The Art of Controversy (or: The Art of Being Right)

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)
Translated by T. Bailey Saunders (1860 - 1928)

The Art of Controversy (or The Art of Being Right) (Die Kunst, Recht zu Behalten) is a short treatise written in 1831 by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer in which he presents thirty-eight methods of gaining an unfair advantage in a debate and thereby being right even if you are wrong. Schopenhauer champions the virtue of dialectical argument, in his view wrongly neglected by philosophers in favour of logic, and goes on to discuss the distinction between our conscious intellectual powers and our will. The text is a favourite of debaters including the philosophers AC Grayling and Mary Warnock, and the Mayor of London Boris Johnson. (Summary by Carl Manchester)

Genre(s): *Non-fiction, Philosophy, Self-Help

Language: English

Section Chapter Reader Time
Play 01 Preliminary: Logic and Dialectic Carl Manchester
00:24:38
Play 02 The Basis of All Dialectic Carl Manchester
00:04:52
Play 03 Stratagems 1 to 10 Carl Manchester
00:15:59
Play 04 Stratagems 11 to 20 Carl Manchester
00:09:29
Play 05 Stratagems 21 to 30 Carl Manchester
00:19:03
Play 06 Stratagems 31 to 38 Carl Manchester
00:14:04
Play 07 On the comparative place... Carl Manchester
00:22:31
Play 08 Psychological Observations Carl Manchester
00:17:40
Play 09 On the Wisdom of Life: Aphorisms Carl Manchester
00:36:51
Play 10 Genius and Virtue Carl Manchester
00:28:24