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Books

Aristotelian Time-Share Salesmen

John Mann reviews The Recovery of the Soul by Kenneth Rankin

A few months ago a special time-share promotion mail shot appeared inviting people to attend an evening presentation at the end of which a wonderful prize of either a car, a colour TV, a video recorder, a holiday or a set of steak knives would be given free (and guess which prize everyone won?) Of course people turned up thinking they would take the prize and leave, but they had not reckoned with the highly unfair training the salesmen had received in what was in essence Aristotelian philosophy – in particular countering scepticism.

All that the salesman required was that a potential customer would enter into dialogue with them – the classic requirement from Aristotle that a sceptic must assert something, which Aristotle could then build on to refute their scepticism. For example having been unable to deny the salesman’s suggestion that they would like a cheap holiday, the customer would find themselves dragged by an awful logic to the conclusion that they must buy a time-share. Having arrived at this dank pit of a conclusion the customer would be unable to argue an escape until they signed up and were allowed to leave.

For reasons no doubt related to the above example philosophers have tried to revise the Aristotelian philosophical heritage, and Kenneth Rankin is another who wishes to change philosophy by changing its Aristotelian foundations.

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