Ἔντευξις

[Meaning an] encounter.¹
Aristotle says that dialectic is a philosophical discipline [sc. useful] for exercise, and for philosophical conversations. Concerning exercise [gumnasi/a] there is something already written under the letter gamma;² but here [the topic is] about conversation. He calls 'conversations', the talks [or: lectures] delivered to many people, those whom we must meet on account of [our] being sociable and loving mankind, and do it in a beneficial way. Now it is not possible to have a discussion with them on the basis of true and apodeictic [premises], for they are not able to understand the principle of such [premises]; nor are they patient enough to learn, for they would not be capable of being benefited by any of the sort of things the principle of which they cannot even understand. However, if we conduct our meetings with them on the basis of what is accepted and what seems [plausible] even to them, they would follow what is being said and would easily be won over through such arguments, unless they were somehow perversely disposed. Since in the case of the person who considers pleasure to be a good and is enslaved by it, by arguing that pleasure is a perceivable production [leading] toward nature, and that such a nature is not able to be a good on account of being an incomplete production -– [because] no good is incomplete –- if indeed one is wants to demonstrate on the basis of such an argument that for this reason pleasure is not a good thing, one would not make any further impression on one who did not know the principle regarding that which is being discussed. But if [one] starts out from what is common [knowledge] and accepted and asks him whether or not it seems [likely] that the good itself makes good people, just as what is white also [makes] people white, and what is warm makes people warm, and then, when this is established, he is asked whether pleasure seems to him to make people good, he will realize that it [does not] make [them good], for this [is] obvious. He will conclude that pleasure is not good from [his own] opinions and responses. That is also why it would change his mind, for just about everyone concedes to what he establishes by himself.