In Brutus’s Act II Soliloquy in The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, he reasons with himself that Caesar needs to be killed. Caesar is about to be crowned, but Brutus feels that would be to the detriment of the Roman Empire. However, Brutus’s reasoning is fallacious and his evidence is insufficient, so his argument is not valid. Brutus begins by saying, “It can only be solved by Caesar’s death” (para. 1); this is a false dilemma because killing Caesar is not the only option, but Brutus makes it seem as though it is. He reasons to himself that it is in Rome’s best interest for him to kill Caesar, despite the fact that there is no reason to believe that Caesar being crowned would not be for the general welfare of Rome. He says, “people often say that humility is a ladder for young ambition,” (para. 2) but this premise is oversimplified and, as such, irrelevant. A general statement is not a sufficient reason …show more content…
Even though he explicitly says, “I have never know [Caesar] to be controlled by his heart instead of his head” (para. 2), he believes that if Caesar is crowned, he will “turn his back” on the people, “scorning” them. This reasoning is fallacious since he has no evidence that Caesar would act that way; in fact, he has the opposite, since he says that Caesar is logical person. He later says that, “Caesar’s true nature…would reach terrible extremes” (para. 3), and that he must be killed. He reasons this, despite the fact that the so-called “true nature” of Caesar is Brutus’s own fabrication so that he can justify to himself the murder of his closest friend. He calls Caesar a “serpent’s egg” and says “it…would like all serpents grow dangerous” (para. 3). This is a false statement as not all snakes are venomous, or even particularly dangerous; however, this false analogy paints Caesar as dangerous, deadly, and detrimental by comparing him to an animal that universally tends to symbolize