After Valla’s attack on what he calls the fundamenta (foundations) of Aristotelian-scholastic metaphysics and natural philosophy, he turns to dialectic in Books II and III of his Repastinatio. For Valla, argumentation should be approached from an oratorical rather than a logical point of view. What counts is whether an argument works, which means whether it convinces one’s adversary or public. The form of the argument is less important. Dialectic is a species of confirmation and refutation; and,