Abstract
Aristotle’s Rhetoric (1393a26ff) mentions fables as a specific type of paradeigma or argument by example, which he finds are good for popular persuasion (dēmēgorikoi). Classical tradition kept paying attention to this kind of composition (logos muthikos) and its argumentative qualities by including it in the standard list of rhetorical exercises (progymnasmata) that every student should be able to construe by the end of his education. In this paper, we will take a look at both this kind of theoretical approach to fables, typical of the rhetorical textbook tradition, which insists on the plausibility of the analogy traced between an impossible fabulous world and the real human world, as based on its narrative qualities, and at certain examples belonging to the catalogue of classical fables (Aesopica). We will see there is a variety of fable types, in which the relative distance of the analogous, source and target domains plays an important role in determining the kind of argument that may be employed to support it: from straightforward generalizations, which may be justifiably treated, in Aristotelian terms, as “rhetorical inductions”, to much more elaborate and imaginative analogies.
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Notes
- 1.
Within this renewed interest in the relationship between narration and argumentation, we find a significant number of references to W. R. Fisher’s (1987) narrative paradigm of rationality, although there is not yet a specific proposal for the integration of this theoretical framework within argumentation theory.
- 2.
Usually a digressive kind of narration, not immediately related to the case discussed. Cf.: Cicero De inv., I 27.
- 3.
Walton’s paper draws on the work of F. Bex and others on “legal argumentation”.
- 4.
Even though the distinction between cases with just one domain and cases with two distinct domains is not always an easy one, and there might be much interpretative work to be done, this is something that should be taken into account.
- 5.
Later in the discussion, after presenting the basic scheme, Walton (2012, pp. 193–194) talks about the possibility of “parallel” or “comparable” conclusions but always alongside the basic standard of the “same” conclusion.
- 6.
And he explicitly avoids the complexities of other kinds of narratives as, namely, Joyce’s literature (Plumer 2011, p. 1553).
- 7.
“The presumption underlying the argument is that the claim made about X can also correctly be made about Y”, p. 168.
- 8.
Govier and Ayers’s paper does also focus on whether these narrative arguments are, in the end and by themselves, good or bad arguments. Their conclusion is not very sympathetic and one of their points has to do with the problems of the epistemic evaluation of fictitious (counterfactual) premises, problems that become rather insurmountable in cases of “symbolic representation”: “Being unable to spell out a symbolic premise, we are unwilling to deem such a premise acceptable or unacceptable. Rather, we will deem it ‘not amenable to logical assessment’” (Govier and Ayers 2012, p. 187). As my own views on evaluation belong to a more contextual and comparative framework and as I will not discus these points.
- 9.
I.e. those attributed to Aesop and Babrius as well as the tradition which directly derives from them, including the Latin fabulists and the enlightenment recreations of the genre, like La Fontaine’s in France or Samaniego’s in Spain.
- 10.
- 11.
- 12.
He is not using the term “parable” as in Govier and Ayers (2012).
- 13.
They would be subsequently and more precisely called logoi muthikoi.
- 14.
The philosophical interest in perceiving similarities or likenesses is also mentioned in Topics 108a7.
- 15.
It is presented, though, with the argumentative and discursive complications of a reductio: selecting magistrates by lot would be similar to selecting athletes or pilots by lot and not by art or expertise, which is something evidently unacceptable. It is never an easy task to analyze arguments in real texts, but, in any case, I do not think this particular complication is very relevant for our concrete discussion.
- 16.
In both parables and fables the similarity warranting the argument is usually made explicit and marked by the use of formulae. In the instances offered by Aristotle, we find, for example: “in a similar way …” (“homoion gar hōsper…”), “so, also in your case…” (“houtō de kai humeis”), “thus, you as well …” (“Atar kai humas”). Another most typical and well known formula in classical fables is: “The fable teaches us that …” (“ho logos<ho mythos> dēloi hoti…”). This one is generally used, as we shall later observe, in cases where the “conclusive” moral, in the realm of human life and action, is made explicit just after telling the fabulous story, with no more explanations added. It would generally be a case in which the way the conclusion is supported by the story told in the fable would be left implicit.
- 17.
Notice that the analogy is not so much in the use of “talking animals” which, as we are starting to notice, is a rather straightforward and naturalized resource in Greek discourse.
- 18.
Theon attributes this idea to Aristotle, but it is not in the Rhetoric we have.
- 19.
In order, for the actual speaker, to avoid the onus or burden of proof.
- 20.
Or “testimony” of an ancient, poetical and reputed source, as Aristotle puts it in Rhet. 1375b26-30.
- 21.
Although there are certain internal rules to the genre’s acceptability that might have been clumsily violated: “for example if someone (…) called an ass wise or a fox stupid”, Prog. 77.
- 22.
- 23.
Cf. : La Fontaine, Fables, VII.1 “Les animaux malades de la peste”.
- 24.
Political speech and practical decision making typically involve the kind of argumentation that Goodnight (2006) calls “Type II Complex Cases”, in which a variety of criteria, belonging to different fields and standards (justice, honesty, feasibility, economy, etc.) might be used as reasons, with the subsequent difficulties in their relative weighing we are all so used to in our daily lives. That we deal with such cases by modelling possible scenarios and outcomes and imagining what it would be like in case of a certain step or decision taken is, therefore, rather reasonable.
- 25.
E.g.: The oak tree and the reed, [Aesop], Pe. 70; The Trees and the Olive, [Aesop], Pe. 262; The Viper and the File, [Aesop], Pe. 93; Cf. Le pot de terre et le pot de fer, La Fontaine, V.2.
- 26.
In most versions of the The Swollen Fox ([Aesop] Pe. 24; Babrius 86), for example, there is no explicit moral. Other versions add a traditionally attached one which is, nevertheless, rather awkward, as it really goes against the grain of the typical prudential wisdom associated with fables: “The fable shows that time solves all difficulties.”
- 27.
My real aim was commenting on certain aspects of Werner Herzog’s documentary film Grizzly Man, a film reviewing the real story of Timothy Treadwell who was attacked and devoured by a bear in the Katmai National Park (Alaska), during the summer of 2003 (Olmos forthcoming).
- 28.
I personally do not see how he could have acted otherwise, but that is inconsequential here.
- 29.
I cannot see this principle, by the way, as any kind of empirical claim or statistical plausibility. As a prediction, it would randomly work out. I would rather consider it a prudential maxim to act “as if it were so”, but Aristotle mentions it as warranting the use of real stories as precedents and examples supporting claims about present or future events.
- 30.
The “a maiore” clause is explicitly mentioned at the end of the text: “Thus even in fools does hunger sharpen the wits” (“Ergo etiam stultis acuit ingenium fames”) as a conclusion directly extracted from the fable which, by means of the a fortiori principle, supports the “ad minore” clause which is the apparently more general but operatively less specific (and thus weaker) maxim. Note that this kind of argument does not work at all as an induction in which the more universal the claim, the stronger the theoretical commitment. The “a fortiori argument” presents different varieties, many of them close to analogies in being meta-argumentative (Marraud 2013a, pp. 242–244, 2013b).
- 31.
For example, in positively praising the capacity for survival and quickness of uneducated and underprivileged social classes or in proposing pedagogical methods based on creating at least intellectual and cognitive necessities to the privileged ones.
- 32.
I.e. claims ostentatiously and vaingloriously, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
- 33.
The way the fox expresses her counter-argument is, nevertheless, a little bit more complex, suggesting that the bear would be a better animal—and she would gladly grant his claim, i.e. that he “loves humans”—if he had opposite characteristics to those he really has, i.e. if he would devour the already dead and leave the living alone. As this is not so, and those characteristics are just ironically mentioned, the undercutting defeater makes its work.
- 34.
Cf. Woods and Hudak (1989, p. 125): “Analogy is rife in the lives of certain species. It scarcely seems possible that we ourselves could do without it. We have analogical predication, analogical pattern recognition, analogical explanation, analogical inference, and analogical argument (…) Some may find it surprising that analogical argument differs from analogical inference. More surprisingly still is the suggestion that analogical predication differs from analogical argument, not just in the way predication differs from argument, but in rather more striking ways that suggest the unlikelihood that they exemplify a single, unified idea of analogy”.
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Acknowledgments
This research has been made possible by funds provided by both the UNED Research Project’s Programme (Project 2012V/PUNED/0010, “Narrativity and Argumentation: Discursive Basis of Plausibility”) and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Research Project: FFI2011-23125, “Arguing in the Public Sphere: Deliberation as a Paradigm”).
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Olmos, P. (2014). Classical Fables as Arguments: Narration and Analogy. In: Ribeiro, H. (eds) Systematic Approaches to Argument by Analogy. Argumentation Library, vol 25. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06334-8_11
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