a dialética erística de tiago a. ou my nights were sour/ spent with Schopenhauer
De antemão advirto que não nego a possibilidade de recondução do meu singelo estratagema a um dos 38 famosões, notadamente o VIII,1 o XVIII,2 o XXVII3 e o XXXIV.4
(Se quiserem extrair algum sentido de minhas sábias palavras, recomendo-lhes que acompanhem as notas de rodapé, que estão em inglês porque não tenho em mãos a versão brasileira. Pensando bem, se a tivesse, também não a citaria—que eu não sou besta. Não porque eu tenha qualquer ressalva a ela, ou porque duvide da capacidade intelectual de seu Anotador, não é nada disso. Receio apenas que a mera menção do nome do Anotador neste post dê a meus poucos e burros detratores a oportunidade de se valer do estratagema XXXII:5 conheço bem o caráter dessa gente, sei que não perderiam a chance de me tachar de você-sabe-o-quê, putting me into some odious category; aquela, a terminada em -ete. Juro que é só por isso que não a cito. Agora, depois desta minha manobra triunfante, que pôs de joelhos meus acéfalos inimigos, podemos ir ao que interessa e fechar este parêntese gigantesco.)
O singelo estratagema que proponho é o que segue. Sempre que seu oponente lhe fizer uma pergunta incisiva e você não tiver uma resposta convincente para ela—ou estiver com muita preguiça para elaborá-la—, tome um elemento central da pergunta formulada e peça para que ele o defina. E. g.: (1) “Blog é literatura?”, “Defina blog/literatura.”; (2) “O Estadão tem razão? Blogueiros são macacos?”, “Defina blogueiro/macaco.”; (3) “Meu bem, você me ama?”, “Defina amor.”
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1 This trick consists in making your opponent angry; for when he is angry he is incapable of judging aright, and perceiving where his advantage lies. You can make him angry by doing him repeated injustice, or practising some kind of chicanery, and being generally insolent.
2 If you observe that your opponent has taken up a line of argument which will end in your defeat, you must not allow him to carry it to its conclusion, but interrupt the course of the dispute in time, or break it off altogether, or lead him away from the subject, and bring him to others. In short, you must effect the trick which will be noticed later on, the mutatio controversiae. (See § XXIX.)
3 Should your opponent surprise you by becoming particularly angry at an argument, you must urge it with all the more zeal; not only because it is a good thing to make him angry, but because it may be presumed that you have here put your finger on the weak side of his case, and that just here he is more open to attack than even for the moment you perceive.
4 When you state a question or an argument, and your opponent gives you no direct answer or reply, but evades it by a counter-question or an indirect answer, or some assertion which has no bearing on the matter, and, generally, tries to turn the subject, it is a sure sign that you have touched a weak spot, sometimes without knowing it. You have, as it were, reduced him to silence. You must, therefore, urge the point all the more, and not let your opponent evade it, even when you do not know where the weakness which you have hit upon really lies.
5 If you are confronted with an assertion, there is a short way of getting rid of it, or, at any rate, of throwing suspicion on it, by putting it into some odious category; even though the connection is only apparent, or else of a loose character. You can say, for instance, "That is Manichasism," or "It is Arianism," or "Pelagianism," or "Idealism," or "Spinozism," or "Pantheism," or "Brownianism," or "Naturalism," or "Atheism," or "Rationalism," "Spiritualism," "Mysticism," and so on. In making an objection of this kind, you take it for granted (1) that the assertion in question is identical with, or is at least contained in, the category cited--that is to say, you cry out, "Oh, I have heard that before"; and (2) that the system referred to has been entirely refuted, and does not contain a word of truth.
