Fallacies have not only been a traditional theme in the history of studies on the argument, but have played a leading role in its revival during the second half of the twentieth century. Currently still represent a stimulus for the detection and analysis of fallacious argument, as well as a challenge for the construction of a lucid, comprehensive and critical argumentation theory.

This book attempts to answer these demands into two main levels: one theoretical and critical; the other, historical and documentary. First, against the inertia of the notions and school rankings, develops a conception of fallacious discourse for understanding subtlety and explain its critical importance. Then this light examines current proposals to make major contributions and limitations, apart from considering them not only in the classical perspectives on argumentation (logic, dialectic, rhetoric), but in the more modern, social-institutional, interested in the call 'public sphere of discourse. "Second, and in addition to these reviews and discussions, some outlines of the historical construction of the idea (or ideas) of fallacy, in line ten times its capital foundational condition, significance and influence advances and providing an anthology its most representative texts.