Playing Hide & Seek

After reading and listening to Gandhi´s famous speech at Kingsley Hall several times, I was able to recognize a few fallacies. I have to be honest that this task wasn’t as easy as I expected. Through out my life I have seen that most of the famous speeches contain fallacies. Why? The answer it´s simple: it helps persuade the audience. Even though it is considered as a rhetoric foul, it´s the easiest and most effective way to get your audience to agree with you. It might sound easy to accomplish, yet the tricky part is being able to insert fallacies into your speech without your audience noticing. In my opinion, Gandhi, does a really good job. I found his speech very inspiring, but it was probably because his good use of fallacies. The reason his fallacies were so hard to spot was because they were all hidden between his logic. The first fallacy I found was the so-called many questions. When Gandhi states, “Even in ordinary affairs we know that people do not know who rules or why and how He rules and yet they know that there is a power that certainly rules” we can see how he is squishing more than two issues into one, so that he would only need one conclusion to cover them all up. In this case the proof actually meets the criteria of the choice, still Gandhi is making the sin of given the wrong number of choices. At first sight one wouldn’t be able to notice this sin, it´s just after you analyze it that you realize that Gandhi has tricked you. Another example of false choices that I found was when he states, “And is this power benevolent or malevolent?” He is actually making us choose between benevolent or malevolent. But are these really the only two choices we have? No, it´s up to use what words we want to use in order to describe the power. Still, by the way he says it, it makes use believe that we have to choose either of.

As I continued to read I found the fallacy of tautology (yet I´m not sure if I´m correct). This fallacy constitutes of repeating the same thing, just with different words. Gandhi states, “If the knowledge of these poor people was so limited about their ruler I who am infinitely lesser in respect to God than they to their ruler need not be surprised if I do not realize the presence of God - the King of Kings.” At first it might sound confusing, but the truth is that he is just repeating himself. In this long-run sentence he is restating that the “poor people” has no knowledge about their ruler, never less about the “presence of God” that is “the King of Kings.” 

We also find the use of the fallacy of antecedent when he says that, “It is not a blind law, for no blind law can govern the conduct of living being.” This statement seems to be completely true, but by paying close attention we can see how we have been tricked again. He concludes that there has never been such thing as the “blind law” therefore meaning that it will never exist.

Last but not least Gandhi uses what I believe is the fallacy of ignorance as proof when he states the following: “He who would in his own person test the fact of God's presence can do so by a living faith and since faith itself cannot be proved by extraneous evidence the safest course is to believe in the moral government of the world and therefore in the supremacy of the moral law, the law of truth and love.” In a way he is claiming that his believes have never been disproved, therefore meaning that his conclusions are right.

Sneaky Gandhi! He effectively was able to play hide and seek with his fallacies, since I almost wasn't able to spot them. Good job Gandhi.