Procatalepsis
Anticipating an objection in your own argument and answering it before it can be raised.
Procatalepsis (Greek προκατάληψις, 'anticipation') is the figure in which a speaker or writer raises a probable objection to their own argument and answers it before the audience can voice it. 'Some will say that this reform is too expensive; but the cost of doing nothing is greater' is a compact modern example.
The device has two great virtues. It disarms critics by showing that the speaker has already thought of their objection; and it lets the speaker frame the objection in the most easily answered form, which is a small but genuine rhetorical advantage. Any good persuasive essay uses procatalepsis at least once — usually in the paragraph before the conclusion.
Aristotle discusses the technique in the Rhetoric under the general topic of dealing with opposing arguments. It is close cousin to hypophora (asking a question in order to answer it) and to prolepsis (the general anticipation of anything future), but procatalepsis is specifically about objections.
Common mistake: caricaturing the objection so obviously that the reader sees the trick and stops trusting the writer. The strongest procatalepsis takes the strongest form of the counter-argument and answers it fairly. The reader who thinks 'yes, that is exactly what I would have said' is a reader now inclined to trust what the writer says next.
“It will be objected that this is Utopian. I answer: the objection is old, and every real reform has met it.”
Keep reading the glossary
A rhetorical figure in which the speaker asks a question and immediately answers it.
The device of raising a subject by explicitly refusing to raise it — 'I will not mention…'
A question asked for effect rather than to elicit an answer.
A compressed syllogism in which one premise is left unstated, to be supplied by the audience.