetoric and eristic” (Rhetoric 1402a23). Whatever the declaration that is being referred to here, the specific strategy of arguing from probabilities is being attributed to Protagoras, and this in 20 Sophistic Argument and the EarlyTradition turn is being associated with rhetoric and, more seriously, with eristic—that use of argument for the mere purpose of winning and showing off. More to the immediate point here, though, is the charge of making the weak argument (cause or case) seem to be strong.There are several things to note about this. The most arresting is the choice made by Kennedy (2007, 189) here, and other translators elsewhere, to render the phrase as “to make the weaker seem [or appear] the better cause,” rather than “to make the weak cause [or argument ] the better cause [or argument].”2The inclusion of the seem would appear to be interpretative and points as much to how translators understandAristotle ’s meaning as to anything else. Not everyone makes such a choice. Barnes (1982, 545) and Sprague (1972, 13), for example, in their translations of the phrase omit the seem (or to put it another way, translate only what is there).3 That those who use seem do so purposefully is clear from statements they make elsewhere. Kennedy observes that “because of its newness, it [rhetoric] tended to overdo experiments in argument and style. Not only did it easily seem vulgar or tasteless, it could seem to treat the truth with indifference and to make the worse seem the better cause” (1980, 41).We will see a similar understanding in the remarks fromAlexander Sesonske I explore below.What stands out here is a concern with truth and an assumption about the Sophists’ practice from an understanding influenced by that concern. Schiappa (1999, 79) cites Lane Cooper’s translation, which includes appear, as showing a statement that represents sophistry at its worse. Schiappa’s interpretation of the Protagorean “promise” in the Rhetoric is that it means not the re-presentation of the same argument, with it initially appearing weak and then appearing strong, but “the substitution of a preferred (but weaker) logos for a less preferable (but temporarily dominant) logos of the same‘experience’” (79–80).Thus he implies the presence of two arguments, one replacing the other.This interpretation , though, does not explicitly address the seem that is in dispute between translators and commentators, nor does it resolve the mystery of...

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