The company loves misery. Jim Miller laments the lack of an official designation for a certain fallacy that is annoyingly common in argumentation, but which does not appear to have its own pithy Latin descriptor. You are no doubt familiar with what he describes as the "appeal to the underdog" or "appeal to the weaker" - the richer, more powerful, better-armed, or all-around more fortunate party must always have the wrong of it.

I'd tend to classify this as a type of argument ad misericordiam, but others may see a distinction here. Any Latinists who can provide Jim's requested translations?

Posted by Moira Breen at July 20, 2004 02:20 PM