The Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy Podcast, brought to you with the support of Kings College London and the

LMU in Munich online at www. History of Philosophy.net.

Today's episode, for the sake of argument,

Fachra Dean Arasi.

The comedy sketches of Monty Python's Flying Circus

seem at times to be aimed specifically at an audience of philosophers.

Of course there's the philosopher's song about how all famous philosophers were alcoholics.

Inevitably it describes to Descartes the sentiment I drink, therefore I am, and the football match, pitting the great Greek philosophers

against their German counterparts. But my favorite is the argument sketch in which a man goes to an

argument clinic and is dissatisfied with the service he receives.

It includes exchanges like,

I came here for a good argument.

No, you came here for an argument.

And argument is an intellectual process.

Contradiction is just the automatic gain saying of any statement the other person makes.

No, it isn't.

I think that in the whole history of philosophy in the Islamic world, the person best qualified to work as a professional arguer at an argument clinic would have to be Fachradin Arrazi.

His works are almost inaccessible to the English reader because they have hardly been translated.

This is a shame because an arguer of his talents is ideally designed for today's audience

of professional philosophers.

Like a 21st century analytic philosopher, he delights in the deaf distinction,

the counter example, the terminology, the terminology,

...