Logos
(Language and Thought)
Lately, with this being election season in the U.S. and all, I’ve had quite a few …we’ll call them “discussions”… which have each been handled in one of a few different ways. Today I’m exploring what those different approaches to discussion are, and what each means for the ideas being discussed.
Before I talk about each approach to discussion, I’m going to be looking at the word itself and its etymology (its word history). For example, discussion is a form of the word discuss, which originally was a combination of the Latin prefix dis– “apart” and quatere “to shake”—in the past participle form, the word meant “broken up” and eventually became the Middle English word discussen “to examine.” So, at the root of the word, “to discuss” means to break something up and examine it—to analyze.
(Now, I’m never going to be the person that tells you that a word’s history has to define its present and future, but when a word has a history, I think we should at least pay attention to it, even if we choose to discard it.)
So, two people can discuss something that they are in complete agreement about or they can discuss something that they are in opposition about. As long as there’s some examination and analysis of the topic going on, the historical meaning of “discuss” still applies.
My problems recently have mostly been concerned with the idea of “debate”. Debate the word comes from Old French, a combination of the prefix de– and the word battre, meaning—well…—“to batter” or “to beat.” Most of the time the prefix de– means a moving away from (or a reduction in) something, so the original meaning was likely “to solve (reduce) a conflict (beating).”And I really don’t have a problem with debate’s attempt to solve conflict.
My problem is with debate’s method of solving conflict. Debate is founded on the same sort of “adversarial” principles that the U.S. court system uses to try cases. One side takes one position, the other side takes the opposing position, and when the debate is over, one side wins and the other loses. The conflict isn’t solved, so much as it is decided in favor of one side or the other. (Worse yet, much of the time, it’s the style or delivery of one side that allows it to be chosen the winner, rather than the facts of the debate.) Debate, at least in the here and now in the U.S., is almost solely about who is the most convincing debater.
But what if there is a third, better option? Or a compromise of the two positions that is more effective? Debate doesn’t really address those questions. It’s concern is ending a conflict by declaring a winner and a loser.
Enter “conversation.” Looking at the word, you might think that it has similar conceptual roots as debate. Maybe that “converse” describes the opposing viewpoint. But if you think about how we use the word conversation in daily conversation, that doesn’t really fit. We don’t always have opposing viewpoints when we converse.
Converse in the sense of “to speak (with someone)” comes from another Latin prefix and base word, this time com– “with” and versari “to occupy oneself”; by the time the combo got to Middle English, it was the word conversen “to associate with.” In a conversation, you associate with someone. You exchange thoughts and feelings. You’re more likely to come to a shared understanding, as opposed to the debate where one side’s thoughts are declared “winner” and the the other side’s are discounted.
There’s a process in philosophy (and academic investigations in general) called “dialectic.” A form of it was used by Socrates, and it still exists as a formalized method of truth-seeking. But the thing about dialectic is that it hinges on conversation, even if that conversation is with yourself. Through questioning and response, or through pitting opposing ideas against each other and seeing which truths hold up under scrutiny, the most truthful answer can be agreed upon—even if that answer is one side’s original position, the other side and all forms of compromise can be investigated to determine how successful or truthful they are. Then that answer can stand as the best answer… until someone comes along with an opposing position and the entire conflict can be reevaluated in light of the new position (and potential compromises).
You may have noticed I didn’t explore the roots of the word dialectic. It’s because I don’t know what to make of them. Tracing the word back to Ancient Greek, you start with dialektos “speech, conversation,” but that became dialektike (tekhne) “(art of) debate.” I’d like to interpret this that, to the ancient Greeks, conversation and dialectic were the art of debate, rather than the way we tend to debate today. Even if that wasn’t the case, the example of Socrates serves as a pretty clear marker that even then it was a viable method of finding a solution.
Time to reveal my bias: I’ve already written a diatribe about my own preference for dialogue over monologue. To me, debate feels like a series of monologues that are crafted against the opponent, rather than the truer type of dialogue that happens in general conversation or even dialectic. But I can’t help but think that, delivery-method aside, debate’s way of solving the conflict isn’t nearly as satisfying as conversation’s.
What do you think? Join the conversation!
Typically, when you learn how to debate, you learn how to debate to “win” and to debate a topic whether or not you even agree with the side that you’re on. This kind of attitude toward debate is, I think, what makes it so frustrating. There don’t seem to be very many real world situations where winning *should* be the most important goal.
I agree in general and in particular with politics that there seems to be little dialogue and little desire to come to a deeper understanding of reality or the structures of society. I have come to see politics the way people view football teams. You grow up cheering for a team and regardless who the players are on your team and regardless of who the head coach is you cheer for your team. Some people may change teams or decide to evaluate from year to year which team they want to be a fan off but ultimately I find viewing political parties as a team provides a mostly accurate depiction of political life. Media covering politics practically amounts to sports journalism and you have different expert fans talking about their team.
I agree that conversation needs to happen and it needs to happen on the dialectical level. During my study of theology one of my projects was to sumarize part of a book by Robert Doran entitled, “Theology and the Dialectics of History.” It is quite a heavy book and my summary of the introduction is itself over 13,000 words long. I’ve copied a small part of my summary here which speaks of dialectics and their role in understanding the world and their importance to theology.
One of the points that Doran makes is that that to methodologically study consciousness there must be something that reaches beyond the data of a single self-consciousness. There must be something that can investigate the data of multiple consciousnesses. Doran says that dialectic is precisely this tool that allows one to investigate the data of multiple consciousnesses. He notes that the awareness of the dialectic is necessary for the proper study of human consciousness. He claims that this dialectic must be expected to be found when investigating the data of human consciousness and being aware of it is fundamentally important. To demonstrate this point, he makes reference between the classical physicists and differential equations. The physicists needs to assume that the data he is attempting to interpret will be intelligible in the form of a differential equation. If the physicist is ignorant of differential equations then he will not be a true physicists. This is the same for the human scientist and the need to be aware of the dialectic. The dialectic is the way to navigate, “the relations between consciousness and the unconscious, with the relations among different conscious subjects, or with the relations between conscious subjects and their historical milieu.”
After establishing the fundamental importance of b
being aware of this dialectic, Doran begins to elaborate on the dialectic. Fundamentally, a dialectic is a tension of opposites. He notes that there are two different types of dialectics. There are dialectics of contraries and dialectics of contradictories. Dialectic of contradictories are a tension of opposites in which the only resolution is to entirely choose one pole and entirely reject the other. Yet, there exists another type of dialect, the dialect of contraries. The dialectic of contraries is a dialectic in which the tension is to preserved by navigating an equilibrium between the two poles. Doran notes that maintaing these distinctions will be of critical importance if one is to succeed in theology.