Everyone Is at Liberty to Be a Fool:

Schopenhauer’s Philosophical Critique of the Art of Persuasion

ABSTRACT: Retrieved from unpublished manuscript remains, Arthur Schopenhauer’s Eristic

Dialectics (1830-1831) has been largely ignored both by philosophers and rhetoricians. The

work is highly enigmatic in that its intended meaning vacillates between playful irony and

Machiavellian seriousness. Adopting an esoteric perspective, this article argues that the tract can

be read as simultaneously operating on two levels: an exoteric, cynical one, according to which

Schopenhauer accepts that people are going to argue irrespective of the truth and as a result

provides tools for defeating one’s opponents, and a deeper, esoteric level, which functions not

cynically but, in Peter Sloterdijk’s language, kynically, as a satirical unmasking of the cynical

impulses animating the study and practice of argumentation, especially as evinced in the

rhetorical-humanist tradition. Such an interpretation reveals that, while a minor work, Eristic

Dialectics offers a sophisticated philosophical critique of “the art of persuasion.”

Ethan Stoneman, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Rhetoric & Public Address

Hillsdale College
 Everyone Is at Liberty to Be a Fool:

Schopenhauer’s Philosophical Critique of the Art of Persuasion

“Stratagem 8. Rousing the opponent’s anger; for when angry he is unable to judge correctly and

to perceive his advantage”; “Stratagem 31. Where we are unable to bring anything against the

reasons stated by our opponent, we declare ourselves with subtle irony to be incompetent…. In

this way we insinuate to the audience…that it is nonsense”; “Stratagem 33. ‘That may be right in

theory, but it is wrong in practice.’—By this sophism we admit the grounds or reasons yet deny

the consequences,” thus contradicting a well-known rule of logic. These and thirty-five other

subtle ways of persuasion, all of which aim at winning an argument no matter what, comprise the

bulk of Arthur Schopenhauer’s Eristic Dialectics (1830-1831), his short treatise on debate.1

Retrieved from unpublished manuscript remains, the work has been largely ignored by

philosophers and rhetoricians alike.2 According to Schopenhauer’s own estimation the work

fares rather poorly. Although the germ of this short treatise can be found in volume two, §26, of

Parerga and Paralipomena (appendices and omissions, from the Greek), Schopenhauer claims

not to have included it on the grounds that it was no longer suited to his temperament.3 Critically

speaking, the work is not all that remarkable of a text: it does not advance new concepts, nor

does it explicitly elucidate or modify key ideas expounded on in his major philosophical works.

What’s more, the ostensible purpose of the work—to provide an instruction booklet on how to

beat any opponent in debate—would seem to run counter to his rather low estimation of

argumentation in general, vis-à-vis its philosophical importance. Writing on the difference and

relation between rational, conceptual knowledge and direct, intuitive perception (whether

empirical or based on the perception, a priori, of the conditions of possible experience),

Schopenhauer claims that, “Proofs are generally less for those who want to learn than for those

1
who want to dispute…. [W]e must therefore show such persons that they admit under one form

and indirectly what under another form and directly they deny.”4 All in all, and relative to

Schopenhauer’s oeuvre, the text comes across as a minor and rather peculiar offering. In place of

the grand, beautifully wrought example of philosophical system building one finds in

Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation, readers are treated to a brief and

somewhat puzzling collection of dishonest, albeit probably effective, argumentative tricks and

rhetorical sleights of hand.

And yet this puzzling quality simultaneously renders the text interesting, for it raises the

question of why Schopenhauer wrote the tract in the first place—and, perhaps significantly,

chose not to publish it. Frustratingly, however, Schopenhauer himself provides readers with no

definite answers but instead issues a number of contradictory statements while simultaneously

allowing for certain special exceptions, all of which contributes to a sense of ambiguity—

perhaps even indecision—with respect to his intent, as well as to the text’s predominant attitude.

However, much of the secondary work that deals with the text (and there exists very little)

glosses over the apparent tensions and neglects any explicit consideration of the overall purpose

or strategy. James Benjamin, for instance, uses the text, unproblematically, as evidence in

support of the claim that eristic is both grounded in classical rhetorical theory and distinct from

its legitimate counterparts in dialectic and rhetoric.5 Similarly, Michel Dufour employs the text

as part of a commentary pertaining to the theoretical and practical relations between dialectic and

rhetoric, though in contrast to Benjamin Dufour uses Schopenhauer to argue for a qualified

continuity between eristic and dialectic.6 More recently, Richard Davies has focused on

Schopenhauer’s tropological description of eristic dialectic “as a sort of mental, spiritual or

intellectual fencing,” according to which, he argues, the master of this sort of fencing is the

2
proper judge of how such debates ought to unfold.7 None of these accounts, however, highlight

the text’s apparent inconsistencies, much less raise the question of what do with or make of

them. On these readings, Schopenhauer’s notes on eristic are to be accepted as uncomplicated,

although pessimistic, reflections on the uses and abuses of argumentation.

Perhaps the most ethically comforting way to approach Schopenhauer’s brief tract is to

assume, along with its English translator, T. Bailey Saunders, that it represents an extended (and

rather committed) attempt at irony.8 Similarly, in the introduction to the most recent English-

language publication of the work, as well as in an additional introductory essay, British

philosopher A. C. Grayling notes that Schopenhauer, when looking back on the tract, saw it as

“an ironical document, a warning by example rather than precept.”9 Nevertheless, Grayling

argues, “the writing of the essay cannot have been altogether tongue-in-cheek,” for it premises

the baseness and self-interestedness of much of human nature and offers techniques for

outmaneuvering it and defending right positions against strong arguments—albeit through the

specious means of eristic.10 Given Schopenhauer’s generally pessimistic view of human nature it

becomes difficult to “dismiss the possibility that he was more than half serious, and perhaps

entirely serious, in offering a weapon” with which to defeat if not any disputant then at least

those who would oppose or obscure the truth.11 Certainly, Schopenhauer’s critique of (and

revulsion for) what he disparagingly refers to as “university philosophy” and its ranks of

“professors of philosophy”—unoriginal, self-serving “little men” who leach off and claim to

have found fault “with the serious and genuine philosophers of antiquity”— would seem to lend

credence to the latter possibility.12 Neither of these interpretations, however, is entirely

satisfying. On the one hand, if the ironic interpretation is correct, then how does one account for

those parts of the text, highlighted by Grayling, in which Schopenhauer appears to sanction the

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use of eristic for the purpose of outwitting unscrupulous opponents? On the other hand, if

Grayling offers the better interpretation, then how does one reconcile a selective approval of

eristic with a lack of moral principles that extends to the vast majority of human beings? If

everyone is equally debased, then it follows that no one is deserving of trust in the use of eristic.

Each interpretation, it would seem, attempts to resolve an apparent aporia, whereby the text is

both ironic and non-ironic, but is ultimately forced to choose sides. Adding to the difficulty is the

fact that, at first glance, these interpretations appear to be not only mutually exclusive but also

exhaustive, leaving no room for a third way alternative.

Inconsistencies and contradictions, however, are not necessarily mistakes but may instead

function as strategic choices for conveying different levels of meaning. As per the esoteric

hermeneutics of Leo Strauss, when employed by a great philosopher such apparent

compositional errors ought at least to be entertained as exoteric signs indicative of an esoteric

philosophical meaning.13 With that observation in mind, and upon closer inspection,

Schopenhauer’s guidebook on eristic can best be understood as a complex philosophical

critique—at once serious and irreverent—of the nature and purpose of what he elsewhere calls

“the logic of persuasion.” That is to say, it can be read as operating simultaneously on two levels:

an exoteric, cynical one, according to which Schopenhauer accepts that people are going to argue

irrespective of the truth and as a result provides tools for defeating one’s opponents, and a

deeper, esoteric level, which functions not cynically but, in Peter Sloterdijk’s language,

kynically, as a satirical unmasking of the cynical impulses animating the study and intentional

practice of argumentation.14 On this reading, eristic refers not so much to fallacious dialectic or

illegitimate argumentation as to the dominant tendency of rhetoric and persuasion. In particular,

Schopenhauer’s philosophical critique takes aim at that branch of the rhetorical tradition that

4
views persuasive speech as a means of negotiating difference in the absence of certainty and of

creating consensus or likemindedness in the process of public deliberation and debate. That is to

say, in place of a “controversial” model of rhetorical effectivity, one in which mastery of

rhetorical technique is conceived of as a condition of resolving disputes and as the only

reasonable alternative to force and deception, Schopenhauer opposes a cynical “motivistic” one,

according to which rhetoric essentially functions as a means of sublimated coercion and cynical

manipulation.15 On this view, then, the question of Schopenhauer’s irony opens up onto the

much larger issue of what is involved in and what we may reasonably expect from any use of

language in which the desire to influence is conspicuously present.

Although the germ of Eristic Dialectics may be found in Parerga and Paralipomena,

Schopenhauer’s first published treatment of eristic occurs somewhat earlier, in §9, volume two,

of The World as Will and Representation (1844). Indeed, in §26 of Parerga and Paralipomena

he refers readers back to this section, while reproducing from it “the outline of what is essential

to every disputation.” Such an outline, he maintains, furnishes “the abstract framework, the

skeleton so to speak, of the controversy in general and can, therefore, be regarded as its

osteology.”16 In this earlier context, which is crucial to understanding how Schopenhauer situates

and ultimately understands eristical dialectic, Schopenhauer is at pains to analyze what he calls

“the whole of a technique of reason.” Comprising the sciences of logic, dialectic, and rhetoric,

the technique of reason can be differentially applied depending either on the occasion or the

specific modality: “Logic, dialectic, and rhetoric belong together, since they make up the whole

of a technique of reason. Under this title they should also be taught together, logic as the

technique of our own thinking, dialectic as that of disputing with others, and rhetoric as that of

5
speaking to many (concionatio); thus corresponding to the singular, dual, and plural, also to the

monologue, dialogue, and panegyric.”17 As the term “eristical dialectic” indicates, Schopenhauer

classifies eristic under the science of dialectic as understood by Aristotle, that is, “as the art of

conversation directed to the common investigation of truth, especially philosophical truth.”18 Be

that as it may, given the tendency of such conversations, Schopenhauer adds that dialectic does

not remain mere dialectic for long but “necessarily” passes, to some extent, into the realm of

controversy. For that reason, he argues, “dialectic can also be explained as the art of

disputation.”19 Once that transference has occurred, dialectic, he maintains, mutates into the

technique of disputation, that is to say, eristic. Although Schopenhauer acknowledges earlier

examples and models of dialectic in Plato, in his estimation “very little has been done for the real

and proper theory of it.”20 Hence, the discussion of eristic found in Parerga and Paralipomena—

and elaborated upon in Eristic Dialectics—represents Schopenhauer’s attempt to fill that gap;

indeed, in the third expanded edition of The World as Will and Representation (1859), he

references his efforts in the second volume of Parerga and Paralipomena to work out an attempt

of this kind, which, he argues, justifies omitting that discussion from the present work.21

Of course, much of what appears in Parerga and Paralipomena on the topic of eristic is

itself a reworking of the introduction to Eristic Dialectics. Thus, while the former differs from

the latter in that it lacks a detailed and minute consideration of the various eristical stratagems

and devices, as well as an implicit endorsement of their use in argument and debate,

Schopenhauer’s understanding of the nature and function of controversial dialectic remains fairly

constant between the two works. Notwithstanding differences of emphasis, in both contexts he

describes “formal eristical dialectic” as complementary to the technique of reason (referring in

Parerga and Paralipomena to §9, volume two, of The World as Will and Representation).22 In

6
that capacity, controversy and disputation can be valued as serving the purpose of intellectual

debate, that is, of correcting existing ideas, confirming our thoughts, sharpening our wits, and

stimulating new views.23 Schopenhauer emphasizes, however, that this capability is rarely

actualized, as it is constrained by the hard and fast requirements of the equality of intellectual

ability and knowledge or learning. If one of the disputants lacks learning, Schopenhauer argues,

“[H]e will not understand everything, [as] he is not au niveau [‘on the same level’]” with his

antagonist.24 Lacking mental power, however, is much more serious an impediment than simply

lacking knowledge, for the exposure of intellectual deficiency will hurt an opponent at the

tenderest spot—viz. the consciousness of one’s own dignity. Such revelations are thus likely to

give rise to feelings of inferiority, such that “the exasperation that is soon stirred in him will

induce him to make use of all kinds of unfair tricks, subterfuges, and chicanery in the dispute and

to descend to rudeness when these are pointed out to him.”25

From these observations Schopenhauer infers two rules, namely, that intelligent persons

should refrain from arguing with those lacking knowledge as well as, and especially, those of

limited intellectual ability. In neither case would an intelligent person be justified in holding to

the belief that sound reasoning and compelling argument would alone be sufficient to convince

an opponent. With regard to the first scenario, the ignorant lack the learning necessary for

understanding arguments that forward new viewpoints or ideas with which they do not already

agree. What’s more, if one were to disregard this rule and plow on, offering perhaps further

elaborations and alternate approaches, then the person would risk not only failure but also

embarrassment. In fact, Schopenhauer argues, one’s opponents might feel so emboldened as to

advance a “crude counter-argument,” but one that will appear convincing to “those who are as

ignorant as they”—that is, “the common ruck of people [the bystanders].”26 Still, arguing with

7
the ignorant is heads and shoulders above arguing with those who lack in intellect and

understanding. For in the latter case, one is speaking not to the intellect but the will, “to which

the only thing that matters is that he ultimately triumphs either per fas or pernefas [‘by hook or

by crook’]”—hence the turn to tricks, dodges, and, eventually, rudeness, since these allow the

opponent to compensate for the felt inferiority and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.27 “It

follows from this,” he concludes, “that hardly one in a hundred is worth disputing with,”

adding—with his distinctive, cantankerous flair—that, “we should leave the rest to say what they

like, for desipere est juris gentium [‘to be foolish is the right of all men’].”28 Exceptions

notwithstanding, there are simply not many persons left with whom a capable mind could

reasonably expect to enter into a dispassionate, truth-pursuing argument.

Nevertheless, people do engage others in disputation, and not infrequently one’s

opponents will not rank as first-rate minds, a fact that Schopenhauer readily acknowledges. For

that reason, the actual practice of controversial dialectic is a much different animal than

Schopenhauer’s initial gloss might lead us to believe—so much so that one wonders whether

“warped” wouldn’t be a more apt description of its relationship to the technique of reason than

“complementary.” In actual practice, the art of controversial dialectic—the art of controversy—is

“the art of disputing, and indeed of so disputing that in the end one is right, and hence per fas et

nefas [‘through right and wrong’].”29 In contrast to the practice of logic and dialectic, both of

which pursue the discovery of philosophical truth, eristic emerges in the overall context of “the

natural baseness of the human race” as a result of moral depravity as well as intellectual

inability.30 Such depravity reveals itself, first and foremost, in the frequent dishonesty of

opponents’ deliberate persuasive strategies—that is, the various unfair tricks, subterfuges, and

chicanery that Schopenhauer itemizes in the body of Eristic Dialectics. If human nature were

8
radically different—that is, “thoroughly honest”—then every debate, Schopenhauer reasons,

would only aim at the discovery of truth; as it stands, however, the majority tends to care very

much “whether…truth prove[s] to be in agreement with the opinion first advanced by us or with

the other man’s opinion,” while regarding what is true as a matter of indifference or, at any rate,

of very secondary consequence.31

Opponents thus come to resemble combatants who fight for their propositions as though

participants in an actual war, for they fight irrespective of the rightness or wrongness of their

positions, and—crucially, Schopenhauer argues—they cannot easily do otherwise.32 People

engage in eristic, in other words, because they are compelled, and they are compelled by a

perversity of will—specifically, innate vanity, which is especially sensitive vis-à-vis one’s

intellectual powers, and innate dishonesty. Interest of truth thus quickly (and easily) gives way to

the more powerful demands of vanity, with the result that “the true is [made] to appear false and

the false true.”33 Despite the impression that first-rate minds are, by virtue of their distinguishing

attributes, somehow above the fray of controversy and immune to its enticements, the

implication of Schopenhauer’s pessimistic view is strikingly clear: erudition and superiority of

intellect are not in and of themselves reliable safeguards against indulging in eristic and

exploiting the various wiles and ways of controversy, any one or combination of which may be

used to defeat an opponent. For just as interest of truth gives way to the interest of vanity, so too

does inequality of intelligence and learning tend to give way (in most people) to the movements

of the will, at least in the use of eristical stratagems. In that case, Schopenhauer alleges, “[T]he

will puts on the mask of understanding in order to play the role thereof. The result is always

detestable.”34 Indeed, Schopenhauer goes so far as to argue that “common thinking in dialogue”

is virtually incapable of producing anything approximating profound philosophical truth.35 In

9
contradistinction to writing, the capacity to communicate one’s feelings and moods by means of

gesture and sound is not a property exclusive to human beings but one shared by humans and

non-human animals alike. It is thus more closely tied to and inclined to be expressive of that

essential quality which humans have in common with non-human animals—in fact, with life in

all its innumerable forms, both sentient and non-sentient—viz., the stirrings, feelings, and

movements of the will.36

Schopenhauer does, however, offer two qualified justifications in defense of the study

and practice of eristic, arguing that each satisfies requirements pertaining to obligation and duty.

Knowledge of eristic is justified, he claims, as a means either of inoculation against others’ use

of dishonest stratagems or of defending and maintaining truth when confronted with specious

arguments.37 And yet, in the final analysis, these grounds cannot but function as post hoc

rationalizations for the art of winning acceptance for propositions—at any cost and in the face of

“the dogmatic attitude natural to man.”38 The “superficial” or apparent explanation of Eristic

Dialectics is therefore the most compelling: to instruct readers in “the art of carrying our point

regardless of objective truth,” through careful consideration of the various “ways and means, by

which an opponent is struck down or which he often uses in order to strike down.”39 Whether a

person may be employing dishonest eristical tricks in order to defend and maintain the truth is a

consideration that “must be laid aside or be regarded as accidental.”40 More important, dialogical

confrontation renders truth utterly irrelevant and virtually invisible vis-à-vis the vague,

unoriginal judgments of bystanders, the masses—the hoi polloi—i.e., those minds that, laboring

under all manner of opinion, authority, and prejudice, ultimately decide on a winner. For in the

absence of sound judgment, reflection, and experience there is no apprehension of objective

10
truth, and eristic supplants edification with spectatorial pleasure and the enjoyment of watching

opposing wills collide.

Despite Schopenhauer’s admonishment that first-rate minds ought to refrain from

argument and debate and, when possible, opt for silence over speech, he is very much aware both

of the egoistic temptation to engage in verbal combat and the practical necessity of foregoing the

standards of clear, sound reasoning (not to mention standards of good taste and propriety). He

writes, “For to allow ourselves to be confused or refuted by plausible argumentation when we are

really right, or the reverse, often happens. And whoever emerges from a contest as the victor

very often owes this not so much to the correctness of his power of judgement in expounding his

proposition as to the cunning and skill with which he defended it.”41 Little wonder, then, that

Schopenhauer, in laying out his rationale, makes reference to Machiavelli’s The Prince,

specifically, to the pragmatic idea that since we cannot expect fidelity and honor from others we

should also not practice them ourselves, unless, that is, we want to meet with a bad return.42

Screening for the self-sabotaging masochist—as well as misinformed optimists—such a

qualification would, in all likelihood, extend to practically no one. It would thus appear that, with

this tract, Schopenhauer is offering would-be debaters practical advice that is unapologetically

Machiavellian—that his post hoc justifications ultimately belie a decidedly non-ironic purpose,

which, ipso facto, justifies a non-ironic interpretation.

And yet the comparison to Machiavelli is also if not wide of the mark then at least

unsatisfying, for it fails to account for what is most distinctive of eristical deception. To be sure,

given certain prevailing circumstances, Machiavelli explicitly enjoins political actors to deceive

their auditors (whether superiors, subjects, or counterparts), urging them, for instance, to

prioritize expedience with respect to keeping or breaking promises, to give the appearance of

11
possessing positive qualities such as generosity, parsimony, sincerity, and the like, and, in

matters of diplomacy, “to mask [their] game…so as not to awaken suspicion” and “to be

prepared with an answer in case of discovery.”43 However whereas Machiavelli’s actors are lying

(or breaking oaths) in order to achieve something beyond the lie—something other than the act

of deception—a person given to argument and debate is lying merely to outperform one’s

opponent, to win acceptance for specious propositions over against another’s. An eristic, in other

words, lies in order to convince others of the lie, not as a means of furthering other unrelated

ends. While on the surface minor, this difference is of consequence because it commits the eristic

both to persisting in a proposition that seems false—or the proof of which seems false—and

insisting on the falsity of an opponent’s contrary or contradictory propositions, even if the latter

(or their proofs) are indeed true. As Schopenhauer argues, controversial dialectic is not “the logic

of appearance” because it can be used to repel both false and true propositions. 44 For the sake of

holding one’s own, and in aiming at victory, the eristic must see to it not only that what is true

must seem false but also that what is false must seem true. Hence, Schopenhauer’s apparent, tacit

recommendation for the study and practice of eristic is totally in keeping with a Machiavellian

ethos but liberated from a logic of instrumentality and elevated to the status of a general outlook,

mood, or attitude.

II

With that observation in mind, Schopenhauer’s pessimistic realism can be seen, tentatively, as

anticipating in prototypical form what, according to Peter Sloterdijk, constitutes the dominant

operating mode in twentieth-century Western culture—cynicism. Indeed, Sloterdijk, in his

exhaustive study of the various mores and mentalities pertaining to this global disposition,

identifies Schopenhauer as one of “the important masters” whose work calls for a critical

12
redescription vis-à-vis the lens of cynical reason.45 Memorably defined as “enlightened false

consciousness,” cynicism as a kind of disillusionment consists in a “consciousness afflicted with

enlightenment that, having learned from historical experience, refuses cheap optimism.”46 In it,

Sloterdijk writes, “a detached negativity comes through,” one that “scarcely allows itself any

hope, at most a little irony and pity.”47 Stemming less from a desire for emancipation via

accurate knowledge of the sensible world and more from the fear of being deceived or

overpowered, cynicism entails resorting to deception for the purposes of self-preservation and

self-assertion, both of which have so demoralized modern consciousness that it can no longer

permit itself the luxury of being dumb and trusting. “[I]nnocence,” Sloterdijk declares, simply

“cannot be regained.”48 So too, the implied reader of Schopenhauer’s tract is someone who,

while not a philosopher, nevertheless accepts what Schopenhauer sees as the unalterable

baseness of human nature—that is, all the obstinacy, vanity, and dishonesty that originates in the

unmeliorable urgings of the will.49 Such a reader is someone who has presumably rejected the

“cheap optimism” of enlightenment thinking and persisted in the belief in what Sloterdijk

describes as “the gravitational pull of the relations to which it is bound by its instinct for self-

preservation” and self-assertion.50 And as we have seen, in the arena of eristical dialectic that

gravitational pull pertains, first and foremost, to an opponent’s lack in intellect and

understanding. Thus, insofar as an eristic aims at victory, he or she cannot assume good faith

arguments on the part of the opponent, viz., arguments expressive of a sincere desire to obtain

accurate information and arrive at the truth—just the opposite, in fact. As Schopenhauer reminds

us, “[A]s a rule when a man disputes, he fights not for truth but for his proposition, as if he were

setting to work pro ara et focis [‘for hearth and home’]…. Therefore…everyone will wish to

maintain his assertion, even when for the moment it seems to him to be false or doubtful.”51

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From the perspective of cynical reason, such an attitude is unassailable: for if the disputant is

successful and emerges victorious from a contest, then, more than likely, Schopenhauer reasons,

he or she owes this outcome to cunning deceit and effective argumentation—not the correctness

of judgment in stating a proposition.52 In this way—and despite the militaristic, existential

portrayal of eristic as war—Schopenhauer’s pessimistic realism evinces a more fundamental,

animating impulse, one consisting in a compulsion both for lying and for mistrustful imputations.

Nonetheless, although borne out by Schopenhauer’s arguments about the nature and

purpose of eristic, this cynical interpretation is not totalizing but rather depends upon the

orientation and interpretive framework of the implied reader—that is, on a perspective seeking to

combine consideration of eristical tactics with practice in order to defeat opponents in the realm

of argument and debate.53 Significantly, this readerly position is not identical to an actual

readership or, in Schopenhauer’s case, to an intended, target audience—even if the implied

reader could be said to qualify as a kind of casual pessimist. In all likelihood, Schopenhauer’s

intended reader is the genius—the philosopher in particular—and such a person would

presumably not waste his or her time arguing with most human beings, since, on Schopenhauer’s

view, the vast majority is incapable of saying anything of value. According to Frederick

Trautmann, the mission that Schopenhauer ascribes to the philosophical genius is the

“worthwhile utterance,” that is, “to turn intuitive knowledge into abstract and reflective

knowledge” and communicate it, objectively and rationally, via discursive utterance.54 Such a

person would thus constitute something of a radical alterity as compared with the run-of-the-mill

cynic—to wit, someone interested in eristic stratagems and ready to win by any means that

appear relevant to the practice of argument.

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 In light of that difference, there would appear to be two contrastive levels of meaning at

play within the work, each of which is tied to a distinct audience or subject position. Borrowing

from the hermeneutical approach of Leo Strauss, we might characterize this bifurcation as

representing an esoteric structure of philosophical communication, according to which a

philosophical text contains two teachings: “a popular teaching,” often of an instructional or even

edifying character, “which is in the foreground…and a philosophic teaching concerning the most

important subject, which is only indicated between the lines.”55 Although disguised within a

superstructural exoteric message, the obscure, esoteric meaning of a text remains decipherable to

all thoughtful readers in all times and places, as it is often conveyed obliquely by any number of

rhetorical strategies and compositional techniques—e.g., obscure references, irony or paradox,

hyperbole, deliberate self-contradictions, even dubious brazenness. In the case of

Schopenhauer’s Eristic Dialectics, the cynical (non-philosophical) message, which is there for

all to see, operates transparently at the exoteric level. Yet at the same time, Schopenhauer

throughout the work suggestively indicates a deeper, esoteric layer of meaning. These signs

include the post hoc justifications for his having written the work, along with both his

backpedaling efforts in Parerga and Paralipomena to dissociate himself from the tract (both of

which contradict his explicit statement of purpose) and his arguments regarding the innate, will-

driven compulsion to vanity and dishonesty. Included also would be the feature that is perhaps

most conspicuous about the work, namely, its undecidability vis-à-vis hyperbole or audacious

sincerity.

III

Equally noticeable, however, is the total absence in the text of any mention of rhetoric. The word

does not appear in the introductory essay or any of the three appendices and is likewise excluded

15
from Schopenhauer’s discussion of the thirty-eight eristical stratagems. Such an absence is

especially noteworthy (or “present,” we might say) in light of the fact that of the three arts

comprising what Schopenhauer calls the technique of reason rhetoric is the only one omitted

from Eristic Dialectics. Schopenhauer, it is true, closely adheres to Aristotle’s division of the

discursive arts, and Aristotle described his own model of dialectic as providing a theoretical and

systematic replacement of what, to his mind, was an unscientific sophistic eristic.56 Nevertheless,

in On Rhetoric (among other of his writings) Aristotle’s distinction between eristic and rhetoric

is not always clearly demarcated, and indeed it begins to blur in certain passages, such as the

following on the usefulness of rhetoric:

Its [rhetoric’s] function [ergon] is concerned with the sort of things we debate and for

which we do not have [other] arts and among such listeners as are not able to see many

things all together or to reason from a distant starting point. And we debate about things

that seem capable of admitting two possibilities; for no one debates things incapable of

being different...for there is nothing more [to say].57

Although the typical form of rhetoric is the public speech delivered to a large audience, as a

discursive art rhetoric is not reducible to a specific modality or strictly delimited by audience

size. As with eristic, rhetoric’s domain is that of argument and debate, which means that rhetoric

always at least implies the possibility of eristic confrontation.58 Rhetoric also employs sources of

support that, while foreign to dialectic, feature prominently in eristic—proofs from the speaker’s

character (ethos) and from emotions aroused in an audience (pathos).59 What’s more, the

function of rhetoric consists in discovering, in each particular case, “the available means of

persuasion [pithanon],” whereas dialectic deals with general questions and aims to determine the

available means of reasoning (syllogismos).60 Tellingly, this identification of rhetoric with

16
persuasive ability, which is so central to Aristotle’s understanding of rhetoric, appears in

Schopenhauer’s little treatise but only as a trace—that is, only as eristic or controversial

dialectic. Nevertheless, Schopenhauer is quite clear that the success of any given eristical

engagement ultimately hinges on one’s ability to convince or persuade an audience of bystanders

(judges, spectators, etc.) of the superiority of one’s propositions.

Reading “between the lines,” then, would seem to suggest that, in Eristic Dialectics,

rhetoric plays a role similar to that which Gayatri Spivak describes in Derrida as a “mark of the

absence of a presence.” 61 Indeed, if we extend such an esoteric reading so that it looks for what

is not only between but also across the lines, we find in volume one of The World as Will and

Representation a gloss of “the art of persuasion,” which bears resemblance to Schopenhauer’s

later characterization of eristic. In contrast to logical sophisms, which, he argues, “are obviously

too clumsy for actual application,” those belonging to “the arts of persuasion” are more subtle

and variable and therefore more effective at “tricking” one’s audience or interlocutor.62 Hence, in

proper esoteric fashion, rhetoric-cum-persuasion is made present in Eristic Dialectics by virtue

of its conspicuous absence, and its invisibility—or trace—speaks as meaningfully as any

propositional statement. When brought to the fore and made to speak in visible language that

esoteric message suggests a rather unflattering, cynical vision not of eristic but of rhetoric—

understood as the systematic study and intentional practice of persuasive expression. If eristical

success consists in persuasiveness and rhetoric is the persuasion-seeking art, then it would follow

that in Eristic Dialectics Schopenhauer is making an esoterically metonymic argument about

rhetoric by way of an exoteric argument about eristic. Rendered explicitly, the esoteric argument

would consist in the claim that rhetoric is reducible to eristic either because or insofar as the

latter constitutes its dominant tendency. Quintessentially concerned with discovering the

17
available means of persuasion, rhetoric cannot but be committed to the consideration and

employment of those tactics and stratagems which are most likely to result in victory, that is, to

convince an audience and elicit its assent. (Whether that audience is identical to or includes the

adversary, whom in all likelihood it would not, is beside the point.) Additionally, given the

perversity of the individual will, in conjunction with the human propensity for loquacity, this

principle of action would not significantly vary from situation to situation but would remain in

full effect across a multitude of occasions, irrespective of situational specificity. Rhetoric, on this

view, is therefore eristical to the extent that it is the art it claims to be. What Aristotle writes of

delivery would thus also apply in the case of rhetoric’s relationship to eristic: namely, that since

the whole business of rhetoric is with opinion, one should pay attention to eristic not because it is

right but because it is necessary.63 Unlike the other techniques of reason, rhetoric traverses and is

ultimately defined by an eristical trajectory.

Notwithstanding the esoteric identity between rhetoric and eristic, the precise import of

the relationship remains somewhat obscure until it is positioned within a larger framework of

meaning. And just as eristic suggests the art of persuasion by way of a present absence, the

metonymic reduction of rhetoric to eristic evokes, by way of negation, much of the self-

understanding of the rhetorical tradition. In particular, it brings to mind the humanist strain of

rhetorical inquiry, a tradition leading back through the Italian Renaissance to Roman antiquity

and originating, even earlier, in the writings of certain ancient Greek rhetoricians, such as

Isocrates and Protagoras.64 According to major proponents of this tradition, rhetoric (or oratory

or eloquence) is the civic-minded art of speaking well, one that, in the absence of certain

knowledge, elevates debate not as a means of asserting one’s will but as a method for resolving

disputes, arriving at decisions, and negotiating differences in a reasonable way. On this view,

18
which was established by the older sophist Protagoras, only by examining arguments for and

against a given proposition can one test their respective claims of probability and come to some

determination as to which side is to be believed.65 Although an objective standard of truth is held

to be inaccessible, “antilogic” or controversia is not for that reason regarded as the art of

disputing in such a way as to hold one’s own, whether one is in the right or wrong. In fact, given

the innate restrictions on human knowledge—especially with respect to matters of

contingency—debate is seen as the only reasonable alternative, other than force, to cunning and

deception. Even Aristotle, who generally does not emphasize debate, upholds the importance of

being able “to argue persuasively on either side of a question…in order that it may not escape

our notice what the real state of the case is and that we ourselves may be able to refute if another

person uses speech unjustly.”66 Going even further, Isocrates argues in his rhetorical discourses

that such a bilateral view of persuasive speech entails the creation both of consensus (homonoia)

and good counsel (euboulia) in the service of ethical and political improvement.67 Later, in

Roman antiquity, this lofty goal of joining wisdom and eloquence in the process of public

deliberation and debate was taken up and extended by Cicero and encapsulated in Quintilian’s

vision of the ideal orator, or orator perfectus, as the “good man skilled in speaking” (vir bonus

dicendi peritus).68

This model of rhetoric, which would be given new life during the Italian Renaissance,

could not be further removed from Schopenhauer’s cynical portrayal of rhetoric as (essentially,

unavoidably) eristic. Yet the juxtaposition throws into relief the strategic purpose, as well as the

meaning and significance, of Schopenhauer’s esoteric argument: namely, that rhetoric is not

what many of its advocates claim it to be; in fact, upon closer inspection, rhetoric would appear

to be a profoundly anti-civic art of pure deception—the history of rhetorical inquiry no more

19
admirable than a cynic’s bazaar, where what is on sale is every tool of casuistry, a

superabundance of sophisms and other assorted crooked tricks of the trade. From the perspective

of an esoteric hermeneutics, this assessment of the self-understanding and self-promotion of the

rhetorical tradition constitutes the deeper, more fundamental meaning conveyed by

Schopenhauer’s work on eristic, the one aimed not at the implied reader but at a select readership

consisting of what Leo Strauss describes as “thoughtful…careful readers,” those who can read

between and across lines, ferreting out and arriving at an appreciative, critical understanding of a

text’s true philosophical message.69 For that reason, Schopenhauer’s esoteric approach could be

said to embody what Arthur M. Melzer describes as pedagogical esotericism—i.e., a form of

esoteric writing whose purpose is “the transmission of philosophical understanding.” 70 On that

reading, Schopenhauer’s obscurity functions “as a stimulus to genuine thought,” displacing a

surface-level cynicism from the text itself and transposing it to the broader historico-intellectual

context; at the same time, the cynical intent is transferred from the author of Eristic Dialectics to

the likes of Isocrates and Cicero and anyone since who has labored to preserve rhetoric’s self-

image—its brand identity—as an instrument of civic education and public morality.71 In this

light, Schopenhauer’s pamphlet on eristic could be said to join the ranks of Plato’s Gorgias and

Thucydides’ account of the Sicilian expedition as an unconventional yet severely critical

unmasking of rhetoric’s “good faith” pretensions.72 Like these works, Eristic Dialectics forwards

the provocative argument that rhetorical success is a function primarily of ignorance and vanity,

while the persuasive uses of language, especially in the context of public deliberation and debate,

privilege the apparent over the real when reality is quite different and all that counts is victory.

At the same time, Schopenhauer’s tract shares with these other works a manifest

preference for creative indirection, over against a straightforwardly discursive mode of

20
argumentation. At first glance, this decision would seem to be at some odds with what

Schopenhauer regards as the philosopher’s mission to communicate abstract, conceptual

knowledge via effective discursive utterance or propositional language. And yet, as G. Steven

Neeley observes, “Because the understanding (the realm of perception) gives knowledge of

reality, and reason (the domain of abstract representations) merely gives truth, there exists a

region of ‘direct and intuitive knowledge’ which cannot be adequately conveyed through a

purely discursive medium and which can only be shown or demonstrated.”73 Indeed,

Schopenhauer maintains that much of what we come to know in the realm of intuitive

apprehension is so remote from conceptual knowledge that it emasculates discursive utterance,

for instance, “[g]enuine goodness of disposition, disinterested virtue…pure nobleness of mind,”

etc.”74 “Even the deductive proofs of logic and mathematics,” Neeley relates, “fail to adequately

convey the intuitive insights that lie at the foundation of these sciences,” for they do not and

“cannot teach us anything that we do not already know intuitively.”75 From that perspective,

Schopenhauer’s pedagogical esotericism is not an abdication of the philosopher’s office (as he

understands it); rather, it constitutes a strategic response to the intuitive nature of his insight into

the essence of rhetoric, i.e., an artistic navigation of the practical constraints involved in the

attempt to communicate what is essentially non-discursive apprehension. Schopenhauer’s Eristic

Dialectics, in other words, can be read as an attempt at critique that runs up against the limits of

language and, of practical necessity, makes use of a communicative strategy that indirectly

compares the structure and tendency of rhetoric to those of eristic. As Frederick Trautmann

avers, “Attempts at explanation through analogy…abandon discursive thinking and cloak

themselves in metaphor,” or, in the case of Eristic Dialectics, in multilevel writing.76 But

whereas the abandonment of discursive argumentation in Plato and Thucydides entails the use of

21
dialogue and characterization, the multilevel esotericism of Eristic Dialectics sees Schopenhauer

himself taking on a role, that of a forthcoming cynical rhetor. And in so doing, he opposes

cynical reason in a manner that is not only indirect but also derisively antagonistic.

If the obscurity of Eristic Dialectics qualifies the text as an attempt at pedagogical

esotericism, then Schopenhauer’s faux-seriousness or mock advocacy qualifies as an instance of

what Sloterdijk terms kynicism. Although the term is somewhat slippery in Sloterdijk’s writing,

kynicism functions as a stand-in for ancient cynic parrhesia (truth speaking) and thus refers to

any mode of truth telling that could qualify as assertoric or confrontational. (Michel Foucault

identifies three modes in particular: critical preaching, scandalous behavior, and provocative

dialogue.)77 Drawing from the ancient cynicism of Diogenes of Sinope, Sloterdijk distinguishes

this tradition from modern cynicism by retaining the etymological root of the Greek-word

kynikos (dog-like) and employing neologisms such as kynical and kynicism. The distinction,

however, is not merely semantic: Sloterdijk sees in kynicism potentialities for opposing any

institutionalized practice or belief system that would “make lies into a form of living.”78 “In

kynismos,” he writes, “a kind of argumentation was discovered that,” in radical opposition to

cynicism, “respectable thinking does not know how to deal with.” 79 Rather than “going along to

get along” (or to get ahead at all costs), kynicism aims to foster novel, uninhibited relationships

between truth and effective symbolic expression, no matter the medium. Diogenes, for instance,

who mocked the artifices of culture by defecating, urinating, and masturbating in public, used the

body’s “pantomimic materialism” both as a criterion of truth and as a form of satirical

argument.80 Schopenhauer, to be sure, is engaged in satire as well, but his kynical unmasking of

rhetoric belongs to a more literary variety of the kynical tradition. With Eristic Dialectics,

Schopenhauer engages in a form of literary expression that Sloterdijk describes as centauric,

22
“that is, the setting loose of an infinitely consequential artistic and philosophical double-natured

eloquence.”81 In contrast to Diogenes’ gestural kynicism of the body, Schopenhauer’s treatise

instantiates a pantomimic verbalism, one that mockingly rebukes the discourse of rhetoric but—

centaurically and esoterically—in its own voice, albeit one that is uncharacteristically honest.

Schopenhauer’s centauric satire, however, is not merely for laughs—or rather, the laughs

themselves are not insignificant but of consequence. Indeed, such double-natured eloquence,

argues Sloterdijk, is capable of a “holy non-seriousness, which remains one of the sure indexes

of truth.”82 For Schopenhauer, the kind of institutionalization of lying—and of lying about

lying—that occurs in the practice and propagation of rhetoric helps to ensure a culture of

manipulation and deceit by providing a sophisticated moral pretext for what is at root nothing

nobler than a toxic admixture of vanity, ignorance, and the will to dominate. Thus exceeding the

compulsion to survive and the desire to assert oneself, the impulses that drive rhetorical cynicism

make an absolute travesty both of knowledge and morality: for its representatives knowingly mix

the right and wrong, the good and the bad, venturing forth with “naked truths that, in the way

they are presented,” writes Sloterdijk, “contain something false.”83 For rhetoric’s “humanists,”

the absence, in any given situation, of an objective standard of truth is nothing more than a

convenient alibi that betrays “the principle of self-preservation gone wild.”84

Schopenhauer’s critique—which is at once esoteric, kynical, and centauric—thus

satirizes rhetoric’s ideology of the uses, advantages, and nature of deliberation and debate

because Schopenhauer discerns in it the formula of cynical reason (articulated by Slavoj Žižek)

that “‘[they] know very well what they are doing, but still, they are doing it.’”85 But instead of

forwarding propositional arguments contrary to the dogmas of the rhetorical-humanist

tradition—which would be a fool’s errand—Schopenhauer employs a parodic double-voiced

23
eloquence that speaks in the mockingly honest language of rhetoric’s best advocates. It is a

hypothetical, self-reflexive eloquence, one that defends dishonesty on the grounds that “abiding

by a proposition that already seems false to ourselves…is still excusable”—an eloquent

admission that as a result of “the uncertainty of truth and of the imperfection of the human

intellect…we are almost compelled to be a little unfair in an argument….”86 With these and other

instances of what Sloterdijk calls “aggressive and free (‘shameless’) truths,” Schopenhauer

derides rhetoric as eristic not because it is a trivial thing but rather because it is serious enough to

be deserving of ridicule.87 In so doing, he makes available a therapeutic avenue (a pharmakon),

which he directs not at the real cynics—those who know very well what they are doing but

continue anyway—but those who still suffer or might suffer from rhetoric’s official ideology

about the positive advantages of public deliberation and debate, however subliminally. While

everyone may be at liberty to be a fool, this does not mean for Schopenhauer that we should

suffer fools gladly—even or especially when they’re persuasive. For them, the appropriate

response is either satire or silence.

And yet Schopenhauer’s decision not to publish Eristic Dialectics could very well

indicate ambivalence about which of these responses he regarded as the more appropriate. On the

one hand, Schopenhauer’s kynical interpretation of eristic and rhetoric affords him a means of

critically engaging rhetoric’s narrative about the powers of argument and debate without having

to advance overt arguments—a strategy that, had he pursued it, would have both implicated him

in a performative contradiction and invited counter-arguments. Moreover, given that in Parerga

and Paralipomena Schopenhauer was not primarily speaking to scholars and university

professors but attempting to “spread a ‘philosophy for the world,’” as Marco Segala claims,

Schopenhauer’s omission of Eristic Dialectics may also have been motivated, in part, by a

24
concern to avoid misinterpretation.88 In any event, the advantage of such a centauric approach is

that, unlike exoteric, single-voiced arguments, it makes possible an eloquence that is separable

from the art of eristical rhetoric. Indeed, Schopenhauer implicitly dissociates eloquence from the

fray of argument and debate, describing it as “the faculty of stirring up in others our view of a

thing…of kindling in them our feeling about, and thus of putting them in sympathy with us.” 89

To be sure, eloquence can be and often is employed to “get the best of it in a dispute,” to

persuade, to dominate and humiliate one’s opponent in the eyes of an audience. But it can also

serve, as it does for Schopenhauer, as a means of holy non-seriousness by which to invite and

seduce audiences—especially readers—to a satirically dressed view of the truth. On the other

hand, there is always the risk that one will be misunderstood, that the hidden truths will remain

unconcealed, the satire misperceived or only partially detected. If and when that occurs, the

antagonistic spirit of kynical revolt is appropriated by cynical impulses and accordingly re-

signified. And this points up an unavoidable tension in the process of kynical engagement: just as

rhetoric’s dominant tendency is toward the eristic, the reception of kynicism always hazards a

cynical interpretation, whether intended or not, strategic or naïve.

Schopenhauer was no doubt aware of the difficulty of using eloquence as a way of

combatting its cynical appropriation by the movements of the will—as his handbook aptly

demonstrates. At the same time, however, his writing itself could be read as a kind of redemptive

gesture to the logic of persuasion, as demonstrating the possibility—even if ultimately futile—of

splitting rhetoric from within itself. By way of dissociation, rhetoric’s cynical impulse of

domination and vanity (of self-preservation run amok) would be pitted against the kynical revolt

of a piously satirical truth that laughs at the notion of victory, while making a mockery of

dishonesty. At the very least, Schopenhauer has provided readers a glimpse of how one might

25
realistically, strategically pursue truth in an age of cynical disillusion—that is, with wry

sincerity.

Notes
1
Arthur Schopenhauer, Eristic Dialectics, trans. E. F. J. Payne, in Manuscript Remains, vol. 3, Berlin
Manuscripts (1818-1830) (Oxford: Berg, 1989), 744, 754, 755. Although the dating of the small work is difficult,
Payne regards 1830-1831 as the time when it was finally written down (E. F. J. Payne, “Editorial Note on Eristic
Dialectics,” in Manuscript Remains, vol. 3, 724).
2
Notable exceptions to this neglect include: Richard Davies, “Eristic Dialectic: The Fencing Master’s
Judgment,” ERIS: Rivista internazionale di argomentazione e dibattito 1, no. 1 (2015): 20-33; Michel Dufour,
“Dialectic and Eristic,” in ISSA Proceedings (Amsterdam: Rozenberg Quarterly, 2014); and James Benjamin,
“Eristic, Dialectic, and Rhetoric,” Communication Quarterly 31, no. 1 (1983): 21-6.
3
Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena (PP II), vol. 2, trans. E. F. J. Payne (Oxford: Clarendon
P, 1974), 24-32.
4
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (WWR I), vol. 1, trans. E. F. J. Payne (New
York: Dover, 1966), 68. For an overview on Schopenhauer’s view of the status and limitations of arguments as such,
see Bryan Magee, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1983), 38-40.
5
Benjamin, “Eristic, Dialectic, and Rhetoric,” 21.
6
See Dufour, “Dialectic and Eristic.”
7
Davies, “Eristic Dialectic,” 20.
8
T. Bailey Saunders, “Translator’s Note,” in The Art of Always Being Right: The 38 Subtle Ways of
Persuasion, ed. A. C. Grayling (London: Gibson Square Books, 2011), 189.
9
A. C. Grayling, introduction to The Art of Always Being Right, 18; see also, “The Truth,” ibid., 7-11.
10
Grayling, introduction to The Art, 18.
11
Ibid., 16.
12
Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena (PP I), vol. 1, trans. E. F. J. Payne (Oxford:
Clarendon P, 1974), 31-32; see also 139-197, esp. 149ff.
13
See Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 1988), 22-37.
14
Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason, trans. Michael Eldred (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P,
1988).
15
The labels “controversial” and “motivistic” are borrowed from Thomas Conley, Rhetoric in the
European Tradition (Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 1990), 23-4.
16
PP II, 27; see 27-29 for the outline in its entirety.
17
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (WWR II), vol. 2, trans. E. F. J. Payne
(New York: Dover, 1966), 102.
18
Ibid. See Aristotle, Metaphysics, Books I-IX, trans. Hugh Tredennick, in Aristotle, vol. 17 (Cambridge:
Harvard UP, 1933), 97 (995a30-4); Posterior Analytics, trans. Hugh Tredennick, in Aristotle, vol. 2 (Cambridge:
Harvard UP, 1960), 75/7 (77a5-35).
19
WWR II, 102.
20
Ibid. See for instance Plato, Republic, Book V, trans. G.M.A. Grube, rev. C.D.C. Reeve, in Complete
Works (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 1077-1107 (449a-480). Schopenhauer also acknowledges the appearance of
eristic in Aristotle’s Topica and its treatment in Theophrastus’ non-extant works. See Aristotle, Topica, trans. E.S.
Forster, in Aristotle, vol. 2, 273/5 (100a25-101a4). For a contemporary discussion of eristic in classical antiquity,
see John Poulakos, “Eristic,” in Encyclopedia of Rhetoric, ed. Thomas O. Sloane (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001), 261-3;
see also, G. B. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981), 59-67.

26

21
WWR II, 102; cf. PP II, 24-32.
22
PP II, 26.
23
See PP II, 24; cf. Eristic Dialectics, 760.
24
Eristic Dialectics, 760.
25
PP II, 24.
26
Ibid., 25. The phrase “the common ruck of people” is one of Schopenhauer’s favorite deprecations and
occurs throughout Parerga and Paralipomena. He frequently contrasts it with what he regards as “first-rate minds,”
whose works have the character of decisiveness and definiteness, with the resulting distinctness and clearness. See
PP II, 497-8, for an explicit differentiation of the two epithets.
27
PP II, 25. Rudeness, for Schopenhauer, is always ultiima ratio stultorum (“the last resort of the stupid”).
28
Eristic Dialectics, 760. It should be noted that Schopenhauer in this passage is not implying that one
percent of human beings have superior minds. Indeed, one suspects that he would claim a smaller proportion than
this. See for instance his remark that, “[U]nfortunately a hundred fools in a crowd still do not produce one intelligent
man” (PP I, 330; my emphasis).
29
Eristic Dialectics, 727.
30
Ibid., 728.
31
Ibid. Following Aristotle’s taxonomy of methods, he claims that, as with the sister arts of dialectic and
sophistic, eristic has no objective truth in view, “but only the appearance of it”; it thus pays no regard to truth itself
and aims only for victory (Ibid., 31, n.1). See Aristotle, Topica 273/5 (100a25-101a4).
32
Eristic Dialectics, 728-729. Indeed, “eristic” is a derivative of the Greek term eris, which means strife.
According to Poulakos, “eristic belongs to the agonistic ethic whose goal is victory” (“Eristic” 261).
33
Eristic Dialectics, 728.
34
PP II, 31. For a useful overview of the will as an unconscious source of motivation, see Sebastian
Gardner, “Schopenhauer, Will, and the Unconscious,” in The Cambridge Companion to Schopenhauer, ed.
Christopher Janaway (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999), 375-421.
35
PP II, 7. Schopenhauer describes writing as “this one and only faithful preserver of thoughts,” and for
that reason considers it “the organ whereby one speaks to humanity,” in PP I, 41.
36
See PP II, 565. See also, WWR I, 37; and WWR II, 445.
37
PP II, 31-32; cf. Eristic Dialectics, 734.
38
Eristic Dialectics, 727.
39
Ibid., 734 (italics in original), 729.
40
Ibid., 735.
41
Ibid., 729.
42
Ibid., 729n.
43
Niccolò Machiavelli, "Instructions given by Niccolo Machiavelli to Rafael Girolami, Ambassador to the
Emperor," The History of Florence and of the Affairs of Italy: From the Earliest Times to the Death of Lorenzo the
Magnificent; Together with The Prince, and Various Historical Tracts, edited by Henry G. Bohn (London: Bohn’s
Standard Library, 1847), 505–06. See also chapter 18 of The Prince, ed. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 61-3.
44
Eristic Dialectics, 735.
45
Cynical Reason, 292.
46
Ibid., 5, 6.
47
Ibid., 6.
48
Ibid., 7.
49
The notion of an implied reader comes from narratology or narrative theory and in the literature is
applied principally to non-narrated “stories.” See for instance, Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse: Narrative
Structure in Fiction and Film (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1978), 149 ff.
50
Cynical Reason, 7.

27

51
Eristic Dialectics, 728-729.
52
Ibid., 729.
53
One is tempted to describe such an orientation as naively (because trustingly) cynical.
54
Frederick Trautmann, “Communication in the Philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer,” Southern Journal of
Communication 40, no. 2 (1975), 155. The other type of genius—the artist—would presumably not characterize
Schopenhauer’s idealized auditor. As Trautmann remarks, the province and obligation of the artist is “the
transmission of singular and profound perceptions” (ibid.). See also, Schopenhauer, PP II, 10.
55
Persecution, 36. A defense of this hermeneutic can be found in Strauss’s essay, “On a Forgotten Kind of
Writing,” Chicago Review 8, no. 1 (1954): 64-75.
56
Aristotle, On Sophistical Refutations, trans. E.S. Forster, in Aristotle, vol. 3 (Cambridge: Harvard UP,
1955), 153 (183b23).
57
Aristotle, On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, 2nd ed., trans. George A. Kennedy (New York:
Oxford UP, 2007), 41 (1.2.12); my emphasis.
58
Preserving its etymological roots, the eristic function of language entails the capacity to captivate,
motivate, or even injure. See Richard Enos, Greek Rhetoric before Aristotle (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 1993),
7.
59
On Rhetoric, 38-9 (1.2.2-5).
60
Ibid., 36 (1.1.14), 37 (1.2.1). See also Topica 273 (100a25-101a4) and 629/31/33 (149b26-28).
61
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Translator’s Preface” to Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology (Baltimore:
John Hopkins UP, 1976), xvii.
62
WWR I, 49. In contrast to logic, “the art of persuasion depends on our subjecting the relations
of…concept-spheres to a superficial consideration only, then determining these only from one point of view, and in
accordance with our intentions” (ibid.).
63
On Rhetoric, 195 (3.1.5).
64
If that humanistic strain can be traced to a specific origin it would be the pronouncement attributed to
Protagoras in the fifth century that, “‘Of all things the measure is man, of things that are that they are, and of things
that are not that they are not.’” See The Older Sophists, ed. Rosamond Kent Sprague (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1972),
18 (B1).
65
For Protagoras’s fragments pertaining to argument and debate, see The Older Sophists 21 (B5-6b).
66
On Rhetoric, 35 (1.1.12).
67
See Isocrates, Antidosis, trans. George Norlin, in Isocrates, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1929),
337/9 (275-7); Panegyricus, trans. George Norlin, in Isocrates, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1928), 121/3 (3-5).
68
Quintilian, On the Orator’s Education, vol. 5, trans. Donald A. Russell (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2001),
197 (12.1.1); cf. Cicero Ideal Orator, trans. James M. May and Jakob Wisse (New York: Oxford UP, 2001), 145
(2.85).
69
Persecution, 25.
70
Arthur M. Melzer, Philosophy between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing (Chicago: The U
of Chicago P, 2014), 205.
71
Ibid., 218.
72
Plato, Gorgias, trans. Donald J. Zeyl, in Complete Works, see esp. 806-9 (462b465e), where Plato’s
Socrates defines rhetoric as a “knack” and a practice of “flattery”; Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, trans.
Steven Lattimore (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998), 306-59.
73
G. Steven Neeley, Schopenhauer: A Consistent Reading (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen P, 2003), 61-62. For
the in-text quotation see Schopenhauer WWR I, 370.
74
Schopenhauer, WWR I, 369-370.
75
Neeley, Schopenhauer, 60; cf. Schopenhauer, WWR I, 62-76.
76
Trautmann, “Communication in the Philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer,” 156.
77
Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech, ed. Joseph Pearson (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2001), 119. For
Foucault’s full account of cynic parrhesia, see 120-133.

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78
Cynical Reason, 102.
79
Ibid., 101.
80
Ibid., 103.
81
Sloterdijk, Thinker on Stage: Nietzsche’s Materialism, trans. Jamie Owen Daniel (Minneapolis: U of
Minnesota P, 1989), 10.
82
Cynical Reason, 18.
83
Ibid., xxxvii-xxxviii.
84
Ibid., p. 324.
85
Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (New York: Verso, 1989), 29.
86
Eristic Dialectics, 728; PP II, 31-2.
87
Cynical Reason, 102.
88
Marco Segala, “Additions and Omissions: The Genesis of Parerga and Paralipomena from
Schopenhauer’s Manuscripts,” Schopenhauer-Jahrbuch 94 (2013): 158. A more speculative but nevertheless
plausible explanation for why Schopenhauer chose not to publish the work could be the poor reception of Immanuel
Kant’s pre-critical work, Dreams of a Spirit Seer (1766), which was an attempt to satirize spiritualistic explanations
of spirit phenomena. Although Schopenhauer does not comment on the work’s reputation, he was indeed aware of
the work and mentions it in connection with his own “idealistic explanation” of spirit seeing and apparitions (PP I,
229; see also, 292). What’s more, as John Manolesco relates, “Kant was not particularly proud of his Spirit Seer, not
because of its philosophical contents but on account of its abusive style…. The mature Kant must have felt uneasy
about his earlier lack of inhibitions and manners” (translator’s preface to Dreams of a Spirit Seer and Other Related
Writings, by Immanuel Kant [New York: Vantage Press, 1969], 7). One imagines that Schopenhauer would have at
least been aware of the possibility that Kant’s mode of expression contributed to the work’s failure. It should be
noted, however, that these possible explanations are not mutually exclusive.
89
WW II, 118.

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