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jensbrede's review
3.0
Schopenhauer starts out by clearly distinguishing logic and dialectic, which has generally and historically not been done (clearly) before (he presents exerts of the work by Aristotle and Plato as examples) and then continues to present 38 "Kunstgriffe", i.e. tricks that can be used to outwit your opponent in a disputation on dialectic alone.
The language used took me a while to get used to but then turned out to be rather precise and on the mark.
All tricks discussed (and partially illustrated with examples) were rather intuitive and felt strangely familiar.
I would not expect to become a master in public disputations just by reading through this book, but if you take it somewhat seriously you will be able to spot many of the tricks in popular events and disputations portrait especially in the media today.
He closes his work with an old Arabic quote "the tree of silence bears the fruit of peace" and reminds the reader that there are only very few people who are actually worthy of a disputation. There are some tricks, which were discussed before in the book, that are only very difficult to 'attack' and after all, the dialectic as defined by Schopenhauer is not at all concerned with the logical and objective truth of the matter discussed but with making your 'opponent' look bad.
The language used took me a while to get used to but then turned out to be rather precise and on the mark.
All tricks discussed (and partially illustrated with examples) were rather intuitive and felt strangely familiar.
I would not expect to become a master in public disputations just by reading through this book, but if you take it somewhat seriously you will be able to spot many of the tricks in popular events and disputations portrait especially in the media today.
He closes his work with an old Arabic quote "the tree of silence bears the fruit of peace" and reminds the reader that there are only very few people who are actually worthy of a disputation. There are some tricks, which were discussed before in the book, that are only very difficult to 'attack' and after all, the dialectic as defined by Schopenhauer is not at all concerned with the logical and objective truth of the matter discussed but with making your 'opponent' look bad.
jannis5's review against another edition
3.0
Although the language is a bit dated and thus difficult to understand at times it is a short read and clearly structured making it easy to read on the side. The book teaches how to win an argument without being right or at least detecting someone who is using these tricks to win an argument.