Political Philosophy

The Book of Fallacies

♡+

Jeremy Bentham

1824

A satirical catalogue of the rhetorical devices habitually used by legislators and public men to resist reform and evade rational argument. Bentham identifies and names dozens of fallacies — the "wisdom of our ancestors," "the slippery slope," "the fallacy of distrust," "the sin of innovation" — exposing each as a way of substituting authority, fear, or sentiment for evidence and reason. Edited by Peregrine Bingham from Bentham's manuscripts, it remains a devastatingly funny and still-relevant guide to political bad faith.