Table Of ContentSWIFT AND THE DIALECTICAL TRADITION
Swift and the
Dialectical Tradition
James A. W. Rembert
Professor of English
The Citadel, Charleston, South Carolina
M
MACMILLAN
PRESS
ISBN 978-1-349-19074-4 ISBN 978-1-349-19072-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-19072-0
©James A. W. Rembert 1988
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1988 978-0-333-43593-9
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission
of this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied
or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance
with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended).
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to
this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and
civil claims for damages.
First published 1988
Published by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
Typeset by Wessex Typesetters
(Division of The Eastern Press Ltd)
Frome, Somerset
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Rembert, James A. W.
Swift and the dialectical tradition.
1. Swift, Jonathan-Criticism and
interpretation
I. Title
828' .509 PR3727
To my sons Andre and Wyman
Contents
Preface XI
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction 1
Part One: The Dialectical Tradition
1 Dialectic 11
Dialectic and rhetoric 11
Dialectic and logic 12
Dialectic, sophistic, eristic 15
2 Dialectic: Antiquity to the Renaissance 19
Dialectic in Ancient Greece 19
Scholasticism 22
The medieval universities 25
The university disputation 31
3 Dialectic since the Sixteenth Century 37
Scholasticism 37
University logic studies 39
The disputation 44
The tripos or prevaricator speeches 54
Criticism of logic and disputations 57
4 Dialectic at Trinity College, Dublin 63
Swift at Trinity 63
The founding and early development of TCD 63
vii
viii Contents
Logic at TCD 64
Disputations at TCD 66
Part Two: Swift and Dialectic
5 First Principles and Contexts 75
Substance versus style 75
The peace of church and state 76
The benefit of mankind 78
The importance of opinion to the age 80
Singularity of opinion 81
Opinions of the wise and the majority 83
Reason 85
Pamphlet warfare 91
University education 94
Controversy 98
6 The Language of Logical Argument 101
Dialectic 101
The language of disputation 103
'Topicks', syllogism, argue 105
Prove, reason, deduce, conclude and consequence 107
The language of the syllogism
109
7 Questioner against Answerer
114
The questioner
114
The opposition
118
Refutation
119
Extension of opponent's thesis 121
Turning of opponent's argument 122
Contents ix
Argumenta ad . . . 124
Argument from contraries 128
The dialectical question: either/or 132
Offering two unacceptable extremes 133
The dilemma 134
8 Answerer against Questioner 144
The answerer 144
The opposition 147
Dialectical superiority 149
Refutation 152
Reductio ad impossibile 154
The dilemmatic response 159
The unacceptable extremes 160
Manipulating an opponent's argument 161
Drawing distinctions 163
Attacking definitions 164
Contempt for opponent's reasoning 167
Exposing fallacious reasoning 167
Citing opponent's dialectical tricks 169
Attacking metaphors 171
Exposing wit and sources 172
Criticising style 174
Personal attack 176
9 Dialectic and Satire 181
Satire 181
Irony 184
Wit and humour 186
X Contents
Paradox 190
Appendixes
1 Dialectic and Demonstration 194
2 University Logic Studies-an Epilogue 196
3 British Library MS Cotton Faustina D. II 198
Notes 202
Select Bibliography 243
Index 259
Preface
Dialectic is not as widely known as grammar and rhetoric, and one
might conclude after glancing at the infrequent syllogisms and
frequent references to Aristotle below that a knowledge of formal
logic and philosophy is requisite to an understanding of this account
of the dialectical tradition. Accordingly one might hesitate in making
an investment of time in what might turn out to be too technical a
subject for the student of literature. The reader may rest easy. The
aim is to provide an elementary introduction to the subject readily
within reach of anyone interested in Swift, literature or argument.
Students of philosophy might bear in mind the propaedeutic function
of the opening chapters.
Besides being an introduction to dialectic and its use by Swift and
in literature in general, these chapters are inadvertently a kind of
handbook on how to win an argument and how to preclude defeat
by an opponent. Swift is staunch, vehement, clever and artistic in
defending principles in which he believes and in attacking those he
deplores, so that studying his art almost necessarily involves one in
the spirit of attack and defence. Analysing the many stratagems
Swift uses in perpetrating valid and fallacious arguments and in
demolishing those of an opponent tends to make a reader want to
practise the dialectical art. Plato warns against the destructive power
of dialectic when practised by young men before the age of thirty
five, and Schopenhauer concludes one of the best expositions of the
art of controversy with two reminders for those who learn the art of
dialectic, Voltaire's suggestion that la paix vaut encore mieux que la
verite and an ancient Arabian proverb: on the tree of silence hangs a
fruit which is peace.
NOTE ON REFERENCES
Quotations from Plato are from the translation of B. Jowett, 4 vols,
Oxford (4th ed., 1953); those from Aristotle from the Oxford
translation, ed. J. A. Smith and W. D. Ross, 12 vols (1908--53). In
later chapters references to Swift's works often are cited
parenthetically in the text, with the volume and page numbers (for
example, III 82) of the Herbert Davis edition, The Prose Writings of
Xl
