"Logic is the technique by which we add conviction to truth"
About this Quote
Truth doesn’t automatically persuade; it just sits there, stubborn and inert, until someone gives it a spine. La Bruyere’s line is a cool, cutting demotion of “truth” from self-evident glory to something that still needs stagecraft. Logic, in his framing, isn’t the producer of truth. It’s the technique that makes truth feel compelling to human minds that are easily distracted, status-conscious, and emotionally bribed.
That distinction carries real bite in a 17th-century French moralist’s world, where salons, sermons, and court politics ran on rhetoric as much as reason. La Bruyere wrote in the shadow of Louis XIV, a regime that perfected the aesthetics of authority; conviction was often manufactured socially, not discovered intellectually. Against that backdrop, he’s hinting that logic is partly a social technology: a disciplined way to convert a true proposition into something that can survive vanity, bias, and the desire to belong.
The subtext is slightly cynical, and deliberately so. If logic “adds” conviction, then conviction is not a reliable signal of truth; it’s an effect, like varnish on wood. You can hear the warning: beware people who confuse feeling sure with being right, and beware yourself when certainty arrives too easily. At the same time, the quote grants logic a practical dignity. It’s not mere pedantry. It’s the method by which truth becomes portable - teachable, arguable, defensible - in public life, where the best idea is worthless if it can’t be carried across the room.
That distinction carries real bite in a 17th-century French moralist’s world, where salons, sermons, and court politics ran on rhetoric as much as reason. La Bruyere wrote in the shadow of Louis XIV, a regime that perfected the aesthetics of authority; conviction was often manufactured socially, not discovered intellectually. Against that backdrop, he’s hinting that logic is partly a social technology: a disciplined way to convert a true proposition into something that can survive vanity, bias, and the desire to belong.
The subtext is slightly cynical, and deliberately so. If logic “adds” conviction, then conviction is not a reliable signal of truth; it’s an effect, like varnish on wood. You can hear the warning: beware people who confuse feeling sure with being right, and beware yourself when certainty arrives too easily. At the same time, the quote grants logic a practical dignity. It’s not mere pedantry. It’s the method by which truth becomes portable - teachable, arguable, defensible - in public life, where the best idea is worthless if it can’t be carried across the room.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
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