Argumentation

My approach to this sort of work is wrapped up in my understanding of practical language use (argumentation) and the nature of language (discourse). Argumentation involves being interested in finding "contested validity claims" and "problematic expression"; it is not about clearly stating what everyone or the writer herself already believes. In "Lost Art of Argument," a chapter in his final book, The Revolt of the Elite, Christopher Lasch tried to flesh out a notion of argument that has less to do with personality and more to do with a collaborative process of inquiry. When he died in 1994, Lasch was celebrated as an important, if prickly, analyst of American culture. Lasch comes to a discussion of argument by considering the role that "debate" plays in a democracy, arguing that we know what our interests are (and what our questions are as thinkers but also as citizens) only as we engage in interested, public debate. As he sums up his thoughts about a mass media that increasingly tries to give us expert information but keeps us from any real debate, Lasch clarifies his own notion of argument:

Until we have to defend our opinions in public, they remain opinions in [a] pejorative sense—half-formed convictions based on random impressions and unexamined assumptions. It is the act of articulating and defending our views that lifts them out of the category of "opinions," gives them shape and definition, and makes it possible for others to recognize them as a description of their own experience as well. In short, we come to know our own minds only by explaining ourselves to others.

The attempt to bring others around to our own point of view carries the risk, of course, that we may adopt their point of view instead. We have to enter imaginatively into our opponents' arguments, if only for the purpose of refuting them, and we may end up being persuaded by those we sought to persuade. Argument is risky and unpredictable, therefore educational. Most of us tend to think of it . . . as a clash of rival dogmas, a shouting match in which neither side gives any ground. But arguments are not won by shouting down opponents. They are won by changing opponents' minds—something that can happen only if we give opposing arguments a respectful hearing and still persuade their advocates that there is something wrong with those arguments. In the course of this activity we may well decide that there is something wrong with our own.

Arguments, as Lasch understands them, are not battles to win or avoid. The issue is not "agreeing" or "disagreeing" but involving oneself in the contest and letting the contest move us, in the company of others, to new conclusions.

Works Cited

Lasch, Christopher. The Revolt of the Elite.