Syllogisms

I'm writing this post because I will admit openly that I don't really know what a syllogism is.  In academia, you don't really get points for half-knowing something, unless you are good at bullshitting, which I am not.  So, I've got to learn more about it so that I know what I'm talking about.

For the first day of class, I have to have read this book Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, which is a book that I also had to read as an undergraduate, and I'm not really enjoying it anymore today than I did then.  But I am understanding a heck of a lot more of the argument than I did 10 or so years ago. The book is now published in a "fiftieth-anniversary edition", which is kind of unheard of in literary criticism as far as I can tell.  Any theory book that has a distinction of being around for a long time (in relative terms) AND has a forward by Edward Said is basically an irrefutably important book to know about as a literary scholar.

The author, Erich Auerbach, is going through the history of western narrative by beginning with Homer's The Odyssey and ending (553 pages later) with Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse.  He keeps talking about syllogisms in certain narratives, and I'm finally realizing that my basic understanding of a syllogism as "a form of deductive reasoning" is not going to cut it.  I have to get down and dirty and get to know the details of syllogism in order to fully understand the method and purpose of Auerbach's argument.

So, apparently syllogism is a form of logic introduced by Aristotle, which, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, has had an "unparalleled influence on the history of Western thought."   The formula of a syllogism is that you have a major premise (example: the world changes constantly) and a minor premise (example: I am part of the world), and a conclusion is drawn from these two premises (example: ergo, I change constantly).  Logic is something I obviously know about and use, but it has not been something that I have objectively studied.  So, I took an "arm chair logic test" for fun to gauge my base level, and I scored a paltry 80%.  I obviously have a lot more to learn than just syllogisms.

Apparently, syllogisms are the most accepted form of logical reasoning today, and there are basically three different kinds: hypothetical, disjunctive, categorical.  So, why is a literary critic talking so much about it?  Well, I'm still not exactly sure.  As Auerbach himself is aware, in literary criticism, breaking up a paragraph of a literary work into syllogisms can appear too pedantic.  However, he actually uses this process to get to the core logic underlying a dense passage with a lot happening in it.  I can't see myself ever writing an analysis in this way.  However, I am now seeing the value behind using this format as a study method to pull out the major and minor premises within particularly dense passages to get to the logic guiding the author's thoughts.  

In fact, I'm thinking this is actually a useful exercise that I might see if I can apply to some theoretical readings.  At any rate, a more universally interesting example of the syllogism at work is in humor.  Jerry Seinfeld is a master of it: