Abstract: The paper discusses theoretical and practical relations between dialectic and eristic. It begins with the origin of the notion of eristic in Greece. Next, it considers eristic from three points of view. First, it is seen as an aggressive attitude in the context of an argument. Then, it discusses the philosophical motivations of some eristic practices in Greece. Finally, the contemporary notions of eristic dialogue and eristic discussion are considered.

Keywords: Aggressiveness, antilogic, Aristotle, dialectic, dialogue, eristic discussion, eristic, Plato, Schopenhauer, sophist.

In his monumental Greek Thinkers: History of Ancient Philosophy the Austrian philosopher and historian Theodor Gomperz (1920) discusses the sentence ascribed by Diogenes Laertius (1925) to the Greek sophist Protagoras: “On every question there are two speeches, which stand in opposition to one another”. This statement would have been the core of Protagoras Antilogies, his legendary but missing book. According to Diogenes, Protagoras also wrote an Art of eristic  which actually was only a part of the Antilogies if we follow Untersteiner (1949). In a footnote, Gomperz (1920, p 590) had already expressed a doubt about the very existence of a separate book on eristic: “Nobody ever called himself an Eristic; the term remained at all times one of disparagement … so that the above mentioned title of his book cannot have been of Protagoras’ own choosing”.

The main point for us is the claim that “nobody ever called himself an Eristic”. If this is true, it should also be true of sophists although they were said ready to challenge any point of view. If Gomperz is right, eristic is a pejorative label that you do not apply to yourself but only to others. This is not the case with “sophist” and “dialectician”, two names germane to eristic, for Protagoras called himself a sophist and Socrates saw himself as a dialectician.

In his biography of Euclid of Megara, Diogenes Laertius (1925, Book II) reports that the members of the Megarian school of philosophy were first called the Megarian, then the Eristics and later the Dialecticians because of their use of questions, their love of arguments and their interest in paradoxes. Thus, if Gomperz is right, Eristics was certainly a nickname. This makes an important distinction of status between eristic and dialectic.

In 1990, on the basis of a systematic study of the electronic Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, Edward Schiappa reported that the Greek words for eristic, dialectic, rhetoric and antilogic all originate in Plato’s writings (Schiappa, 1990; see also Schiappa, 1992, 1999). As far as eristic is concerned, this seems to be a linguistic innovation but based on a root, eris, which means dispute or quarrel. Kerferd (1981, chap. 5) stresses that, for Plato, eristic did not only mean an attitude – to look for victory in a discussion – but also the art that provides and develops the means to do it. However, it would be wrong to consider this art as a specific techne since the eristic speaker is ready to use any means to triumph or to give an impression of triumph. So, although Plato often applies eristic and antilogic to the same characters, Kerferd suggests that a distinction should be maintained between these two words which involve an agonistic attitude. A verbal exchange is antilogic when two opposite or contradictory discourses (logoi) are applied to the same thing, event or situation. But, in an antilogic dialogue, the refutation of an opponent can be systematic without pertaining to a strategy ready to use any means. This point is essential to understand Socrates’ position against the sophists: even when he contradicts his interlocutor, a dialectician does not aim at something like winning but looks for a truth which may not depend on the result of the dialogue. Although he often refutes his interlocutors, this makes a major difference between the dialectical inquiry fostered by Socrates and the love of dispute typical of eristic arguers ready to use any trick to succeed.

There are about a dozen occurrences of words germane to eristic in Plato (Brandwood, 1976). In the Theatetus (164c), Socrates does not use this word but makes a distinction between genuine philosophers and agonistic speakers who are only interested in words. A bit further (167e) he imagines how his fellow sophist, Protagoras, could complain about Socrates’ unfair attitude in a previous conversation they had together. Socrates makes the sophist draw a sharp line between the agonistic strategy of eristic and the cooperative attitude of dialectic even when it uses refutation (Benson, 1989):

But I must beg you to put fair questions: for there is great inconsistency in saying that you have a zeal for virtue, and then always behaving unfairly in argument. The unfairness of which I complain is that you do not distinguish between mere disputation and dialectic: the disputer may trip up his opponent as often as he likes, and make fun; but the dialectician will be in earnest, and only correct his adversary when necessary, telling him the errors into which he has fallen through his own fault, or that of the company which he has previously kept.

In the Euthydemus, the young Clinias is going to listen to Euthydemus and Dyonisodorus, two brothers who have just been introduced as sophists. Socrates accompanies him because he claims that despite his venerable age he wants to learn their art that he calls eristic (272c). The two brothers are introduced as fighters. They were experts at wrestling, then at dispute before a court, and finally:

The one feat of fighting yet unperformed by them they have now accomplished, so that nobody dares stand up to them for a moment; such a faculty they have acquired for wielding words as their weapons and confuting any argument as readily if it be true as if it be false. (272a)

The fact that an arguer is ready to confute any statement, true or false (successfully or not) may confirm indifference to truth. This kind of attitude is also often associated with the art of the sophists and Plato’s use of eristic tends to confirm a proximity between eristic and sophistic (Nehamas, 1990). However, in the Sophistical Refutations, Aristotle makes a set of distinctions between dialectic, eristic and sophistic. First:

The man who views general principles in the light of the particular case is a dialectician, while he who only apparently does this is a sophist. (171 b5) … The eristic arguer … reasons falsely on the same basis as the dialectician. (171b37)

Thus, for Aristotle (at least in this passage), the difference between the dialectician and the sophist is a matter of “vision of the principles”, while between the dialectician and the eristic it depends on the quality of their reasonings. There is also an important difference of goals between the sophist and the eristic arguer who, here again, is introduced as a fighter, but an unfair one:

… just as unfairness in an athletic contest takes a definite form and is an unfair kind of fighting, so eristic reasoning is an unfair kind of fighting in arguments; for in the former case those who are bent on victory at all costs stick at nothing, so too in the latter case do eristic arguers. Those, then, who behave like this merely to win a victory, are generally regarded as contentious and eristic, while those who do so to win a reputation which will help them to make money are regarded as sophists … Eristic people and sophists use the same discourse, but not for the same reasons…. If the semblance of victory is the motive, it is eristic; if the semblance of wisdom it is sophistical… (171 b24-31)

This distinction does not preclude that you are both a sophist and an eristic; but if you are one of them you are not a dialectician, at least in the Aristotelian sense of this term. It is also noteworthy that Aristotle is talking of the way people are “generally regarded”. Thus, his comments could be taken as a testimony of the way the words dialectician, sophist and eristic were used around the middle of the fourth century. Further, as stressed by Dorion (1995, p 51) about the status of the Megarian school, it is likely that these terms were sometimes taken as synonyms at this time.

Taking now for granted that eristic arguing is characterized by the idea that a discussion is a challenge that you can win, that an eristic arguer systematically tries to refute his interlocutors by any means and, then, does not care about the truth of the views they express, I will examine three aspects of this phenomenon. First, it can be seen as an attitude independent of philosophical, religious or, broadly speaking, ideological orientations. Second, as suggested by the case of the Megarian school or the views of some sophists, it can be motivated by elaborated intellectual positions. Finally, I will consider eristic behavior in the context of a controversial discussion as is the case with Protagoras’ antilogies, Plato’s Euthydeme or the verbal confrontations discussed by Aristotle in the Topics or the Sophistical Refutations.

Eristic attitudes
It is common lore that some people love to argue and have a strong tendency to contradict their interlocutor in almost any verbal exchange. This suggests that eristic behavior could be a psychological individual feature, independent of the topic of the conversation. When it is related to only one kind of topic, for instance religious or political, it is sometimes seen as indicative of a dogmatic attitude.

Another typical case has been registered in classical texts: young people would be more prone to an eristic behavior than their elders. This is already reported in Isocrates’ Panathenaicus (1929, 26) where Plato’s rival notes that the new type of education has the merit “to keep the young out of many other things which are harmful” and:

Now in fact, so far from scorning the education which was handed down by our ancestors, I even commend that which has been set up in our own day — I mean geometry, astronomy, and the so-called eristic dialogues, which our young men delight in more than they should, although among the older men not one would not declare them insufferable.

Isocrates’ testimony suggests that even if young men have a natural slant to eristic, it has been made more salient by the new education set up by senior citizens. Isocrates does not deny that arguing is enjoyable but stresses that it is the abuse of eristic that is objectionable. A similar observation can be found in Plato’s Republic (VII, 539 b27) where eristic is not introduced as a kind of dialogue but as a perversion of it:

Socrates: There is a danger lest they should taste the dear delight too early; for youngsters, as you may have observed, when they first get the taste in their mouths, argue for amusement, and are always contradicting and refuting others in imitation of those who refute them; like puppy dogs, they rejoice in pulling and tearing at all who come near them.
Glaucon: Yes, there is nothing which they like better.

Young people would have fun to imitate “those who refute them”, probably their masters. Like Isocrates, Plato suggests that this juvenile behavior is a consequence of the emergence of the new education, a feature of a new social life. But the analogy made by Socrates with an animal non-verbal attitude also suggests that it could be generic and natural. Even if Socrates’ dialectical refutations or Protagoras’ antilogic games are possible models for this juvenile eristic, both passages suggests that young people are excessive in this practice. A few lines latter, like Isocrates, Socrates stresses the difference with elder people and then with a more serious practice of dialectic:

Socrates: But when a man begins to get older, he will no longer be guilty of such insanity; he will imitate the dialectician who is seeking for truth, and not the eristic, who is contradicting for the sake of amusement; and the greater moderation of his character will increase instead of diminishing the honour of the pursuit.

According to Plato, the fact that eristic arguers do not pay much attention to truth can have sad ethical and epistemic consequences. This kind of game would quickly pave the way to skepticism because, with the habit to confute and to be confuted, “they violently and speedily get into a way of not believing anything which they believed before”. And this would be the ruin of the whole educational program of the Republic since “philosophy and all that relates to it is apt to have a bad name with the rest of the world”. This threat from eristic to philosophy is also at the very heart of the Euthydemus where the two eristic sophists are said to be old men. Even if young men – what about young women? – are especially gifted for this art, this dialogue shows that it is not their prerogative or that their presumed masters can be worse than them.

Schopenhauer’s thesis
Schopenhauer wrote his Eristiche Dialektik (Eristical dialectic) in 1831. It is usually translated into English as The Art of Controversy (Schopenhauer, 1921), a choice which is unfortunate because eristic and dialectic disappear from the title and, accordingly, their semantic proximity too. Schopenhauer was clear about it: eristic is a kind of dialectic. Further, even if you know the original German title, you cannot make a decision about the main point, namely whether “controversy” translates “eristic” or “dialectic” or both, more or less identified.

The German version begins with a definition of eristical dialectic, immediately followed by long footnotes about the differences between logic, dialectic, eristic and sophistic. These notes have become the first pages of the English translation. When you replace controversial by eristic, the English translation of Schopenhauer’s definition (1921, p 4) comes close to Plato and Aristotle’s ones:

Eristical Dialectic is the art of disputing, and of disputing in such a way as to hold one’s own, whether one is in the right or the wrong – per fas et nefas… (whether right or wrong).

According to Schopenhauer, logic is “the science of thought, or the science of the process of pure reason”, then “it should be capable to be constructed a priori” (p 3). On the other hand, dialectic “can be constructed only a posteriori” because it is the “manifestation of the intercourse between two rational beings”. Therefore a possible disagreement between interlocutors is the consequence of the “disturbance which pure thought suffers through the difference of individuality”.

Schopenhauer is pessimistic about the way conflicts of opinion can be solved. The Socratic ideal of a common pursuit of truth by means of a friendly conversation is hardly possible in practice. On the one hand, “regarded as purely rational beings, the individuals would necessarily be in agreement” (p 3), but, on the other, this possibility is unlikely in practice because “man is naturally obstinate”. According to Schopenhauer, the origin of this stubbornness is simply “the natural baseness of human nature” (p 5). When two interlocutors, A and B, perceive that they disagree, A “does not begin by revising his own process of thinking, so as to discover any mistake which he may have made, but he assumes that the mistake has occurred in B’s”. Therefore, every man “will insist on maintaining whatever he has said, even though for the moment he may consider it false or doubtful” (p 6). But he is not ready for a revision of what he has just said because he is “armed against such a procedure by his own cunning and villainy” (p 7).

So, according to Schopenhauer, eristic is not an isolated individual behavior or an attitude typical of specific human groups, for instance young men: it is a natural and almost universal aspect of human conversations. Schopenhauer may be right that eristic behaviors or tendencies are quite frequent, but they may be less frequent than he says. You can also doubt his pessimistic explanation and opt for a more optimistic version saying that there may be a global epistemic or cognitive benefit for mankind to behave eristically or, at least, to support a claim when there is strong evidence to the contrary. Schopenhauer already stresses that an agonistic attitude can prove beneficial during the conversation:

…we make it a rule to attack a counter-argument, even though to all appearances it is true and forcible, in the belief that in the course of the dispute another argument will occur to us by which we may upset it, or succeed in confirming the truth of our statement. (p 6)

Let us add that it could be beneficial also after the dispute, in the long run, as shown by the example of cold cases reopened because some defenders resisted the evidence of the guilt of a sentenced person and finally found new evidence to the contrary, that they suppose decisive.

Schopenhauer points to the agonistic and sometimes aggressive aspect of eristic attitudes but does not pay much attention to the playful (Plato) or athletic (Aristotle) aspect, already stressed by the Ancient and still clear nowadays, for instance in the behavior of the so-called “trolls” that you can meet on the social networks of internet. This suggests a distinction between different kinds of eristic attitudes, depending on whether they are playful or not, aggressive or not. Schopenhauer supports the strong anthropological claim that eristic arguing is a global, if not universal, phenomenon, but this deserves a more systematic empirical study. Hample and his colleagues have begun a worldwide investigation of it (Hample, 2010; Xie & al., 2013). In their 2010 paper which reports the results of a research involving about two hundred American students (mostly women from various ethnic origins) Hample et al. draw a roughly “schopenhauerian” conclusion: “We believe that the natural strip of arguing behavior is eristic, that at its core arguing is verbal force aimed at defeat of the other person”. One variety of eristic arguing is arguing for fun, but Hample et al. emphasize an idea already found in Plato and Aristotle’s metaphors about the kind of game played by eristic arguers: it lies on a scale ranging from peaceful sports with clearly stated rules to a war fearing neither god nor man. In the Euthydemus, Plato says that, before turning to eristic, the two brothers used to practice pankration, the Greek martial art almost free or rules and are experts in the use of weapons. Hample et al. (p. 418) only talk of boxing, a more civilized sport:

Entertainment is not normally supposed to be eristic or potentially unpleasant, but our results show that in the case of arguing, it certainly is. Aggressiveness asserts itself forcefully in the experience of and awareness of arguing for play. The entertainment character of interpersonal arguing is more comparable to boxing than to passing the time pleasantly or working on a garden together. In fact, we are somewhat disinclined to say that playful arguing is playful at all, since it shows such a combative nature in our analyses.

Eristic philosophy
Even if eristic arguing sometimes appears to bloom haphazardly in a conversation, it can also be motivated by theoretical reasons. If its goal were really to win by any means, i.e. to silence an opponent, a gun could be the most efficient one. But this seems too radical. So, an implicit presumption is that not any means make the deal but only any verbal ones. But, to shout or utter an endless stream of words are also verbal means to try to silence someone. Thus, a more restrictive presumption is that eristic arguing has something to do with reasons giving and so, at least broadly speaking, with argumentation. The problem then becomes the scope of the expression “any means” in the context of an argument.

As many contemporary scholars I do not agree with the traditional view considering the so-called “great sophists” (De Romilly, 1988), namely those who lived at Socrates and Plato’s time, as hurried professors ready to support any idea by any means to make fast money. Even the two sophists of the Euthydemus who seem to belong to a second generation – if they did exist – claimed that their eristic attitude was bound to philosophical positions: they would not be playing just for the pleasure. If Dorion (1995) is right that Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations is especially directed against the Megarian, this would confirm that the dispute between the Philosophers, represented by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and the Eristics and/or the Sophists is not merely a fight of good against bad or pseudo philosophy, as the tradition claims. It is a moment of an enduring debate between philosophical schools.

There are some good reasons to say that the Eleatic philosophy associated with the names of Parmenides, Melissos and Zeno has had a major influence on the eristic/sophistic thought. I will only recall a few arguments that support the existence of a filiation between some ideas, gathered under the name of Eleatic philosophy, and the dialectical practice of some eristic sophists.

Gorgias is the author of a lost work called On Nature or the Non-Existent. There remain two partial paraphrases of this text: one can be found in Sextus Empiricus’ Against the Professors, the other is an anonymous text called On Melissus, Xenophanes, and Gorgias. In this last work, Gorgias puts forward three paradoxical theses about being, knowing and communicability: in short, nothing exists, if something existed we could not know it, and even if we could know it, we could not communicate it to other people. The proofs of these astounding claims explicitly refer to the views of Eleatic thinkers like Melissus and Zeno whom Aristotle held to be the father of dialectic if we believe Diogene Laertius (IX, 25). According to B. Cassin (1980; 1995), Gorgias’ theses would be a “logical” but paradoxical consequence of some ideas of Parmenides and his followers.

According to Gomperz (1920), the founder of the Megarian school, Euclide, “merely ethicized, if the term is permissible, the metaphysics of Elea…” (p174) and “the Megarians, as a school, may be described by the term Neo-Eleatics” (p 175). The reason for this philosophical proximity being the Eristics and Eleatic philosophy is their shared position about what Gomperz calls the problem of predication, namely the possibility of a plurality of attributes applying to one single being and a plurality of individuals sharing the same predicate. Like the Eleatic thinkers, the Megarians denied the possibility of “a relation of unity to plurality”. In spite of their common tendency to despise empirical knowledge and their interest for paradoxical arguments, propitious to eristic games (Wheeler, 1983), the strength of this connection between Eleatic and Megarian thinkers has been challenged by Muller (1988, p 39).

Last but not least, in Plato’s Sophist (1921) the stranger who leads the discussion with Theodorus to try to define what a sophist is, comes from Elea and is a disciple of Parmenides and Zeno. Socrates ironically wonders if this man is not a god and, more precisely, a god of refutation. No, this man “is more reasonable than those who devote themselves to disputation” (216 b-c). The Sophist and the Theatetus are also the two main dialogues where Plato sketches a theory of error, a major subject of disagreement with some sophists who were said to deny the possibility to be wrong. Here again Parmenides’ ghost is lurking around because, according to Socrates, the possibility of a mistake “in opinions and in words” (241a) amounts to the ascription of some being to non-being. To ascribe some being to non-being is impossible according to Parmenides, for non-being is not (= has no being). This is a central tenet of his Poem where the Goddess condemns the path of non-being and leaves opened the only path of being. Therefore, a thought or a saying is always about something, namely some-thing, i.e. some being. Hence, the two correlated theses that it is impossible to say a falsity, i. e. to say nothing, namely no-thing, and then to conclusively confute an opponent. A consequence is that a decisive arbitration of a controversy is not possible: an opponent is fully entitled to claim that he is right to the detriment of the other. This is why, from the Eristic point of view, victory in a discussion is not the victory of truth over falsity but the victory of the stronger arguer. All this would come from the Eleatic thought. This seems to be acknowledged by Socrates when he says that to take a step in the direction of an ascription of being to non-being is an offense and even a crime against the old Parmenides (237a; 241a).

Another wind, coming from Heraclitus, seems to have blown on eristic philosophies. The Heraclitean idea of an always changing world can bring another kind of support to eristic arguers. A thing that is green today may be red tomorrow, so it can rightly be said red and non-red. This reasoning has a similarity with the kind of faillibilism which appears in Schopenhauer. The eristic arguer whom everybody, including himself, believes to be wrong today (although a Parmenidian eristic arguer should not care about being wrong since it is impossible) could be right tomorrow (but a genuine Heraclitean view forbids the possibility of any definitive success). We know that Aristotle denounces this kind of move in his discussion of the principle of contradiction in On Sophistical Refutations (167a) or in Metaphysics (1005 b 15-30) where he condemns the sophistic maneuverings based on the unconditional use of contradictory predicates.

In the Theatetus when Socrates discusses Protagoras’ maxim that “man is the measure of all things”, first interpreted as meaning that each man is the measure of all things, he explicitly establishes a relation between this view, which opens the path to eristic conflict, and the philosophy of Heraclitus, Empedocle and many philosophers, but Parmenides (152e). It is noteworthy that the discussion is limited here to the case of perceptions. According to Protagoras, the one who says that the wind is cold when the other says that it is not cold are both right. Socrates does not deny it and Protagoras is right to say that these two discourses are a case of antilogy. But it may seem difficult to grant, at the same time, that both speakers are right and that a contradiction is not possible. A way to avoid this paradox is to claim that both speakers actually say “some-thing”, hence that their utterances are neither false nor void, but that they are not talking of the same thing. After stressing that a verbal opposition is not the same as a mental opposition, that “our tongue will be unconvinced, but not our mind” (154d), Socrates stresses a pragmatic contradiction between Protagoras behavior and his philosophical theses for he should grant that, under his own maxim, people who disagree with him are right.

It is beyond the scope of this paper to dive further into this topic and the disputed influences of Parmenides and Heraclitus on Greek eristic thinkers. The main point is that, in Greece, eristic arguing was not always a silly game. Even if it is rooted in human nature and sometimes appears spontaneously, at least in Greece, it was also motivated by philosophical concerns about language, thought and communication.

Eristic discussion
In Commitment in Dialogue, Walton and Krabbe claim that eristic dialogue is a specific kind of dialogue (1995, p. 76):

Under this title we have assembled all types of dialogue, such as acrimonious verbal exchanges and private quarrels, that serve primarily as a substitute for fighting (tournaments or duels) as a means to reach, provisionally, an accommodation in a relationship. As in a fight, the participants are foremost trying to win. What constitutes winning may differ but is often defined in terms of effects on onlookers or referees.

This kind of dialogue which is supposed to follow some rules, like tournaments and duels, would have subtypes. Quarrel is one of them, eristic discussion is another (p. 78):

The eristic discussion is a type of dialogue where two participants engage in verbal sparring to see who is the most clever in constructing persuasive and often tricky arguments that devastate the opposition, or at least appear to.

A slightly different approach, without explicit acrimony and onlookers, is also introduced in Walton (98, p. 181) who, further, uses the expression “sophistical dialogue”:

Eristic dialogue is a combative kind of verbal exchange in which two parties are allowed to bring out their strongest arguments to attack the opponent by any means, and have a kind of protracted verbal battle to see which side can triumph and defeat or even humiliate the other.

More recently, Van Laar gave his own version (2010, p. 390):

Eristic discussion is the kind of game that aims to determine who is the most capable, smart and artful when it comes to devising and presenting arguments and criticisms.

There are similarities between these contemporary approaches, and also between them and the various ancient concepts of eristic. But there are also important differences between the new and the old ones. Let us begin by the similarities.

In these contemporary definitions we find again three features of previous definitions. First, a common goal: to win. Second, “any means” with the restriction that they are, more or less, connected with the practice of argument. Finally, we meet again sport or military comparisons or metaphors (fighting, tournaments, duels, devastate, combative, attack, battle, triumph, defeat, humiliate…). Van Laar seems to escape this paradigm but not the idea of a competition to select the best arguer according to criteria to define.

Now, a characteristic feature of all these contemporary approaches is the parity or symmetry between the main goal of the interlocutors and between the means they use or are “allowed” (Walton) to use. Their common main goal is to win and they are supposed to use means which are different but framed and, perhaps, evaluated according to the same criteria or rules. The status of these criteria or rules is a problem. Are they the same as in a critical discussion as suggested by pragma-dialecticians? Are they specific to each kind of dialogue? Are they mixed? See Krabbe (2009) for a discussion. But, my main point remains that in these contemporary views they are the same for both sides.

It is also noteworthy that in Van Laar’s paper and Krabbe and Walton’s definition, the eristic discussion occurs in front of an audience or in front of “onlookers and referees” who serve as a jury. Thus, it is supposed to follow a common procedural frame: the goal is collectively fixed like in a tournament or a contest and the parties are “allowed” to bring out their strongest arguments. Hence, the interaction can not only be seen as a (collective) game, it is a game: the participants know they are playing and what game they are playing. In such a case, it seems easy to identify a discussion as an eristic one.

This scheme fits common situations. For instance, it seems close to the way Protagoras is supposed to have trained his disciples or similar to the didactical exercises sometimes played in contemporary argumentation classes, with one player or a team trying to support a view “by any means” against an opposing team. You can also find examples in context which are less obviously playful. Most contemporary democracies have preserved two Greek institutions, the Assembly and the Court, two places of collective or public talk which are major symbols of democratic life. In both of these arenas opposition is essential and its truthfulness counts as a warrant of a regular working. This is why lawyers are appointed to support a defendant even when “everybody” claims that he is guilty. This is a political opposition is essential to democratic life as it is summarized by the French political saying to the effect that “L’opposition s’oppose” (The political opposition has to oppose the government’s policy) which seems massively followed by politicians and political parties, even if citizens interpret this systematic opposition as a sign of bad faith or unfairness that may lead to a public disaffection toward politics.

Krabbe (2009) distinguishes two typical attitudes in dialogue: collaboration and competitiveness. He stresses that even in competitive situations “a certain minimal cooperativeness is needed – since otherwise there can be no exchange at all” (p. 121). He adds that “arguments are called in as a means to change a situation into a better situation” (p. 122). Who decides that a situation is better, and according to which criterion? “By common standard … in an optimal situation the parties would be in agreement”. But this fails to capture the idea that although eristic arguers may be ready to cooperate as long as common standards serve their personal goals, they are also ready to drop them when they become hindrances. I think that Van Laar rightly points that if eristic is a specific kind of dialogue it is not like the others. There is something puzzling, properly para-doxical, i.e. beyond common expectations, at least in some forms of eristic arguing. Van Laar (2010) writes: “…a crucial characteristic of an eristic discussion is that there is less cooperation than prescribed by the norms of critical discussion[i] and the contestants are typically unwilling to bind themselves to propositions or more detailed procedures” (p. 388).

The problem with Krabbe’s notion of competitiveness introduced to account for the fact that each party wants to win, is that it can shelter very different attitudes. Even if you grant the debatable point that in any argument the different parties want to win, the most classical feature of eristic is the will to win “by any means”. It is the scope of “any means” which is the key, I think, to understand and evaluate eristic arguing even if the working of this key is not very clear and deserves a closer investigation.

We have seen that the use of sport and military metaphors is as old as the word “eristic”. The former ones suggest the idea of a whole range of practices spanning from athletics to boxing and other martial arts. Sport competitions have frames and rules which are usually clearly identified and apply symmetrically. But if we shift to the military paradigm the question of rules become more uncertain. In some sense, you can say that there is a minimal cooperation in war for the reasons given by Krabbe and war can also be seen as a kind of competition, especially when it is seen as “the continuation of politics by other means” as Clausewitz said. By other means does not mean by any means. Sometimes there are codified practices between enemies and attempts to regulate the use of weapons. But we know that in some wars, the enemies are ready to win by any means: the end justifies the means and there is no need of a jury to decide who won. Collaboration or competition is not the only choice for eristic arguing: there is a third option, more hostile, beyond them. Sometimes, eristic appears beyond collaboration and competition.

I think Kerferd (1980, p. 113) is right when he suggests that the distinction between antilogic and eristic should be maintained on the ground that antilogic is not ready to use any means while eristic is. Antilogic is closer to sports while eristic is closer to war, with difficult but interesting limit cases, like duels, gladiators fights and, perhaps, pankration.

It is difficult to say if the definitions of eristic dialogue introduced by Krabbe and Walton cover the whole field of martial dialogues, namely antilogic and (warlike) eristic exchanges, two notions which are not always clearly distinguished even in classical authors. But, if we grant that they are two different kinds of the genus that I have just called martial (which could still be called eristic if the context prevents any confusion[ii]), it seems clear that the eristic discussion considered by Krabbe (2009) and Van Laar (2010) and more generally the “regular” political and judicial opposition of our democracies is a matter of antilogic rather than (warlike) eristic: it is soft, open and manifest competition whereas eristic can be hard, stubborn and concealed. Of course, eristic can bloom in an antilogic dialogue: a manifest antilogic discussion is sometimes a good prelude to a hostile eristic overflow.

This seems to be the case in Plato’s Euthydemus. Walton and Krabbe (1995), Krabbe (2009), Walton (1998) turn to this dialogue to illustrate their views about eristic discussion. They mostly focus on its antilogic (and fallacious) aspects whereas I think the key of this dialogue is rather the warlike eristic behavior of the sophists.

The collective goal of the dialogue seems to be clear: the two sophists claim that an eristic training could teach virtue to the young Clinias and persuade him to love knowledge and to practice virtue. Like in a game or a sport, a rule is fixed before the beginning of the play. It is quite simple: the young boy has just to answer yes or no (276d). But this is a trick since he knows nothing else about the alleged game. Walton and Krabbe write that in an eristic dialogue, “the initial situation …is an unsettled intellectual hierarchy, prompting a need to test our verbal skills of argumentation to see who is the more masterful. The goal is to settle the intellectual hierarchy…” (p. 79). Does this apply to the Euthydemus? I doubt it because the status of the intellectual superiority is more intricate. The apparently shared goal is the education of the young Clinias. To reach it, the lad accepts an eristic dialogue with the two teachers who are supposed to be intellectually superior if Socrates is not ironical or does not play on words when he says that he wants to study eristic. The sophists win, but their brilliant victory is so cheap that, from the point of Plato and probably most readers, they did lose. Plato’s conclusion seems to be that eristic arguing is certainly not the right path to knowledge and wisdom, let alone to the education of beginners. The first intellectual hierarchy is upset.

A major difference between Krabbe and Walton’s models of eristic dialogues and the Euthydemus (at least in the first part) is that this dialogue lacks the parity, the formal equality that is typical of their models and of antilogic games. A first anomaly, allowed by the alleged intellectual authority of the sophists, is that they fix the rule of the game. Later, Socrates will try to break it by asking questions, but the sophists will refuse it because they stick to their own rule: their opponents are not allowed to ask questions (287 c-d). The lesson of boxing quickly ends for Clinias who has accepted the rule: knocked out in the first round. The expected lesson shifted to an unfair competition which is over when it has hardly begun, much to the delight of the two sophists. The match is a triumph for them, but the lesson is a failure. The two sophists made a decisive step towards eristic when they decided not to play with Clinias but at his expense. They were already beyond collaboration and competition.

Conclusion
Since the Antiquity, eristic practices have been associated with the use of strength in a dialectical argumentation. A first necessary condition of eristic is to see a dialectical exchange as something that you win. But its most typical feature is the readiness to win by any means that appear relevant to the practice of argument.

Eristic can show two faces depending on whether the arguer uses means which pertain to the frame of the exchange or not. These two faces appeared in Greece where theory and practice of eristic arguing was part of philosophical reflections and arguments about the nature of thought, language and the practice of argument. An antilogic game was an agonistic verbal game where the participants were supposed to abide by rules. But it already seemed clear that this did not account for all the agonistic verbal exchanges. Sometimes arguers did not compete with their interlocutors but play at their expense.

This supports the suggestion that an eristic behavior can be the manifestation of a primary natural aggressiveness which could abide by rules as long as they serve the desire to win. But this desire can also be ready to use fallacious strategies. We should, however, resist a quick association of fallacies with eristic since eristic can do without them. Systematic refutation too is not a reliable criterion since an eristic behavior can be limited or occasional, like aggressiveness.

Some contemporary authors claim that eristic dialogues or eristic discussions can be seen or are a specific kind of dialectical interaction. I have suggested that their views focus only on one face of eristic, the antilogic one. The distinction between this pacific version of agonistic verbal exchanges similar to the practice of games or sports, and the more warlike one, ready to win even by irregular means, could help to clarify the analysis and evaluation of agonistic arguments.

NOTES
i. In the pragma-dialectical sense of the term.
ii. Just like man can be a generic term including woman and man.

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Abstract: This paper intends to describe and analyze the argumentation that has taken place in El Mercurio, Chile’s main daily newspaper, both in articles in the printed edition as well as in blogs in the online edition, during the months of September and October 2013. This argumentation constitutes a case of social and political deep disagreement. The nature of the disagreement lies in the ways of explaining the coup and the military regime.

Keywords: blogs, deep disagreement, multi-modal argumentation, pragma-dialectics, strategies for overcoming deep disagreement.

1. Introduction
In several conferences of ISSA and OSSA, I have presented a number of papers on arguments in political propaganda taking the Chilean daily El Mercurio as the source of the argumentation. The main thrust of these papers is the view that the study of argumentation in general should include the analysis of emotional, physical and intuitive arguments as well as logical ones. The paper presented in the 2010 ISSA conference (Duran, 2010) intended to show that, on the basis of work done in the previous papers, the psychoanalytic theory of Bi-Logic is in a position to explain some fundamental aspects of argumentation in agitation propaganda as developed by the press. That paper concluded with a reflection on the dramatic disagreement in Chilean society about the causes and circumstances of the military coup, the military dictatorship, and the return to democracy.

I attended during the 2010 ISSA conference the paper by David Zarefsky on deep disagreement in argumentation. His views helped me to develop a preliminary understanding of argumentation possibilities to break the deadlock in Chile through argumentation techniques as discussed in his paper. Since then I had tried to find material in El Mercurio that would help me to develop some mechanism to deal with the disagreement. The social and political idea behind this initial project was that a society cannot truly function without an undertstanding of the reasons for a major crisis that divided it into two irreconcilable camps. I found an article in El Mercurio published in early 2010 by Arturo Fontaine, then Director of CEP (Centro de Estudios Públicos), a powerful think-tank representing the views of the highest levels of the entrepreneurial class in Chile. According to Fontaine, any attempt to discuss the drama of Chile would necessarily involve that the supporters of the coup would need to recognize the repressive nature of the military dictatorship; conversely, those who suffered the repression would have to accept that the government of President of Salvador Allende ended up terrorizing the middle classes.

I decided to look into blogs in El Mercurio internet (emol.com) that could deal with the topic. During the many activities to conmemorate the 40th anniversary of the coup, the amount of coverage of the coup and military regime has been impresssive, still within the general frame of deep disagreement. I have focused mainly on articles on the editorial page of the daily edition and on several internet blogs that deal with the topic. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the argumentation that has taken place in the blogs.

2. Framework for the study of blogs
In order to proceed with the analysis of the argumentation as it appears in the blogs, it seems necessary to develop a systematic framework. Usually blogs consist of expression of opinions, or points of view, with no attempt to participate in dialogues. In the case of the topic of this study, those opinions tend to be very black and white, with the people in favor of the military regime attacking the other side quite strongly, and viceversa. Ad hominem fallacies are found frequently, including insults and accusations of evil motivations. Therefore, what is the reason to develop a systematic framework? It has been my idea for a long time, that people need a social forum where they could exchange their views and opinions about economic, political, social issues in a way that could become interactive. The mass media, especially the press, seem to be an appropriate vehicle for that purpose..

In his recent book Arguing with People, Michael Gilbert (Gilbert, 2014), introduces a complex model for argumentation among people that includes some core aspects of the Pragma-Dialectical model of Van Eemeren and Grootendorst, combined with his own theory of Multi-Modal Argumentation, and his understanding of argumentation as leading hopefully to coalescence. In this context, my thought moved from the idea of analyzing argumentation in blogs to hopefully, at some point, be able to propose formally to conduct dialogues along the lines of the new model.

2.1 M. Gilbert’s model for the study of argumentation
In what follows I introduce the model that has helped to get going in the analysis of argumentation in blogs in the case of social and political deep disagreement in Chilean scoiety. At the same time, I discuss David Zarefsky’s ideas on transcendence of deep disagreement as they appear in his paper presented at ISSA 2010 (Zarefsky, 2010). A combination of the ideas of Gilbert and Zarefsky could hopefully produce the model that I have been discussing above. However, in this paper, the model is to an important extent used in order to show the limitations of interactions in the blogs. Needles to say, I do not want to be deterred by such limitations in future work.

In dealing with his purpose of helping people to argue, Michael Gilbert introduces the idea of stages of argumentation that was developed, as mentioned above, by van Eemeren and Grootendorst: as is well known, the stages are confrontation, opening, argumentation, and conclusion. The novelty in Gilbert’s approach in this new book, is that he proposes that these stages should be analyzed in a way that, in each one of them, one must be clear as to which mode(s) of argumentation is (are) at stake. Thus, the interaction at the confrontation stage could be in the logical mode combined with, for example, the emotional mode; or it could be happening at the visceral mode; or kisceral mode together with the logical mode; or it could be in any one of the modes alone. And the same thing can happen in the other stages. This way of conceiving arguing adds to the process of understanding it a much needed complexity.

I believe that both the Pragma-Dialectical and Gilbert’s approaches to argumentation are intended, if possible, to lead into coalescence. This idea is very important in my present study as discussed below. Now, I need to incorporate to this model some of the key ideas of Zarefsky in the paper mentioned above.

David Zarefsky is concerned with the fact that argumentation assumes a certain degree of agreement such that, even when there is disagreement, there should be the possibility of arguing the case. Thus, productive disagreement must have an underlying stratum of agreement. However, there are situations in which each arguer’s claims are based on assumptions that the other arguer rejects. In this case he says “[d]eep disagreement is the limiting condition at which argumentation becomes impossible.” He says that this state of affairs was first characterized by Robert Fogelin (Fogelin, 1985).

I examine Zarefsky’s views on possible ways of transcending deep disagreement in what follows, but first I entertain a few thoughts on this problematic issue. Given the Pragma-Dialectical/Gilbert model articulated above, it seems rather evident that most, or a great number, of cases of deep disagreement happen at the confrontation stage. Indeed why to argue if there is no basis of agreement whatsoever. However, let’s assume that in a certain argumentation process, disagreement is found in the opening stage, such that no agreement is possible as to the rules of the process of arguing: for example, one arguer believes that only logical rules of arguing are acceptable while the other claims that emotional rules are paramount. The same could be said about the stage of argumentation. In either situation, it seems clear that the arguers have to come back to the confrontation stage. If so, it seems that deep disagreement cases happen basically at the confrontation stage. Another key issue is the consideration of magnitude or levels or depth of deep disagreement. Not all cases are necessarily the same. It may happen that one of the arguers claims, to start with, that s/he disagrees completely with the other arguer; or the situation could be less radical, and the deep disagreement appears after a few exchanges in which they find areas of productive exchange.

2.2 D. Zarefsky’s strategies for dealing with deep disagreement
David Zarefsky discusses four possible strategies for overcoming deep disagreement. He groups these strategies in pairs under the following headings: inconsistency, packaging, time, and changing the ground. In its turn, each one of them is divided into two options. My own take on this insightful proposal is to explore them as potential ways of seeking productive agreement: therefore, I present them here as I intend to use them in my own study of deep disagreement in Chilean society. The overall picture is the following:

1. Inconsistency may happen as “hypocrisy” or “circumstancial ad hominem”. In both moves, the attempt is to get inside the opponent’s frame of reference and discredit it on grounds of inconsistency. The charge of hypocrisy happens when the arguer maintains a position which is inconsistent with another one maintained during the argument. The circumstantial ad hominem option takes place when a position of the arguer is contradictory to her or his own behavior. Now, in both cases, the arguer that is seeking an end to the deadlock expects that the inconsistency can be enough to make the other arguer realize where s/he really stands.

2. Packaging is divided into “incorporation” and “subsumption”. Incorporation consists in including the deep disagreed upon issue into a larger package which also includes things that the other arguer agrees with. Subsumption is a strategy which seeks to subsume the items of deep disagreement within a larger frame which can be acceptable to both arguers. In both cases of packaging, the expectation is to generate agreement around the disagreed topics such that the arguers may develop some sense of working together.

3. Time can happen as “exhaustion” or “urgency”. Exhaustion refers to cases that have been very long, tense, and emotionally draining. Urgency refers to a bad situation generated by a crisis that has undermined the arguers. Of course, a crisis may lead to exhaustion. The expectation in these two cases is that the arguers cannot continue in a deadlock that affects their lives so seriously.

4. Finally, changing the ground could take place as “interfield borrowing” or “frame-shifting”. In interfield borrowing one arguer assumes the field of the other arguer attempting to find an area of possible productive argumentation. In frame-shifting one of the arguers will try to move the argument from one context or frame to another where both could agree upon. In these two cases the expectation is to situate the argumentation on a common plane where agreement becomes possible.

3. Analysis of blogs
In this part of the paper, I examine specific cases of deep disagreement as they have been found in two blogs in El Mercurio, one in early September and the other one in early October, both in 2013. At that time, Chile was witnessing a remarkable and painful explosion of public debate as a consequence of the conmemoration of the 40th anniversary of the September 11, 1973 coup d’ etat that deposed the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. A number of high level politicians from all sides of the political spectrum got involved in different ways of commenting or arguing about the coup and the military dictatorship that followed. President Sebastián Piñera, a right wing politician but with a centrist tradition, made a public criticism of some of the civilians involved in the government of General Augusto Pinochet. Members of traditional institutions, including the powerful Catholic Church, were also involved in this public debate. In this social and political atmosphere, blogs in El Mercurio became a source of intense and voluminous participation of people representing the two sides of the deep disagreement. The task is now to examine the two blogs mentioned above.

Now, this examination of the blogs is undertaken in two main and different, but related, ways. On the one hand, the blogs are described as they appear face value, with no intervention of the framework developed above. Then, they are related to the framework “sideways”, so to speak: the job is to show possible ways of relating aspects of the framework to issues presented in the blogs. As mentioned at the beginning, the blogs consist of viewpoints with no recognition of the need to exchange views in any formal sense. At the most, they can be evaluated as remaining at the stage of confrontation and this happens in a crude way, really. At this moment, it is pertinent to introduce a significant concept that Michael Gilbert discusses in his recent book (2014): his views on arguing with people have in mind what he calls “familiars”, that is, people with whom the arguers are familiar, they know each other well enough. Of course, this concept is at the other end of what happens in the blogs, to the extent that the participants could be called “unfamiliars”. This issue is considered when describing and analyzing the two blogs.

3.1 A personal deep disagreement exchange
Before undertaking the study of the blogs, I believe it is pertinent to discuss one personal exchange that I had in the late 1980’s, when Pinochet was still in power. It involved a dialogue that I had with a former student whom I met by chance in a coffee shop in Santiago. He was a member of the upper class in Chile, and a supporter of the coup and the military regime. When he was my student in the 1960’s, we had developed a friendly relation. Upon greeting each other, he told me how pleased he was to see me back in Chile, and then, almost immediatley asked me how I felt about the military regime. My response was that it was a repressive dictatorship with horrible violations of human rights to which he agreed upon saying that he was sorry about that. He continued saying that he was truly sorry, but the fact is that Chile had developed economically in a way that, at some point, democracy would return, and then Chile, as was the case with Spain, would move politically from the centre right to the centre left, back and forth. He added that in that situation there would never again be another Allende. I was completely shocked such that I could hardly articulate anything else. If that dialogue with my former student indicates something is that perhaps it happened at an earlier “stage” than confrontation. Or maybe, that I could not even recognize confrontation. In hindsight, I think that I may have agreed subconsciously with him that that was going to happen, as indeed it has happened in Chile over the past 24 years! It was an experience that I keep going back to. I am not sure that I could have entertained an argument with him.

Some reflection about this case is needed before I move to the study of the blogs. At that time, I did not know much about argumentation theory, my only training had been since the mid 1970’s in informal logic, not enough to know what to do in an argumentation case like this one. However, the point is a larger one and it involves at least two issues. One refers to the fact that most people in the world are not familiar with argumentation theory, so it is practically impossible for them to proceed along the lines of the framework that I developed above or any other systematic one. Thus, it would be important to get to know what exactly happens when people argue in general. Is there some sense of stages? Do they try to come up with rules for the argumentation? Is there an intuitive sense of all this? Do argumentation theorists, in one way or another, manage to articulate formal structures for conducting arguments based on ways that are natural so to speak?

The second issue involved here relates to the need for educating people formally since the early stages of the education system. What are argumentation theorists going to do about this immense challenge? Leaving this sophisticated knowledge only for meetings in conferences, or writings that go around experts, or for high level teaching in academic institutions, would miss the very nature of what argumentation theorists have been doing.

3.2 Analysis of the first blog
Perhaps I should move to the study of the blogs by stating that it is my expectation that this study could help promote the need to educate people. It may be a long shot, but it is worth trying.

In the climate of intense public debate in Chile as a consequence of the 40th conmemoration of the military coup, political leaders of all parties, religious leaders, educational professionals, and the general public at large got involved in all sorts of public statements and debates. This was the case of the Bishops of the Catholic Church who produced a public document on September 9, 2013.

The Bishops state that the society continues to be divided into two irreconcilable camps, and time has come to search for a true reconciliation. However, they say, in the present context, unfortunately strong accusations and reproaches tend to predominate. They continue by stating that the wounds left by the painful events in September of 1973 have not really healed. They claim that truth, justice and reconciliation is the road to a true understanding. They are also very critical of the abuses of human rights by the military regime during and after the coup. Finally, they remind people of the role the Church undertook in the defense of human rights during that regime.

It is possible to characterize this statement of the Church in terms of David Zarefsky’s strategy for overcoming deep disagreement called “time in the sense of urgency”. The Church makes it clear that the status quo of confrontation is not possible to maintain any longer.

I have selected two blogs found in El Mercurio for a detailed study. One of them was originated by an article published by Senator Hernán Larraín from the most right wing party called UDI, Democratic Independent Union. UDI was created during the military regime in order to provide political support to it. His most important founder and leader was Jaime Guzmán, a young, prominent intellectual who played a most important role in the creation of legal, political, and economic structures during the government of General Pinochet. Larraín represents a rather centrist side in this party. The article was published on September 2, 2013.

The other blog stems from an article published on October 8 by Eugenio Tironi, a centre-left intellectual from the PPD, Party for Democracy. I selected these two blogs for several reasons. One reason is the fact that Larraín, being in the most right wing party in Chile, has taken a conciliatory position and in his article he is asking for forgiveness so as to provide a basis for reconciliation. A second reason for the selection of blogs is that Tironi, on the other side, represents a clear centre-left position and sometimes is accused by the more traditional left in Chile as being too bland. His article represents a strong criticism of Jaime Guzmán’s endorsement of the military regime. The point here is that both politicians tend to the centre of the political spectrum, thus they are more prone to get engaged in overcoming deep disagreement. A third reason is related to the fact that one of the bloggers in the Larraín article produces a more balanced account of the Chilean crisis, but paradoxically he loses that balance in the Tironi blog.

The Hernan Larrín blog developed out of his article entitled “Las razones de un perdón” (“The reasons for asking for forgiveness”). In this article Larraín states that Chile still suffers from the profound wounds developed out of the political violence of the 1960’s and the three years of the Allende government. He says that there were groups in the left that were promoting violence. The coup ended with democracy and civil liberties. However, the military regime, at the same time that developed repression and violation of human rights, contributed to the creation of a successful economic model. In any event, after 40 years since the military coup, Chile is still a divided country. He urges people to come out of this confrontation and try to find a common ground in order to live in peace and united. He proposes to ask for forgiveness as the way for social healing. He himself takes this option in the expectation that forgiveness may take people on the road to reconciliation.

What Larraín says here is similar to what Arturo Fontaine expressed in his article from early 2010. He says that there were groups in the Chilean left that promoted political violence and, at the same time, he recognizes that the military regime was repressive. He makes a point though that the regime also helped to promote economic development in Chile. Certainly, he seems to be putting on the table, some of the most significant factors of the deep confrontation in Chilean society. From the perspective of Zarefsky, it is possible to evaluate his position as a case of time with the option urgency, as well as it happens in the Bishops’ document.

The analysis of the blog is interesting in several ways. First, very few people referred in their participations to the most significant point of Larraín, that of asking for forgiveness. More so, even fewer bloggers acknowledged his article in a direct and explicit way. One of the few who did so was very critical accusing Larraín of naivete. Second, the blog consists of a large number of extremely critical points against the other side of the social and political divide: in essence, they are expressions of the confrontation. Third, there are few participants that get involved in exchanges, and when that happens they are confrontational. Finally, I found, as mentioned above, one set that is initiated by a blogger who appears balanced in his evaluation of the events in Chile, in a way somewhat similar to Fontaine and Larraín. I proceed then to analyze this particular exchange attempting as much as possible to refer to the Gilbert/Zarefsky model presented above.

The blogger, whom I refer to by the initials of his name as JAFM, describes the situation in the 1970’s in Chile as one characterized by the presence in the country of guerrilla operatives exported by the Cuban revolution, but also by Armed Forces trained by the United States in the School of the Americas. Also there were Chilean guerrilla groups. He says that Chile was in fact the reflection of the cold war. He blames the “political class” as a whole for the coup. He mentions that it is important to understand, but not justify the violations of human rights by the military regime. In a second blog, JAFM expresses his view that Chileans must teach their children to resolve conflicts through dialogue and respect for institutions. At the present stage, he values politicians as opposed to the political class of the 1970’s.

One blogger, MEG, agrees entirely with him but does not explain. She does not mention Hernán Larraín, nor forgiveness. Another blogger, AFV, also without reference to Larraín, appears to be in significant agreement with JAFM, to whom he addresses his participation, but does not acknowledge that he agrees with him. A third participant, MQ, does not refer to Larraín and attempts to defend Allende from the accusation of favoring armed struggle and inviting Cuban extremists in the country. He blames extreme left wing parties and groups but not relating them to Allende. He blames the United States and President Nixon in particular for the coup and makes the point that the USSR did not have any interest in Latin America beyond Cuba. A fourth blogger, JPRM, negates the presence of Cuban guerrilla operatives in Chile, and blames the United States as well. This blogger does not mention Larraín or forgiveness. A fifth participant, EJLC, agrees with JAFM with respect to his historical analysis, but disagrees with him in blaming the political class of the 1970’s. He himself blames Allende, whom he describes as the Chávez of that time, and his followers who introduced weapons in Chile. Therefore, in his view, the Armed Forces could not accept that and neither the disastrous economic situation. This blogger does not mention either Larraín or forgiveness. Blogger MQ accuses the previous blogger EJLC of spreading falsehoods with regards to introduction of weapons in Chile. A sixth participant, MSOE, mentions Larraín indirectly and metaforically, with no reference to forgiveness. What she says may be of great interest in the study of blogs, although it is unclear to whom exactly she is referring to. She mentions that there are three kinds of witnesses: those who saw well but have doubts; those who did not see well but believe they have seen well; and finally those who saw nothing but believe that they have seen everything. She also says that “something like this is happening…. if Mr Larraín lost a good and important part of this story.” Finally, JAFM, the initiator of these exchanges, comes back with a third participation, but not acknowledgeing any of the participants in the blog that after all he initiated. He presents now an indirect critical point to Larraín’s views, by way of saying that no economic advance can justify the violations of human rights. He insists in criticizing the political class of Allende’s time, but also mentions that his government was not doing anything to overcome poverty.

There are several conclusions at this stage. The first one is the almost complete lack of reference to the author of the article to which the blog ows its existence. Of course, there could not be any dialogue or actual argumentation with him, but at least one would expect some reference to his ideas, especially given the fact that Larraín is writing about the need to overcome the deep disagreement in Chile. Second, there is deep disagreement found in this particular exchange in the blog, and no clear sense of further interactions. Third, even when there is agreement, paradoxically there is no recognition of it. Thus, fourth, the participants in this exchange seem intended in presenting their points of view only. Fifth, the fallacy of ad hominen appears here, for example, in accusations such as that of stating falsehoods. Sixth, the issues raised by MSOE, assuming that I am correct in their interpretation, may be seen as a sharp description of the way blogs go around: some bloggers see well but are prepared to doubt; some other do not see well but believe they do; and then there are those who see nothing and believe that they have seen everything. MSOE may be stating that there are many bloggers who truly do not know what they are saying, but still feel the need to present their views. In any event, the idea here is that if there could be further interaction, for example taking into account the Gilbert model, then possibly people could be able to understand each other in more positive ways.

Finally, from the perspective of the Gilbert model, at the most, the exchanges remain at the level of confrontation. Looking at them from the point of view of Zarefsky’s ideas on breaking the deadlock of deep disagreement argumentation, perhaps only one of the points by JAFM could be seen as relevant: this seems to be the case, when he advocates the need to teach children the value of dialogue and respect of institutions as the way to avoid political violence. I am tempted here to say that this represents a case of packaging in the subsumption option. I say this because, after all, JAFM has recognized the same as Fontaine and Larraín, the need to look at the negative aspects of the two sides of the social and political divide. He stops there, but Larraín claims that there ought to be forgiveness. Now, I evaluated his position above in terms of the case of time in the urgency option, and now I see that looking at JAFM’s view combined with Larraín’s claim, the packaging possibility seems applicable as well. To be clear about this: in my own sense here I draw from Fontaine, Larraín and JAFM’s need to examine the negative aspects of the left and right side of the deep social and political confrontation as the basis for overcoming it, therefore, borrowing JASM’s idea, subsuming them under the value of dialogue and respect of institutions.

3.3 Analysis of the second blog
The second blog stems from Eugenio Tironi’s article entitled “¿Quien perdió?” (“Who Lost?”) The article refers to the October 5, 1988 plebiscite that the opposition to Pinochet won, and therefore signalled the beginning of the end of the military regime. According to Tironi, the real loser in the plebiscite was Jaime Guzmán whose significance as an ideologist of the regime has been discussed above. Tironi says that the real losers were “Jaime Guzmán and the ideology according to which, in due course, people accommodate themselves to their economic interests.” The article represents a very critical view not only on Guzmán, but on the whole of the military regime based on its commitment to neo-liberal economic policies. In his article, Larraín mentions that the military regime was succesful in this sense in Chile. I intend to examine this point below, but at this stage I should point out that it does constitute a very difficult issue in terms of deep disagreement.

What is clear is that this article develops a strong criticism of the right side of the political deep disagreement only, in contrast to the Larraín article, as well as Fontaine’s view in early 2010, and also the bloger JAFM.

I selected one specific set of exchanges in the blog because in it JAFM participates with a very strong criticism of Tironi. This set is initiated by blogger EJLC, also involved in the Larraín blog, who criticizes Tironi accusing him of a double moral standard. He relates Tironi to the communist party in Chile saying that communism has been involved in serious violations of human rights as was the case in the URSS, North Korea, Cuba, China, etc. A second blogger, FJGP, responding to EJLC, says that socialists and communists are the worst violators of human rights in history. A third participant, CCBC, also responding to EJLC, mentions that there were one hundred million people assassinated until 1998 by communists, pending the statistics until now. At this stage, JAFM intervenes in the exchange, with a strong criticism of Tironi, albeit not mentioning him explicitly, by stating that it is terribly difficult to argue with people in the left, because they take unmovable positions no matter what arguments are provided to them: they keep rejecting and refuting them. He continues by criticizing marxist-socialism on the counts of economic failure, political repression, and lack of respect of human rights, and he says that that was the doctrine of President Salvador Allende. Had he succeeded, Chile would be an underdeveloped country, with political repression, and violation of human rights. Then he shows great appreciation for Jaime Guzmán because he worked for the establishment of a political system that provided sufficient political stability that made it possible for international investment in Chile. As a consequence Chile is today a respected country in the world due to its economic achievements. A fifth participant, MQ, also involved in the Larraín blog, responds to JAFM by questioning if any country achieved development through neo-liberalism. A sixth blogger, HF, attacks MQ saying that what he says is absolutely false and provides the names of a number of countries, including some traditional European developed countries, that succeeded due to neo-liberalism. Finally, MQ himself responds by saying that HF understands very little about the topic since he is confusing capitalism with neo-liberalism. He invites HF to study a bit more the issue so that he realizes that in the countries that HF mentions the state has played a very important role in economic terms, which is the very opposite of a neo-liberal approach.

Comparing the analyses of the two blogs, first, in the Tironi one, there is explicit and clear implicit reference to the author of the article, essentially by way of strong criticism of Tironi. However, no blogger mentions the main point of “who lost” in the plebiscite that Tironi makes. Bloger JAFM comes a bit close to it when he defends strongly Jaime Guzmán who is the ideologist that Tironi criticizes in his article. Second, the bloggers who respond to the Tironi critics, do not refer to him directly or indirectly, but criticize those critics. No further interaction between them proceeds, but there is deep disagreement present here in the sense of attacks against communism and neo-liberalism.

Third, there is some interaction between the participant who questions JAFM and the one who responds to him, but very limited in terms of follow up. In any event, this is also a case of deep disagreement. Fourth, as in the Larraín blog, the participants seem just interested in presenting their points of view. Fifth, I think that what blogger MSOE expresses in the previous blog with regards to the three kinds of participants, may apply here: for, given the nature of their participations, it is not clear whether they do really know the topic they are writing about. However, this may not be fair on my part, for I have not been an external critic of the objectivity of the participations of the bloggers, neither of the authors of the articles that originated the blogs. However, a feeling that has appeared at this stage has become too strong for me to avoid and I come back to consider it at the end of the paper. Sixth, the fallacy of ad hominem is present in this blog as well, as it happens in the case of accusations of ignorance.

Finally, from the Gilbert model perspective, exchanges remain at the level of confrontation as well as in the Larraín blog. With regards to the point of view of Zarefsky, there is no immediate case that could be made for overcoming deep disagreement in this blog as different from what happened in the previous blog. It is possible, however, to imagine a situation stemming from the exchange between MQ and HF: in this particular exchange, somebody may suggest that a main point would be to decide factually whether the state has been involved in the countries that HF presents as successful cases of neo-liberalism. If this were the case, then I would be inclined to evaluate the possibility of inconsistency as hypocrisy as the strategy to follow to resolve deep disagreement. The reason is simple to state: HF defends the success of neo-liberalism in several countries that he mentions explicitly, and MQ claims that in them the state has played an important role in economic development, which is the opposite of neo-liberal doctrine. But, obviously I seem to be imagining well beyond the actual texts of both bloggers.

However, there is a productive point that could be assessed as positive in the imaginary case. It concerns the relation between inconsistency in the hypocrisy mode and changing the ground in the option of interfield borrowing. In the case under examination here, it seems that there is a clear similarity between both strategies because they do involve getting ‘inside’ the other arguer. This is a very promising issue for further research in the study of strategies for resolving deep disagreement.

4. Conclusions
The ongoing research that is developed in this paper has required the generation of a systematic framework for the study of cases of deep disagreement as they are manifested in blogs in the press. This framework could also be potentially used in dialogues with familiars. As presented above, the framework involves a combination of the argumentation model suggested in Michael Gilbert’s book Arguing with People, with the ideas on strategies in order to overcome deep disagreement discussed by David Zarefsky in his paper read in the 2010 ISSA Conference. Now, from this perspective, the research has been able to show that the Gilbert model, as expected beforehand, helps to conclude that there is no process of real argumentation involved in the blogs that have been analyzed: at the most, the argumentation happens at the stage of confrontation. Whereas, somewhat more productive have been Zarefsky’s ideas in that they have been useful in suggesting several worthwhile strategies for dealing with deep disagreement. Clearly, the door has been opened for more research.

However, my overall goal is to apply this framework to the development of exchanges in blogs. I mean, that perhaps it could be possible to introduce the framework so that blogs could proceed according to it. Therefore, participants in the blogs could become able to know about the four stages of argumentation, try to follow them systematically, and in cases of deep disagreement, perhaps be able to try the strategies described by Zarefsky. This goal may seem ambitious, even unrealistic, but perhaps worth trying. Moreover, I see it in line with the need to educate people in general about the outstanding achievements of Argumentation Theory. One important issue in this context is the fact that participants in blogs are “unfamiliars” as opposed to what Gilbert says concerning the dialogical relation between familiars.

With regards to Gilbert’s model, I have not dealt in this paper with his theory of Multi-Modal Argumentation when analyzing the blogs. It seems to me that the exchanges in the two blogs examined, may be assessed as a combination of the logical and emotional modes, perhaps the intuitive mode as well. But at this stage, I need to work more on the ways in which evaluations of the non-logical modes should proceed in the case of blogs: indeed there is no clear way of assessing emotions in a systematic way here. One could, of course, say that given some interactions, it is easy to assume emotional expressions by analogy to what happens in face-to-face dialogues.

And yet another topic of great significance would be the study of levels or magnitude of deep disagreement. This issue has only been indicated in a preliminary way in this paper. There seems to be no question, at least intuitively, that cases of deep disagreement are not all of the same “depth”. For example, the question as to the atrocities committed by the military regime does introduce very deep disagreement when people who suffered them confront those who supported the regime. Emotions tend to be extremely high in this case. Comparing that situation with a debate about the state’s participation in the economy, it is possible to see that, while in this instance there is deep disagreement, the case does not reach the emotional level of the previous one.

A related issue needs to be considered now. When presenting my interaction in the late 1980’s with my former student, I said that I was shocked by what he said about the fact that, since Chile had developed economically, then when democracy would return, the political scenario would be moving from the centre-right to the centre-left and vice-versa. Senator Larraín mentions in his article that the military regime violated human rights and at the same time developed a successful economic policy. The bloger JAFM mentions that economic development cannot be used to justify political repression. Also, several exchanges between the two sides, as can be perceived in the blogs analyzed, refer to the relation between economic success and repression. Here lies, in my view, one of the deepest sources of disagreement still present in Chilean society. For can the left side of the disagreement be prepared to accept that the military coup and repression was needed in order to achieve economic well-being?

A further point complicates matter even more. It seems clear that getting rid of the government of Pinochet was possible by an “agreement”, whose whole nature is not known, between the regime and the centre-left coalition that had formed since the early 1980’s in Chile. That agreement brought about the plebiscite that made possible to end the regime. So, there is already some level, not insignificant, of breaking the deadlock between the two sides: at least, at the level of the political leaderships. One area of agreement here is the fact that the centre-left coalition would maintain the neo-liberal-economic policies of the regime. Therefore, the Zarefsky strategy at play here may be evaluated as time in a combination of exhaustion and urgency, although it could very well had happened that during the negotiations a number of the other strategies may have been present.

A final issue relates to the fact that my overall research, since I began the study of the right wing press in Chile with several colleagues in the 1970’s, intended to contribute to the development of a more democratic society. At the same time, we were committed to an objective and systematic study that should not be interfered by our commitment to a specific ideological position. This involves to walk a fine line all the time. Thus, since I am myself a member of the left side of the political confrontation, how would I behave, at the present stage, if I were to have actual argumentations with people on the other side of the disagreement? For instance, if I were to meet my student and decide to argue seriously with him: would I be willing to accept that, given repression, violation of human rights and everything else, one thing that was positive of the military dictatorship was their successful economic policies? Only actual argumentation processes would be able to help in answering that troublesome question.

References
Duran, C. (2011). Bi-Logical Analysis of Arguments in Political Propaganda: The case of the Chilean Press 1970-1973. In F. H. van Eemeren, B. Garssen, D. Godden, G. Mitchell (Eds.), Seventh International Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation 2011.
Larraín, H. & Núñez, R. (2013). Las Voces de la Reconciliación. Santiago: Instituto de Estudios de la Sociedad.
Fogelin, R. J. (1985). The logic of deep disagreements. Informal Logic, 7, 1-8.
Gilbert, M. (2014). Arguing with People. Tonawanda, NY: Broadview Press.
Gilbert, M (1997). Coalescent Argumentation. Mahwah, NJ: Routledge.
Zarefsky, D. (2011). The Appeal for Transcendence: A Possible Response to Cases of Deep Disagreement. In F. H. van Eemeren, B. Garssen, D. Godden, G. Mitchell (Eds.), Seventh International Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation 2011.

Abstract: In 2012, the U.S. public overwhelmingly supported gun regulations. Yet, Wayne La Pierre claimed that the U.S. lacked the correct climate for meaningful discussion. In a gesture to the third-order condition of argumentation, he argued that we must first satisfy other concerns to create the proper climate for debate. We discuss whether this appeal was a legitimate maneuver or a derailment.

Keywords: affect, commitment, conviction, gun debate, political context, strategic maneuvering, third order conditions.

1. Introduction
On December 14, 2012, at around 9:35am a man “dressed in black fatigues entered the Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut and perpetrated the worst shooting at a primary school in U.S. history” (Kauffman, 2012, p. A10). Adam Lanza carried three weapons including, “a semi-automatic AR-15 assault rifle made by Bushmaster and pistols” (CNN, 2014, para. 2). “Somebody’s got a gun . . . . They’re running down the hall. They’re still running, they’re still shooting . . . . Sandy Hook School, please” a trembling voice told emergence services (Susman, 2013, p. A8). In approximately 10 minutes, the shooter had discharged “as many as 100 rounds” (Kauffman, 2012, p. A10) killing 26 people including 20 children and 6 adults, and himself (Fifield, 2012, p. 5). First responders “found the hallway strewn with rifle casings, the ‘distinct smell of fired ammunition’ in the building, and children and teachers locked in closets and afraid to open the doors” (Susman, 2013, p. A8). This shooting was one of the deadliest in the United States history and it occurred within 6 months of 3 other massacres. The images of dead children, mourning parents, and a community ripped apart coupled with the accumulation of mass shootings brought the nation to a tipping point.

Gun ownership is one of the most affectively charged and political issues in the United States (Winkler, 2011). After the shooting, a Reuters poll found support for gun control increased by eight points from 42 to 50 percent supporting the statement, “gun ownership should have strong regulations or restrictions” while a CNN poll found 62% support for bans on semi-automatic assault weapons and high capacity magazines” (O’Malley, 2012, p. 18). These changes in public opinion prompted an opening for a critical discussion on guns. Lankford (2012) reported,

Overall the frequency of these incidents in the U. S. rose dramatically, with 18 attacks occurring from 1980-1989, 54 attacks from 1990-1999, and 87 attacks from 2000-2009. Worse yet, over this time span, the number of attacks resulting in at least five fatalities more than tripled, from 6 high-fatality shootings in the 1980s to 19 high fatality shootings in the 2000s. (para. 6)

Not only had the frequency and severity of mass shootings increased enormously over 30 years, it had finally affected the most innocent among us, America’s children. The climate seemed ripe for reasoned gun reform – 91% of Americans supported universal background checks (Light, Feeney, & Kamp, 2013, para. 18; Washington Post, 2013, para. 4). Yet, a year later, no major reform had been enacted; assault weapons were not banned; high capacity magazines were not limited; and, background checks were not expanded. In fact, since Sandy Hook, gun laws have become even more lax.[i] In the year after Sandy Hook, “194 children ages 12 and under . . . were reported in news accounts to have died in gun accidents, homicides, and suicides” (Follman, 2013, para. 2). Perhaps more chilling Everytown For Gun Safety reported that since Sandy Hook there have been 74 shootings in schools (Chokshi, 2014, para. 1).[ii] What went wrong? Why did Sandy Hook fail to provide an opening for gun reform? How did the country fail so dramatically to enact legislation with such overwhelming support? And, why did public support decline so rapidly in the face of ongoing violence?

Argumentation scholars are in a prime position to answer these questions. Debate guides the legal interpretation and promotes legislation on the question of guns. In the conclusion of his history of gun regulation laws in the United States, Michael Waldman (2014) of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law wrote,

Law students might be taught that the court is moved by powerhouse legal arguments or subtle shifts in doctrine. The National Rifle Association’s long crusade to bring its interpretation of the Constitution into the mainstream teaches a different lesson: Constitutional change is the product of public argument and political maneuvering. (para. 4)

The evolution of legal interpretations of the Second Amendment, illustrates the importance of public debate and dialogue in shaping our culture and laws. Argumentation scholars have a duty to praise and chastise strategic maneuvers because these arguments alter the trajectory of gun laws (Hollihan, 2011).

In this essay, we examine the critical discussion between President Barack Obama and Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association (NRA). We utilize a framework of strategic maneuvering to examine the Sandy Hook inspired debate to evaluate how well arguers can balance commitments to the procedures for reasonable resolution of a disagreement with the desire to have their standpoint accepted (van Eemeren, 2010). Frans van Eemeren (2010) identified three types of maneuvers:

1. topical potential,
2. audience adaptation, and
3. presentational devices that an arguer can use in the service of their standpoint.

But, if an arguer privileges a commitment to their standpoint over the norms of a critical discussion, then they derail the conversation. We argue that LaPierre overcame the commitments of 91% of Americans, because he more effectively intensified his audience’s convictions through strategic maneuvering and derailment. LaPierre’s appeal to the anxiety-ridden context of the critical discussion enabled him to position guns as a necessary condition to freedom. The fear that children’s safety and freedom is at risk, affectively charges the debate in his favour. Even if Obama won the most commitments, his followers suffered an intensity deficit. Commitments do not always translate into action. If an arguer is able to modulate the intensity of beliefs, then they are likely to prompt action.

2. Strategic maneuvering around the third order conditions of argumentation
For a critical discussion to occur, three conditions must be satisfied. The first-order condition of a critical discussion is the procedure for resolving differences of opinion – the code of conduct for arguers. The second-order conditions are the attitudinal requirements necessary for a critical discussion to occur. This is the process of reconciling commitments to a standpoint with commitments to the process of critical discussion (Hicks and Eckstein, 2012; Hicks, 2007; Mitchell, 2010). The third-order conditions of argument are the “external conditions” that must be satisfied for a critical discussion to occur (van Eemeren and Grootendorf, 2004; van Eemeren, 2010; Hicks and Eckstein, 2012). Darrin Hicks and Justin Eckstein (2012) elaborated three components to third-order condition of argumentation:

1. there must be “a social and political environment” that supports critical discussion mediating disagreement;
2. a culture of “freedom, autonomy, and equality” is necessary to use critical discussion to resolve conflicts; and finally,
3. there are affective conditions, such as conviction, risk, trust, required to facilitate critical discussion (pp. 333-334).

If these conditions are not met, then a critical discussion cannot function properly. For instance, if a debate happens in a political context that does not allow the free and open exchange of ideas, then it would be difficult to reasonably test a proposition.

In the aftermath of Sandy Hook, President Barack Obama and Wayne LaPierre leveraged different parts of the conditions to advocate their propositions. For Obama, the aftermath of Sandy Hook provided the ideal opportunity to pass “common sense” gun reforms, because the majority of Americans were mourning the loss of children. In contrast, LaPierre argued that affective conditions were not appropriate for a critical discussion because the populace was too sad to make a reasonable judgment. He also claimed that a critical discussion would violate the cultural norm of equity because it would unfairly distribute risk.

Obama’s argument was that Sandy Hook offered Congress a kairotic moment to pass gun regulations – even calling his White Paper “Now is the Time.” It had almost been 20 years since The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act and Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act were signed into law. These two pieces of legislation represented the last time any bill intending to curb gun violence could muster the votes to pass. Yet, the succession of mass shootings in Oak Creek, Wisconsin; Clackamas, Oregon; Aurora, Colorado; and Newtown, Connecticut over a 12-month time span drew into relief the problem of gun violence. Each shooting evoked a mixture of sadness and fear, sparked a dialogue, and shifted the democratic consensus on gun control. Obama said,

Over these past five days, the discussion has re-emerged as to what we might do not only to deter mass shootings in the future, but to reduce the epidemic of gun violence that plagues this country every single day. And it’s encouraging that people of all different backgrounds and beliefs and political persuasions have been willing to challenge some old assumptions and change some long-standing positions. (Obama, 2012, para. 3)

Above all, Obama reconfigured the Sandy Hook massacre as the context to mobilize a broader campaign against gun violence. The national outrage following the Sandy Hook shooting unsettled commitments, providing law makers an ideal moment to pass legislation. Obama leveraged the population’s sentiments to advance his standpoint for comprehensive gun control measures. He hoped that the nation’s grief could be translated into meaningful reform.

Obama explained that the majority of Americans are now in favour of “common sense” gun reforms, such as universal background checks, banning weapons of war, and funding more gun violence research. “The Majority” and “Most Americans” operated as a refrain to frame his policy initiative. For instance, he proclaimed,

A majority of Americans support banning the sale of military-style assault weapons. A majority of Americans support banning the sale of high-capacity ammunition clips. A majority of Americans support laws requiring background checks before all gun purchases so that criminals can’t take advantage of legal loopholes. (Obama, 2012, para. 8)

The tripartite repetition of “the majority,” what the Romans would call repetītiō, was used to promote his standpoint. According to Jean-François Augoyard and Henry Torgue (2005), “the principle role of repetition seems to reside in the offering of marks for the organization of a complex message” (p.93). The positing and return of a term, or a set of terms, connects the words together sonically into a rhythm. Rhythm has long been a tool of memory, helping pre-literate cultures transmit information across vast times and distances (Ong, 1989). Even today, we see the mnemonic power of repetition through the ubiquitous earworm – those little jingles that get stuck in your head. Yet, rhythm does more than convey information, it imbues a message with feeling. Different speeds, pitches, and arrangements modulate listeners’ moods, inflecting how they interpret content (Augoyard & Torgue, 2005). Put simply, repetition is a presentational device that modulates the reception of a message (Eckstein, 2014). For each of his proposals, he had the full support of the American public. Like other rhetors, this appeal to “the majority” was a presentational device indicating if everyone else is doing it, then you should too.

In the context of political deliberation, consensus also signals a political mandate to act. It pressures congress into acting with their constituents desires. If a policy has enough support, then a law should be passed. The only thing that could stop legislation from passing, Obama warned, is the power of special interest groups working behind the scenes to thwart legislation. Even 70 percent of members in the National Rifle Association favoured background checks, Obama claimed. This bit of reluctant authority buttressed Obama’s argument that his plan aligned with the interest of the population. Thus, if you are not in “the majority,” Obama argued, then you are allied with special interest groups that favour profits over people. Obama implored citizens to call members of congress and ask them “what’s more important – doing whatever it takes to get a [sic] A grade from the gun lobby that funds their campaigns, or giving parents some peace of mind when they drop their child off for first grade?”(Obama, 2013, para. 31). This bifurcated the audience into either for or against gun control. It foreclosed the middle space of abstention and forced people to pick a side. And, if they chose to oppose gun control, then, by implication, they opposed the democratic will of the people.

This created a difficult situation for LaPierre and the NRA, because any argument offered could be characterized as undemocratic. To circumvent this rhetorical situation, LaPierre shifted the debate away from the political context to the sentimental and cultural conditions of the critical discussion. Even if the political conditions favoured political actions, the affective and cultural conditions eclipsed that mandate. By appealing to the other conditions accompanying the critical discussion, LaPierre could offer reasons to suspend dialogue in favour of arming the teachers.

In response to the Obama administration’s claims, LaPierre first pivoted the affective conditions of the critical discussion. He scorned the Obama administration for instrumentalizing victims of the Sandy Hook massacre to advance a political agenda. For him, the immediate aftermath of a tragedy was a sacrosanct space demanding respect and reverence. LaPierre proclaimed, “Out of respect for the families and until the facts are known, the NRA has refrained from comment. While some have tried to exploit tragedy for political gain, we have remained respectably silent” (LaPierre, 2012, para. 2-3). Quite simply, he argued that people were not in the right frame of mind to rationally evaluate policy proposals – the population was grief stricken and did not possess the proper faculties to adjudicate deliberative matters. Just as it would be unreasonable to hold anyone to a decision made under duress, people should not be forced to legislate policy when they’re overcome with emotion. Instead, the populace should have deferred the discussion until sadness subsided and everyone could confront the question of gun violence rationally. Underwriting this assumption is the belief that rational policy should be quarantined from emotion. If policy lasts forever, it should not be grounded in a fleeting feeling or sentiment. So, even if Obama had the political mandate to pass gun regulation, this precedent was disqualified because it did not meet the affective conditions required for reasoned dialogue.

Instead of “trying to score political points,” LaPierre advocated immediately securing our schools. LaPierre’s strategic maneuver to define the topical potential as school safety allowed him to leverage the problem of security as a necessary condition that must be satisfied before debate could occur. If security was deferred for any period of time, the public risked another tragedy. He explained,

Before Congress reconvenes, before we engage in any lengthy debate over legislation, regulation, or anything else, as soon as our kids return to school after the holiday break, we need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work and by that I mean armed security. Right now today every school in the United States should plan meetings with parents, school administrators, teachers, local authorities and draw upon every resource that’s out there and available to erect a cordon of protection around our kids right now. (LaPierre, 2012, para. 36)

LaPierre used the timing of his speech to his advantage. If he was right that there was another copycat killer waiting in the wings, and Congress was in recess, they had no power to address the problem before another possible shooting. Securitizing the schools would have addressed school safety immediately.

The claim that another killer could strike works through double conditional reasoning. Brain Massumi (2010) explained, “the affect-driven logic of the would-have/could-have is what discursively ensures that the actual facts will always remain an open case, for all preemptive intents and purposes. It is what saves threat from having to materialize as a clear and present danger – or even an emergent danger – in order to command action” (p. 55). That is, conditional logic attenuates the burden of proof onto the speaker, because the mere fact an event could happen is sufficient to justify action. For example, LaPierre asked, “Does anybody really believe that the next Adam Lanza isn’t planning his attack on a school, he’s already identified at this very moment?” (LaPierre, 2012, para. 18). Each step in the conditional removes the burden of evidence – the fact that there could be another killer does not prove there is another killer. And, the ascription that such a person would kill presupposes a level of intentionality that is difficult to prove. Each conflation of the conditional for reasonable, amplifies uncertainty and infuses it with fear. It is irrelevant what the actual conditions of the debate are; the conditional potential a threat materializes is sufficient to prompt feelings of dread and fear. The threat feels “so superlatively real that it translates into a felt certainty about the world, even in the absence of other grounding for it in the observable world. The assertion has the felt certainty of a gut feeling’” (Massumi, 2010, p.55). This sort of pre-emptive logic justifies the use of pre-emptive measures to prevent another school shooting. The fact is that a double conditional statement means it is always a looming threat, never resolved. So, even if another Lanza never materialized, he still could. As a result, LaPierre used fear to intensify his followers’ commitments to guns.

Additionally, LaPierre’s arguments were buttressed by the fact that Congress was on break making the prospect of any solution abstract and uncertain. Hence, any sort of critical discussion about guns was inappropriate because it unfairly distributed risk onto the bodies of students – it was the children that were at risk while the nation decided the best way to protect them. As LaPierre pointed out numerous times in the speech, Obama and Congress had the time to discuss and think about guns, because they had the privilege of being protected by guns. As a result, LaPierre’s arguments constructed guns as a necessary component of the third-order conditions of argumentation. If everyone was not adequately protected with guns, then deliberation could not occur.

3. Conclusion
Multiple polls taken after Obama’s January address found that at least 91% of Americans were in favour of universal background checks (CBS News, 2013, para. 1; Saad, 2013, para. 1; Quinnipiac University, 2013, para. 1). This would appear to be a win for the Obama administration because most Americans signalled a commitment to gun control. Yet, nothing was done. Why? The answer resides in the difference between commitment and conviction. Although commitments and conviction are related, they are not synonymous. Commitments are discursive statements of acceptance or rejection of a proposition; and convictions are the attachments underwriting beliefs (Hicks, 2007; Godden, 2010). While it is possible to extract a discursive concession from an opponent, it does not translate into an attitude change. Hence, even though Obama won the most commitments, LaPierre won the battle for conviction. The lack of any significant gun reform in the wake of Newtown demonstrates “the power of a determined, passionate minority to overcome the half-hearted, unfocused wishes of a majority” (Economist, 2013, para. 6). Indeed, Obama may have attracted numerous supporters, but not nearly as many with as much vigour as the NRA. LaPierre’s constellation of propositions simply resonated with his followers, putting Obama at an affective disadvantage.

In the confrontation stage of a critical discussion, interlocutors strategically maneuver to define the nature of the disagreement advantageously. The Obama administration advocated that Sandy Hook was another iteration of a broader gun violence epidemic. If they won this proposition, then the critical discussion would gravitate towards the question of gun control. It also allowed Obama to circumvent gun rights discourse by demonstrating that guns inflict tangible harm. Conversely, the NRA posited that Sandy Hook was evidence of the dangerous world we live in. If the critical discussion changed to security, then the NRA could move the debate back to gun rights and to each person’s right to protect their loved ones. Concurrently, both sides maneuvered around the third order conditions of the critical discussion. For Obama, the wake of the shooting provided him with a democratic mandate and a kairotic moment to pass gun control laws. For LaPierre, the conditions of the debate were unfair because they exploited grief and would leave children vulnerable to another attack.

To evaluate strategic manoeuvers that occur in the confrontation stage, Andone (2012) offered three “soundness conditions” that must be satisfied for a move to be legitimate. First, a move must facilitate the progression of the critical discussion. If any strategic maneuver impedes this progression, then it is a derailment. Second, each reason should relate to antecedent reasons and maneuvers. Reasons offered that are not germane to the dialogic exchange risk muddling the discussion and distract from the reasonable resolution of disagreement. Third, maneuvers must be easily apprehended by both parties as relevant to the critical discussion. This rule, Andone noted, functions to exclude the tactical deployment of unclear language to confuse the critical discussion. If any of these conditions are not satisfied, then an arguer is shirking their commitment to the procedures of critical discussion.

Obama’s use of the Sandy Hook shooting to advocate gun reform was reasonable because:

1. it propelled the critical discussion;
2. it was relevant to gun violence and
3. it was a clear presentation of his standpoint. If we don’t discuss problems of public concern when they arise, then when is the appropriate time?

If we apply LaPierre’s accusation that politicizing tragedy was a derailment to other contexts, it does not make sense. For example, the decision to make sex offenders’ information public (to enact Megan’s Laws) in the wake of Megan Kanka’s grisly murder was not met with accusations of politicizing a tragedy. Just the opposite, the passage of the laws was deemed appropriate and reasonable. As Arthur Chu (2014) recently remarked in the wake of the Santa Barbara, CA mass shooting, “The only reason to talk about tragedy . . . is to try and prevent bad things from happening in the future” (para. 38). LaPierre’s appeal to not politicize a tragedy was a strategic maneuver – if the NRA could defer the debate long enough, then the affective reside of the tragedy would subside and the audience might be more receptive to his standpoint. As a result, both commitments and convictions in support of gun reform would wane. Yet, LaPierre’s claim was not quite a derailment. He represented Obama’s position as exploiting a tragedy, inviting him perhaps to clarify his proposition to agree with LaPierre that we should have a conversation about the “less politicized” school safety. Thus, LaPierre’s maneuver was also reasonable because it attempted to progress the critical discussion, albeit toward the problem space of school safety.

However, LaPierre’s injunction to suspend the critical discussion and immediately adopt his proposition was a derailment. Although there are some incidents where a critical discussion may not be the most appropriate course of action because of an impending danger, his use of the double conditional logic posited an open ended threat that justified the permanent suspension of critical discussion. Indeed, the call for suspension of deliberation in the face of an ongoing systemic threat was a derailment. The notion that guns preserve the conditions for democracy is a common refrain from the gun lobby. As the Economist (2013) retrospective on Sandy Hook pointed out,

Attend gun rallies, watch speeches or interview politicians, and it could not be clearer that the single most potent message of the pro-gun lobby revolves around tyranny, and the idea that American patriots need to be armed to prevent the government from snuffing out their liberties. The second amendment’s right to bear arms, in this telling, underpins all other rights, and any move to qualify that right amounts to evidence of a liberticide government at work. (para. 18)

This sort of logic acts as a rhetorical trump card to end critical discussions. If guns are a prerequisite to freedom, then they become codified within the third-order condition of argumentation. This imbues the topic of gun control with an affective intensity that is difficult to surmount with reasoned discussion. In short, it renders guns sacrosanct.

Fundamentally, reform was blocked after Sandy Hook because LaPierre’s supporters demonstrated greater conviction than the majority of the public who stated commitment to common sense gun reforms but stayed home demonstrating little or no conviction in support of reforms. The group Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense In America (Moms Demand Action) suggested that gun reforms were blocked because the NRA was a vocal minority demonstrating high levels of conviction. Heather Whaley, a member of Moms Demand Action in Connecticut, posted a picture of a tally sheet from a legislative hearing on facebook. She wrote,

Often people ask me . . . why the NRA is able to block efforts at common sense reform. Just after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, I testified in front of the CT State Legislature. The room was packed with NRA members . . . Because there were so few of us on the other side, one of the guys who worked in the legislative office building showed me this tally sheet. On the left is a mark for every person who had called in opposed to any reform to our gun laws. Those calling in asking for change are marked on the right. Keep in mind this was in CT about a month after the shooting in Sandy Hook. That’s why our gun laws are the way they are. (Green, personal communication, June 26, 2014)

The photo of the tally sheet shows approximately 850 tally marks on the left indicating NRA supporters who took the time to call their representative opposing reforms. It shows only three tally marks on the right indicating members of the public calling to support reforms. So what strategy can Obama purse in the future to secure legal reforms? We contend that Obama and others in favour of reform must shift argumentative strategies to energize smaller populations who can demonstrate greater conviction in support of gun reforms. Winning the debate in a public speech is not enough. Argumentation must inculcate conviction to have any hope of creating change. Without such conviction, supporters will remain apathetic and will not demonstrate their conviction to elected representatives. Groups like Moms Demand Action, founded by Shannon Watts after Newtown, have proven that sufficient conviction can spark reforms. Among numerous campaigns that borrow from NRA strategies, Sarah Jane Green, a member of Moms Demand Action in North Carolina, stated that the group successfully lobbied several national chains including Starbucks, Chipotle, Jack in the Box, Sonic, and Chili’s to ban guns on their premises (personal communication, June 26, 2014).[iii] Until those who support reform can instil sufficient conviction in their followers, there cannot be legislative change. Obama and others supporting reforms must craft arguments that inspire followers to demonstrate conviction through phone calls to representatives, letters, postcards, demonstrations, and other strategies. In the current climate, gun reforms only have a chance if those with greater conviction act. As the NRA has proven, even when only 9% of the public supports your position, sufficient demonstration of conviction can block congressional action. President Obama needs to find strategies to increase the conviction of supporters who can act in effective ways to limit guns (e.g. asking individual businesses to ban guns, conducting social media campaigns, staging demonstrations, grading representatives on their gun reform positions, etc.). Only by building a coalition of such activists can Obama hope to implement widely popular legal reforms.

NOTES
i. For example, Georgia just passed an open carry law that allows citizens to openly carry their guns anywhere.
ii. This number is not without controversy – the 74 school shootings is based on defining a school shooting as an incident involving a gun in an education settings. Gun rights advocates take issue with this definition and argue a school shooting only occurs if a shooter came with the intent of killing lots of people. Thus, when an individual comes to a campus with the specific purpose of killing a particular individual, it does not count as a school shooting. For more over this definitional debate see Binder, M. (2014, June 20). Gun nuts’ infuriating craze: Why they want to redefine ‘school shooting. Salon.com http://www.salon.com/2014/06/20/gun_nuts_bizarre_new_craze_trying_to_change_definition_of_school_shootings/
iii. One potential benefit of these strategies is that they bait gun rights extremists into directly revealing derailment strategies including threats of violence regularly used by gun rights supporters. For instance, the successes of Moms Demand Action have drawn rhetorical demonstrations of misogynistic violence against women from gun supporters and direct threats targeted at those demonstrating for change. Making such rhetorically violent derailments visible may be a step in undermining the credibility of gun rights extremists. See: Alec MacGillis. (December, 2, 2013). Gun lovers are attacking Newtown activists with violent, misogynistic messages. The New Republic. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115790/gun-control-moms-face-misogynistic-violent-online-harassment; and, Mark Follman. (May 15, 2014), Spitting, stalking, rape threats: How gun extremists target women. Mother Jones. http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2014/05/guns-bullying-open-carry-women-moms-texas.

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Abstract: As a verbal-dueling, Kenre is still vitality in Yi area of Southwest China. It is characterized by poetic wisdom. Kenre is not only a kind of verbal behavior and dialogue art, but also a way of communication and inheritance. The mode of mental development in Kenre dueling includes evoking, remembering, deriving, creating, principling and rhyming.

Keywords: Kenre dueling mental Yi minority

Large-scale debating thoughts have occurred in China, India, and Ancient Greek, which constitute the three ancient debating system. Various Chinese ethnic minorities also enjoy a long history of debating tradition, among which, the Kenre dialectical practice of Yi minority is a common example. “Kenre” is a kind of transliteration from Yi language, while “Ke” means utterance and “Nre” represents removal and compromising. Together, “Kenre” means verbal-dueling. The dueling is a direct dialogue, which centers on some certain object or question with the aim to reach the correct answer to the object. It ends when one party win the dueling.

Section 1: the formula of kenre dueling
The process of Kenre dueling varies slightly among different Yi areas. It is generally divided into the first and second halves. The first half follows the procedure: opening remarks, narration or debating, retrieving the classics, and setting up questions. They welcome the guests and compliment the other party with polite remarks. This can be viewed as an impromptu speech to relax the atmosphere and comfort the guests.

The host party: The esteemed guests, your silence worries the guests. How is everything going in your home? How about the cereal harvest? Does the lady defend the enemy? Does the lad marry?
The guest party: It is a great honor to attend the ceremony. Everything is fine in my home. The husbandry is prospers and the crops enjoy a good harvest. The family and friends are safe.

There is a transitional period called “go and have a look”. It is somehow a challenge for debating. It is said that “We should like two energetic deer to compete”.

The procedure for the second half is like this: the origin of the epic, the evolution of the epic, and the narration of the epic history. The first half mainly tests the participant’s response ability while the second half is to test the proficiency of the epics. The words and remarks, like endless bullets, come out from the participants continuously. The second half is based on the epic named Hnewo Teyyr. The debate combines the clues and stories to the history events, like creation, immigration, wars, and settlement, and cultivates lots of hero images.

If the debate reaches a draw, then the riddle or examination session will follow. This session is for the completion of experience and knowledge. The host party usually narrates the places he/she traveled, the historic resorts, the beauty of the people, and the customs exaggeratedly. Finally, one “referee” (usually a senior citizen), on behalf of the audience, will make a toast to the participants, which represents the peaceful compromising. Kenre dueling is somehow a mental sport inclusive of cooperation and competition.

The popularity of debating in human history is because that it is a unique dialogue education. Dialogue is the real conflicts between different thoughts, and the approach for truth exploration and self-recognition. Jaspers (1991) thought that without considering the social and historical background, education itself can be divided into the following three categories: scholastic education, master and apprentice education, and Socratic education. The last one means that there is no fixed educational model, and the learning party and the teaching party can think freely.

After endless inquiries and questions, students and teachers will find themselves naive to the absolute truth. Teachers will arouse students’ sense for exploration. This kind of spawning induction education is advocated by Socrates. This educational method will arouse the internal potential of students, instead of putting too much pressure from the outside (Jaspers, 1991, p. 46). Socrates himself was a philosopher who practiced this kind of dialogue education.

Section 2: the mode of mental development in kenre dueling
Human’s mind has the characteristic of bilaterally. Paying a attention to the realistic life from the perspective of dueling, human’s thinking is a process of cognitive game of inherent dialectic. The real idea is dialogue, which is important ways for human beings to understand themselves and the world. The real education is dialogue education. Kenre dueling is a kind of Socratic education. Before activities dialogu with classic, In activities dialogu with others, After activities dialogu with himself. The mode of mental development in Kenre dueling includes evoking, remembering, deriving, creating, principling and rhyming.

Sub-sections 1:.Evoking is the starting of dialogue intentionality in Kenre dueling
The essence for Kenre dueling is the competition of abundance of knowledge and experience. It regards the origin of objects and life experience as the logic evidence. The debater will always exaggerate the places he/she visited, and the scenery he/she saw. The debater will always challenge to ask the opponent in a provocative way: Have you ever been to somewhere? Have you ever seen something?

Sub-sections 2: Remembering is the representing of knowledge in Kenre dueling
The contents of dueling include the folklore, the oratory skill, the living skill, the traditional rituals and festivals. It has the moral recognition, innovation, memorizing, and entertainment. The influence posed by the knowledge to the individual varies greatly according to individuals’ interests, hobbies, styles, and abilities. For human beings, Kenre dueling is a kind of self-education, which is a major means for the carrying of human culture. Education activity, as a pass of the accumulated knowledge, is for each individual. As a result, this kind of inheritance will influence the individual first. This kind of influence is quite different. Under this kind of influence, people usually want to be known and to be capable (Hu, 1999, p. 315).

Sub-sections 3: Deriving is the projecting of thinking in Kenre dueling
From the beginning of the argumentive intentionality to the poetic expression, the using of formula of defense of Kenre dueling is highly. The dueling process is a process of improvisation. No memory means no creation. The improvisational process is a conversion process from change to un-change. The categorization and the specialization are strategies for creating in Kenre dueling

Sub-sections 4: Creating is the generating of thinking in Kenre dueling
For example, in the greeting between debaters of both sides when they start the Kenre dueling, change refers to the names or symbols representing characters of things: pheasants in the Fern grass, caraganas in the bamboo, bears in the forest, deer in the mountain, honeys in the rocks below, otters in the river front, white dogs in the courtyard outside, heavy pigs in the courtyard inside, chickens under the eaves, girls in the house, boys in the sitting room and so on; un-change refers to the functional words which represent their action: peaceful or not, auspicious or not, hospitable, no talking and other phatic words, which of function of welcoming the arrival of the guests.

Sub-sections 5: Principling is the structuring of logic in Kenre dueling
Kenre dueling is a language activity among the participants. Debaters prove their own viewpoint, overrule the opponents’ view, and eliminate the controversy through individual statement or combination of statements. For a long time, either as a phenomenon or a question, dueling is followed closely by logic, rhetoric, and pragmatics. This is not only because debate is a common phenomenon and a language activitity, it also reflects the disparity among individuals. Different thoughts will continue to advance in the debate and discussion. Two opposite thinking skills have been established in our mind. The first one is to categorize, and the second one is to treat each object differently. They also breed the seeds for debate and negotiation. The categorical logos is always resisted by the individualized ant-logos (Billig, 2011, p. 159).

Sub-sections 6: Rhyming is the expressing of poetic wisdom in Kenre dueling
Kenre dueling is based on a classical epic named Hnewo Teyyr, which contains 14 chapters including the creation of world. “Hnewo” is a transliteration of Yi language, it means verbal passing of knowledge. For the Yi minority, this epic is a chronological book, which is widely spread and accepted by Kenre dueling. The language is always exaggerated and innovative.

The Kenre dueling is a process to cultivate the Yi minority’s poetic wisdom of tracking the origin. In Liangshan area, where Kenre dueling exists, rituals are a common ingredient for life. The ritual participants exist and divided according to their blood relation and location. During the rituals, people share the same sorrow, happiness, and destiny. They dance, sing, and pray together. They also express their wishes, exchange the information, promote the mutual recognition, and reinforce their union and harmony. Rituals have an effect on strengthening the social action and tribe agglomeration. Kenre dueling comes from this kind of ritual life and is marked as an outstanding feature for public social life. Kenre dueling is an excellent ingredient of the verbal culture, which should be advocated and further developed. The limit of blood relation and family boundary should be broken. It should be developed in the entire nation and whole society. Then, it will influence the whole nation and society in a higher level. The spirit of collectivism, competition, and union should be fully exerted, and establish a new sense of honor which means sharing of weal and woe. This new sense of honor will be rooted in the emotional conciseness of the Yi minority, and will be a spiritual power for mutual assistance and mutual prosperity. The spirit for tracking the origin, the system of sharing the same name between the father and the son together with the poetic thinking and nature, have formed the cultural tradition of poetic wisdom (Gu, 2011, p. 21)

References
Billig. M. (2011). Arguing and thinking – A rhetorical approach to social psychology. (K. Li, Trans.). Tianjin, China: Chinese People University Press.
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Hu, D. H. (1999). Educational theory. Lanzhou, China: Lanzhou Education Press.
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Abstract: Methods of critical social analysis can be understood as deliberative dialectical reasoning whose main argument type is practical argumentation, with explanation embedded. How then does dialectical argumentation fit into critical method overall? I address this issue in terms of the relationship between dialectical argumentation and other facets of dialectic identified within Hegelian-Marxist dialectics, questioning the assumption in argumentation studies that the two are not connected.

Key words: critical method, deliberation, dialectic, explanation, practical argumentation

1. Introduction
In Fairclough & Fairclough (2012) I argued that critical discourse analysis (CDA) needs to incorporate analysis and evaluation of argumentation because political discourse – a focus for CDA – is primarily practical argumentation and deliberation. I also argued that critical social analysis more generally needs to do the same in order to go beyond just claiming that discourse may contingently have constructive effects on social reality, to showing how: discourses provide reasons for/against acting in certain ways, and they may have constructive effects in so far as practical arguments stand up to critical evaluation, and lead to decisions, which lead to action, which has transformative effects on reality.

In Fairclough (2013), I also suggested that critical social analysis, including CDA, is itself (self-evidently) a form of discourse, and that it is centrally a form of practical argumentation. Thus (practical) argumentation and its analysis and evaluation are relevant in two ways to critical analysis of political discourse: as a primary feature of the discourse being analysed, and of the discourse – and method – of critical analysis.

In this paper I offer an account of how practical argumentation connects to other components of the method of critical social science and CDA, how the components are integrated, in terms of relations between dialectical argumentation and other facets of dialectic identified within Hegelian-Marxist as well as classical dialectics. One other component of the method is explanation; another is an orientation to and aspiration to contribute to transformative action to change existing states of affairs in broadly emancipatory ways. If, as I propose, the methods of critical social science and CDA have a dialectical character, in what way are they dialectical, and how might the dialectical character of argumentation be articulated with other dialectics which are distinguished in critical social science? Bhaskar’s work on dialectic (1989, 1993) is especially useful here. In part this argument is addressed to argumentation theory and analysis, which we draw upon extensively in the book. “Dialectic” for argumentation analysts is a facet of argumentation alongside logic and rhetoric. Yet a significant tradition in critical social analysis aims to be dialectical in a wider and broadly Hegelian-Marxist sense. From this point of view, dialectical argumentation is one form of dialectic amongst others, what Bhaskar calls “epistemological dialectic”; there are also ontological, practical and relational dialectics. What I am suggesting to argumentation analysts is that, in so far as they are concerned to apply their work in social analysis, they should perhaps consider how dialectical argumentation relates to these other dialectics. The argument is also addressed to critical policy analysts (Fairclough 2013): in so far as critique is conceived in a dialectical way, what is the place of dialectical argumentation within a critical conception of dialectic? My answer is that we can conceive critical method as dialectical reasoning: an epistemologically based, which means argumentatively based, constellation of epistemological, ontological, practical and relational dialectics – giving it an essentially argumentative character.

2. An example: the Kilburn Manifesto
My argument is of a theoretical nature, but I shall begin with a concrete example and introduce the main lines of my argument in a practical way.

The Kilburn Manifesto is a critical social analysis written by a team whose core members – Stuart Hall, Doreen Massey, Michael Rustin – are critical scholars in various areas of social science, in which the question of “what is to be done”, of action to change existing neo-liberal social reality in emancipatory ways, is accentuated. It is a “manifesto by instalments” published in the journal Soundings (from number 53, 2013) and on the Manifesto website (www.lwbooks.co.uk/journals/soundingd/manifesto.html, see References for the instalments so far). I have space only for a sketch of my analysis of the Manifesto and my interpretation of it as a form of “dialectical reasoning” (see extracts and annotations in Appendix).

The Manifesto has a layered and embedded character. The first layer is argumentation for changing the existing neoliberal state of affairs on the basis of critique and analysis of it, and certain values and goals. It is a form of practical reasoning and argumentation. The second layer represents how neoliberals have changed the prior social democratic state of affairs, including their arguments for doing so based upon their own critique and analysis, values and goals. The third layer suggests the same sort of thing for social democrats changing the prior state of affairs, but without detail and without representing their arguments.

I suggest that the method of critical social science (and CDA) can be viewed as a form of dialectical reasoning, and that the Manifesto is an example. Dialectical reasoning has the four elements A-D. Its organising form is practical reasoning from Circumstance, Value, Goal and Means premises to a Claim for action, with explanation embedded within it.

A. (Normative) critique of existing discourse
B. Explanation of discourse as effect and cause in the existing state of affairs
C. (Explanatory) critique of existing state of affairs
D. Advocacy of action to change existing state of affairs

A-D include epistemological (A, C), ontological (D) and practical (D) elements. Both the first and second layers in the Manifesto include the elements A-D. I have presented extracts in Appendix 1 in a way which illustrates this, though the elements are presented as stages (1, 2a, 2b and 3) of dialectical reasoning as I suggest below.

Bhaskar (1993) characterizes the essence of dialectic as “absenting constraints on the absenting of absences”. He argues that being includes absence, a necessary assumption in the move he is making from being to becoming (change). In his terms, the “real” includes an unactualized potential as well as what is “actual”. The actual is contradictory, and includes ideas (imaginaries) for states of affairs that could and maybe should but don’t presently exist, discourses which are different from those that presently exist, ‘goods’ which are different from the “ills” that actually exist etc. “Absences” subsumes all of these. Critique presupposes and is targeted at absences in this sense. Transformative action (praxis) to change the existing reality, including action for emancipatory change, seek to “absent absences” – eliminate parts of what exists, replace it, create new actualities. So procedures for working through flaws, contradictions, the coexistence of actual states of affairs and imaginaries for possible/desirable new states of affairs – all seen as absences – are the basis for transcending them, and achieving better modes of thought and forms of life. We can gloss Bhaskar’s formulation as: eliminating constraints on the correction or overcoming or elimination and replacement of absences. There are constraints on eliminating absences, and part of the business of dialectic is to eliminate such constraints.

The Manifesto includes (element B, explanation) analysis of causal relations in which neoliberal discourse can be both effect and cause – cause of both existing states of affairs and associated “ills”; it advocates eliminating (“absenting”) neoliberal discourse and replacing it with different discourse. This is also a move in eliminating constraints on the correction of absences: it can contribute to eliminating and replacing (“absenting”) existing states of affairs and “ills”, because the causal efficacy of discourses is a constraint on doing so.

Dialectical reasoning is an epistemologically-based constellation of epistemological, ontological, practical and relational dialectics. It is epistemologically based because it is a form of (primarily practical) reasoning, realized in practical argumentation and deliberation. It diagnoses through critique, beginning with critique of discourse, “absences” in discourse, in states of affairs, and in terms of “ills”, as a basis for advocating action to eliminate (“absent”) such absences. It is we might say focused upon error and correcting error as a contribution to knowledge. But it also has embedded within it ontological dialectic, the correction of absences in states of affairs, and is directed towards practical dialectic, the elimination and replacement of “ills”; and it includes relational dialectic, the elimination and replacement of existing relations (including cause/effect relations) between discourse (and more broadly “ideas”) and material facets of existing reality. The Manifesto is not overtly presented in the form which I have suggested for dialectical reasoning (and will make more explicit in the next section), for good presentational and rhetorical reasons, but it is an example of dialectical reasoning which can be reconstructed in accordance with this form.

3. Critical social analysis (and cda) as a form of dialectical reasoning
Critical social analysis is directed towards transformative action to change existing social reality for the better, i.e. in broadly emancipatory ways. It does not itself constitute such action, it seeks to support it, it moves towards it. It is a critique of existing social reality, including discourse, through which it arrives at accounts of existing states of affairs which, together with particular values and goals, and claims about what actions might achieve those goals, provide reasons in support of particular advocated lines of action. In other words, it is a form of practical reasoning. However, this is incomplete. To reach reasoned conclusions about lines of action also requires explanation of existing states of affairs.

So the form of reasoning is practical reasoning with explanation incorporated within it, and can be characterized in terms of four stages corresponding to elements A-D above. The second and third are labelled 2a and 2b because they both appertain to explanation. This accords with the basic character of critical method, as I see it: it links together critique, explanation and action.

* Stage 1. Normative critique of discourse (including practical argumentation) in terms of truth, rightness, truthfulness (Habermas).
* Stage 2a. Explanation of normatively flawed features of discourse in terms of features of existing social reality.
* Stage 2b. Explanatory critique of aspects of existing social reality, focussed upon relation between discourse and other elements.
* Stage 3. Advocacy of lines of transformative action to change existing reality “for the better” (in emancipatory ways).

The main argumentative scheme is practical argumentation. Stages 1 and 2 appertain to the Circumstances premise, with explanation embedded in the practical argument at this stage. Stage 3 appertains to the Claim, with reasons for the advocated line of action being drawn from the Goal (and indirectly the Value) and Means premises as well as the Circumstances premise. In terms of genre, this is deliberation: critical social analysis is in dialogue with existing argumentation which it critically evaluates.

3.1 Stage 1: Normative critique of discourse
There is a lot of common ground on Stage 1, the starting point of method. Aristotle’s method was to start from phainomena, and from endoxa – generally accepted beliefs and opinions, what people say, ordinary people or “the wise” (Nussbaum 1986/2001, Evans 1977). We might now say starting from current discourse. Similarly Marx’s method – Marx begins his critique of political economy from the language, the discourse, of the political economists, and shows its contradictions, thereby identifying problems which need to be resolved in systematic inquiry and analysis (Fairclough & Graham 2002). CDA also starts from, and critiques, current discourse, and there is also a wider tendency within critical social analysis to do so. Pragma-dialectics, one of the most influential current approaches to analysis and evaluation of argumentation, also proceeds from current discourse – existing arguments.

Differences arise over what methods proceed to. Pragma-dialectics proceeds I think from discourse to discourse – from different “opinions” to shared “opinions”. But there is a different view of dialectic in Aristotle as proceeding to, seeking to attain, “a truth of some sort by inquiry” (Krabbe 2002), though the precise role of dialectic in the achievement of truth, its relationship to analytic in Aristotle, is a matter of debate (Smith 1997, p. xviii). And for Marx, as well as CDA and critical social analysis more generally, dialectic proceeds from discourse to, or towards, truth, in a practical sense: the right thing to do, the right action to take. In the version of dialectical reasoning I am proposing, dialectic proceeds from existing discourse and normative critique of existing discourse to advocacy of a line of action as the right action to take, on the basis of explanation of existing discourse in terms of existing social reality and explanatory critique of aspects of existing social reality.

3.2 Stages 2a and 2b: explanation and explanatory critique
Explanation is an essential component of critique with emancipatory aims; we cannot get from critique of existing discourse, or of social reality more generally, to or towards emancipation, without explaining their normative flaws; without explanatory comprehension of existing reality, we have no basis for identifying, deciding upon and taking, action which may contingently transform existing social reality (Bhaskar 1989, 1993[i]). For instance, we can’t assess the likely consequences of action.

Bhaskar’s position is that “beliefs” represent/interpret “social objects”, which is their epistemological facet and a relationship open to critique, and are both effects and causes of “social objects”, which is their ontological aspect and requires explanations. Therefore (normative) critique alone is not sufficient for critical social analysis, it must be combined with explanation. Or, in the terms of the following quotation, “criticism” (normative critique) needs to be combined with “comprehension” (“begreifen” as well as “be- und verurteilen”):

This passage [from a text written by David Urquhart] shows, at one and the same time, the strength and the weakness of that kind of criticism which knows how to judge and condemn the present, but not how to comprehend it (Marx 1954, p. 474 footnote 1).

Explanation is – usually implicitly – present in existing frameworks for evaluating argument (Fairclough & Fairclough 2012): in critical questioning of arguments in terms of sincerity as possible rationalizations, of truth and rightness, and of consequences of advocated action. So it’s not just a matter of bringing explanation in from outside, so to speak, it’s also a matter of drawing out what is already present. Embedding explanation in practical argumentation (deliberation) extends the object of critique from (normative) critique of discourse to (explanatory) critique of existing states of affairs (including relations between discourse and other elements). So CDA – and this is perhaps a general model for critical social analysis – starts from a critique of discourse, but its critical object is not just discourse but existing social reality, using discourse as a “point of entry” into this wider critique.

In the case of rationalizations, Fairclough & Fairclough (2012) adopt Audi’s (2006) view that they fail to meet normative criteria for good argumentation and are open to critical evaluation on those grounds, which is compatible both with a pragma-dialectical view of a sincerity condition for speech acts and Habermas’s view of sincerity as a precondition for rational discourse. Rationalizations are cases where the reasons that are offered in support of a claim are not the reasons that support the claim from the viewpoint of the arguer. An example we discuss in the book (pp. 178 ff.) is Brian Griffiths’ – Vice-Chairman of Goldman Sachs International – arguments for paying high “compensation” and bonuses to bankers and tolerating the inequality entailed as a means for achieving the goal of prosperity and opportunity for all. One Guardian reader’s response to a report about this was that Griffiths’ “trickle-down” argument is a “scam for a bunch of … greedy incompetent lying bastards to justify their outrageous salaries”. This is normative critique – it’s a “scam”, a deception, in our terms a rationalization – but also a partly implicit explanation, which is twofold: the real cause of inflated “compensation” and inequality is greed; and the cause of the rationalization is the need to provide justification and to hide the real cause. This is the basis for explanatory critique that connects stage 2b to stage 3: the state of affairs which allows bankers etc to get away with such greed and such rationalization is a flaw in existing social reality which should be eliminated.

Critical evaluation of the premises of arguments in terms of truth or falsity includes ideological critique, which is a form of explanatory critique: the claim that inflated “compensation” leads to prosperity and opportunity for all can be normatively criticized as untrue, but also explained as necessary to sustain the existing state of affairs, i.e. as ideological. It can be subjected to explanatory critique: a state of affairs which requires such untruths is a flaw which should be eliminated.

Another way of critically questioning a practical argument is by showing that the action advocated in its Claim is likely to produce consequences which undermine important goals. But claims about what the likely consequences are need to be supported by explanations of what causes what in the existing social reality.

4. Dialectical character of critical method
I have already introduced Bhaskar’s view of the essence of dialectic as “absenting constraints on the absenting of absences” and his distinction between epistemological, ontological , practical and relational dialectics. Epistemological dialectic is concerned with eliminating (“absenting”) errors and so advancing knowledge through argumentation, ontological dialectic is changing (“absenting”) states of affairs, practical dialectic is eliminating/replacing (“absenting”) ‘ills’, relational dialectic is “absenting”/replacing existing relations between discourse and other aspects of reality. Bhaskar (1993, p. 3) also claims that “in its most general sense, dialectic has come to signify any … process of conceptual or social … conflict, interconnection and change, in which the generation, interpenetration and clash of oppositions, leading to their transcendence in a fuller or more adequate mode of thought or form of life … plays a key role”.

Dialectical argumentation and deliberation is epistemological dialectic. Dialectic as dialogue, dialectical argument, is social interconnection and sometimes conflict in which different standpoints and arguments are opposed with an orientation to moving towards the truth and the right thing to do. This may be dialogue in the most basic and direct sense, face-to-face dialogue, or monologue which draws different standpoints and argument into indirect dialogue. The opposition or clash between standpoints and arguments involves a process of normative evaluation of all the standpoints/arguments at issue. One focus of evaluation is upon contradictions within arguments; the focus more generally is upon, in Bhaskar’s (1993) terms, “theory-practice” contradictions, contradictions between what is said and what is really the case.

However, setting what is said against what really is the case requires, as I have indicated in discussing explanation, a shift to ontological analysis, analysis of states of affairs, which is the basis for explanatory evaluation of states of affairs, with a focus upon contradictions in them which involves relations between discourse and other elements of states of affairs. Ontological dialectic is “absenting” states of affairs, changing states of affairs to different states of affairs. Our account of practical argumentation in Fairclough & Fairclough (2012) takes goals in the Goal premise to be imagined possible future states of affairs which the action advocated in the Claim is advocated as a possible means of achieving, to replace the existing state of affairs as represented in the Circumstantial premise. On this account, the epistemological dialectic is articulated with ontological dialectic: “absenting” erroneous arguments, including erroneous representations of states of affairs and erroneous representations of the consequences of action, in favour of better arguments and representations, is articulated with “absenting” flawed states affairs – eliminating them and replacing them with other states of affairs which exclude their flaws.

However, epistemological and ontological dialectic are also articulated with practical dialectic, with anticipated transformative action to absent “ills” in the existing social reality, using “ills” as a cover term for aspects of it which we have good reasons – which of course have to be provided – to see as antithetical to human well-being, the “good society”, and so forth. And these three dialectics are articulated with relational dialectic, “absenting” existing relations between discourse and other aspects of reality, replacing them with new relations.

Hence dialectical reasoning as I have construed it can be seen as an epistemologically-centred constellation of epistemological, ontological, practical and relational dialectics. It is epistemologically-centred in that what we are talking about, after all, is a form of reasoning and argumentation. It incorporates practical dialectic not in the sense that it actually is transformative action to eliminate “ills”, which it is not, but in the sense that it anticipates and seeks to serve and be articulated with it. It incorporates ontological analysis and dialectic not in the sense that it performs such analysis, which it does not, or in the sense that it changes states of affairs, which it does not, but in the sense that it necessarily presupposes and draws upon ontological analysis, and in anticipating transformative action to eliminate “ills” it also anticipates, seeks to serve and to be articulated with the “absenting” of existing states of affairs and the production of new states of affairs.

Let me relate this to a particular area of critical social analysis. Policy studies has made an “argumentative turn” which recognizes the centrality of argumentation in policy debate and policy-making, and critical analysis of argumentation in critical policy analysis. Its concerns are not however limited to argumentation and argumentation analysis as such, but to how they connect with diagnosis of problems in existing states of affairs and the overcoming of these problems and the “ills” associated with them through changing states of affairs, eliminating and replacing (“absenting”) existing states of affairs. Addressing the constellation of epistemological, ontological, practical and relational dialectics through a focus on dialectical reasoning could therefore be a way of approaching its concerns.

5. Conclusion
Practical, dialectical argumentation is both an important object of critical social analysis, and its method, in dialectical reasoning. Moreover, dialectical reasoning, through its deliberative character, incorporates the former into the latter. But dialectical argumentation is just one facet, an epistemological one, of change and truth arising from conflict and contradiction through “absenting”, eliminating and replacing. Other facets however – ontological, practical, relational – are brought into the scope of agency, action and change through dialectical argumentation; so dialectical reasoning is epistemologically-based.

A genre is a form with a potential which is only partly actualized. The genre of deliberation can potentially take the form of dialectical reasoning, but it rarely does, the potential is only partly actualized. I suggest that an aim of critical social analysis, and of CDA in particular, is to realize, more fully actualize, this potential, both in its own method and in “members’ methods” – those of politicians, policy experts, citizens and so forth. For everyone with an interest in emancipatory change can gain by appreciating: how discourse (and ideas and beliefs), states or affairs, goods and ills are articulated together in existing reality; that emancipatory change requires “absenting”, eliminating and replacing, all three , and the relations that hold them together; that emancipatory change can result from critique only via the mediation of explanation. Dialectical reasoning binds these together in an operational way.

6. Appendix: the Kilburn Manifesto
“The aim of the manifesto is to focus attention on the nature of the neoliberal settlement, including the social, political and cultural battles that have attended its emergence and maintenance – and those that might help bring about its demise” (Editorial, Soundings 53 2013, p. 4).

6.1 Stage 1 Normative critique of discourse
“The vocabulary we use, to talk about the economy in particular, has been crucial to the establishment of neoliberal hegemony … [for instance] the majority of us are primarily ‘consumers’, whose prime duty (and source of power and pleasure) is to make ‘choices’. The so-called truth underpinning this change of descriptions … is that, in the end, individual interests are the only reality that matters; that those interests are purely monetary; and that so-called values are only a means of pursuing selfish ends by other means. And behind this … is the idea of a world of independent agents whose choices, made for their own advantage, paradoxically benefit all. That the world is not like that is evident. There are monopolies and vastly differential powers. There is far more to life than individual self interest. Markets in practice need vast apparatuses of regulation, propping-up and policing … Moreover, this privileging of self interest, market relations and choice … leads inexorably to increased inequality … (which) is protected from political contest by another shift in our vocabulary … ‘liberty’ … defined simply as self interest and freedom from restraint by the state … has become so much the dominant term that the resultant inequalities have eviscerated democracy, and the vocabulary of equality has been obscured from view” (Massey 2013).

So neoliberal discourse is normatively criticized because it is (a) a falsification of existing reality, (b) unjust – leads to “glaring inequality”.

Contradictions of neo-liberal discourse: “This assumption of the naturalness of markets is crucial to the insistence that There Is No Alternative … one of the ghastly ironies (is) that we are told that much of our power and our pleasure, and our very self-identification, lies in our ability to choose (and we are indeed bombarded every day by ‘choices’, many of them meaningless …), while at the level that really matters – what kind of society we’d like to live in, what kind of future we’d like to build – we are told, implacably, that … there is no alternative – no choice at all” (Massey 2013).

6.2 Stage 2: Explanation
“The language we use is one of the sources of the political straightjacket we are in … this vocabulary of customer, consumer, choice, markets and self interest moulds both our conception of ourselves and our understanding of and relationship to the world.

These ‘descriptions’ of roles, exchanges and relationships in terms of a presumption that individual choice and self interest does and should prevail are in fact not simply descriptions but a powerful means by which new subjectivities are constructed and enforced. … The new dominant ideology is inculcated through social practices, as well as through prevailing names and descriptions. The mandatory exercise of ‘free choice’ … of a hospital to which to be referred, of schools for one’s children … is … also a lesson in social identity, affirming on each occasion that one is above all a consumer, functioning in a market.

By such means we are enrolled, such self-identification being just as strong as our material entanglement in debt, pensions, mortgages and the like. It is an internalisation of ‘the system’ that can potentially corrode our ability to imagine that things could be otherwise. This question of identity and identification, moreover, goes beyond our individual subjectivities. Everything begins to be imagined in this way. The very towns and cities we live in are branded in order to contend against each other, including internationally, in a world in which the only relationships are ones of competition.

So, the vocabularies which have reclassified roles, identities and relationships … and the practices which enact them embody and enforce the ideology of neoliberalism, and thus a new capitalist hegemony. Another set of vocabularies provides the terms through which the system describes itself and its functions. These frame the categories – for example of production, consumption, land, labour, capital, wealth – through which the ‘economy’ (as a supposedly distinct and autonomous sphere of life) is understood. These definitions constitute another element of ‘common sense’ … As we pointed out in our framing statement … the gains made by labour under social democracy proved intolerable to capital and a backlash was launched. Even mere redistribution could only be allowed to go so far. And one crucial element … was the dislodging of the common sense which underpinned these aspects of the social democratic approach – in particular the commitment to … equality and the important role of the state and public intervention … in achieving this. Changing our economic language was crucial in shifting our world-view” (Massey 2013).

“[T]he aim of the rise of neoliberalism was an active undermining of the economic and political gains made by ordinary people during the post-war social-democratic settlement. Its whole point was to engineer a class rebalancing. From this point of view it has succeeded. And the predictable crisis of its model has now become grist to its mill: it is being used as a pretext for further restructuring and redistribution” (Massey & Rustin 2014).

Changing the vocabulary (discourse) > “dislodging” (+ replacing) “common sense” (“absenting it”); replacing identities; replacing social practices > the neoliberal backlash, a new capitalist hegemony (as a precondition for it, as “absenting” constraints on its “absenting” of absences in social democracy). A complex and not simply uni-directional set of causal relations (e.g. changes in common sense etc > changes in practices > changes in common sense) connect changes in: discourse, common sense/identities, practices, structures (“hegemony”).

6.3 Stage 3: Explanatory critique
Explanations of causal relations slide over into critique of states of affairs (the existing social reality – not just the discourse) in which they obtain – e.g. the passage in italics above. Explanations are part of analysis and are factual claims; but some factual claims are simultaneously value claims. Bhaskar (1989, p. 101): if we have adequate grounds for supposing that belief X is false, and that S explains X, then “we may, and must, pass immediately to” a negative evaluation of S, and a positive evaluation of action directed at its removal (“absenting”).

6.4 Stage 4: Advocacy of lines for transformative action ‘An outline of an alternative’
It follows from our argument that an economy should be a means for fulfilling social goals, and not an end in itself, and that a means of deliberating and determining what such goals should be is essential to democracy. But our political institutions do not currently serve this purpose. … Yet there are always cracks in the carapace. Hegemony has to be constructed and maintained and is thereby always open to challenge. And most of social reproduction in fact relies on non-financial relations, of trust, care and mutual responsibility. Not only is not absolutely everything captured, but those other feelings still resonate and resist” (Massey & Rustin 2014).

NOTE
i. “The subject matter of the human sciences includes both social objects and beliefs about those objects” [and] “relations” [between these aspects] “are both causal” [ontological, relations of generation] “and cognitive” [epistemological, relations of critique]. “Only a discourse in which the explanatory, as well as the critical, condition” [causal as well as cognitive] “is satisfied can be intrinsically emancipatory” (Bhaskar 1989, pp. 101-2).

References
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Bhaskar, R. (1989). Reclaiming reality. London: Routledge.
Bhaskar, R. (1993). Dialectic: the pulse of freedom. London: Verso.
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Fairclough, I., & Fairclough, N. (2012). Political discourse analysis. London: Routledge.
Fairclough, N. (2010). Critical discourse analysis: the critical study of language. London: Longman.
Fairclough, N. (2013). Critical discourse analysis and critical policy studies. Critical Policy Studies, 7(2), 177-197.
Fairclough, N., & Graham, P. (2002). Marx as critical discourse analyst: the genesis of a critical method and its relevance to the critique of global capital. Estudios de Sociolinguistica, 3(1),185 – 229. Reprinted in Fairclough (2010, pp. 301-346).
Hall, S., & O’Shea. A. (2013). Common-sense neoliberalism. Kilburn Manifesto, chapter 4. Soundings, 55, 8-24.
Hall, S., Massey, D., & Rustin, M. (2013). After neoliberalism: analysing the present. Kilburn Manifesto chapter 1. Soundings, 53, 8-22.
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Abstract: This paper challenges the view according to which speeches of praise and speeches of blame perform a similar political function of gathering citizens (around a hero in the case of praise and against a scapegoat in the case of blame). It is argued that the idea, seldom challenged in literature on epideictic rhetoric, that blame is merely a reverse mirror of praise, is due to an overemphasis on logos.

Keywords: artistic proofs, blame, catharsis, epideictic, homeostasis, homonoia, praise, rhetoric, violence

1. Introduction
To introduce my topic, I would like first to present George Kennedy main hypothesis in his book Comparative Rhetoric (1998). George Kennedy argued that the primary function of rhetoric in human societies is the preservation of existing social order. As he puts it: “The major function of rhetoric throughout the most of human history has been to preserve things as they are or to try to recover an idealized happier past” (1998, p. 216).

The history of research on argumentation and reasoning can be described as a struggle against such a natural tendency to conservatism. This history began with sophistic exercises such as dissoi logoi (twofold arguments)[i] and, later, with Aristotle’s studies on the various ways one can attack someone else’s arguments, the identification of fallacious arguments and the definition of rules for rational discussion[ii].

In this quest for tools to correct our reasoning biases, the status of epideictic rhetoric has always been disturbing. Epideictic speeches, with their depiction of a world clearly organized between the good people, ‘us’, and the bad people, ‘them’, appear as a revival of the naïve first steps of our humanity. One might thus understand why argumentation studies did not pay much attention to epideictic rhetoric: epideictic rhetoric appears to be nothing but what all of us spontaneously do when we stop struggling against our natural tendency to conservatism.

Some scholars, however, drew attention on the central role of epideictic rhetoric for the good functioning of any society, traditional and democratic alike (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1958, p. 69; Hauser, 1999). Emmanuelle Danblon (2001) even argued that epideictic rhetoric is not outside of rationality: on the contrary, epideictic speeches, by maintaining a set of shared values, shape our collective intentionality (Searle, 1995), that is, our ability to agree and decide collectively. Endowed with such a political function, epideictic discourses seem worth studying.

In this respect, Aristotle’s Rhetoric is of little help. Indeed, Aristotle does not mention any explicit connection between epideictic speeches and the restatement of shared principles in a community. Aristotle only describes the means by which the orator can perform an effective speech of blame or praise (Rhet., I, 9, 1366a-68b). He does not state that those blames and praises are means to strengthen common values. Such a political function of epideictic speeches seems nevertheless plausible in view of human rhetorical practices.

As far as blame is concerned, looking for a scapegoat seems to be a widely shared human reaction to a situation of crisis (Patou-Mathis, 2013, pp. 90-96). Along with the same line, philosophers and psychologists have long analysed the need for human societies, big and small, to define themselves against “outsiders” (Freud, 1930; Schmitt, 1932; Heller-Roazen, 2009; Crisp and Mileady, 2012). As far as praise is concerned, moments of grief are, then as now, accompanied by instants of harmony around the memory of the deceased. Remembering the deeds of glorious ancestors also seems to be an ancient and widely shared means to reinforce the links between the members of a community (Kennedy, 1998; Barry, to be published).

However, scholars who advocated for a political function of epideictic do not differentiate praise from blame in their inquiries: praise and blame are perceived as rhetorical tools to perform a similar political function of gathering citizens (around a hero in the case of praise and against a scapegoat in the case of blame). The aim of my paper is to challenge this consensually shared view: by studying a speech of blame I intend to demonstrate that praise and blame do not have the same political effect.

To do so, I will focus on a case study: Theodore Roosevelt’s blame of an anarchist who killed president McKinley in September 1901[iii]. At first glance, it would be seducing to analyse this speech as an instance of a federating function of blame. Indeed an anarchist is, by definition, out of the community of citizens: he is an atopos. Blaming an anarchist would offer an opportunity to gather citizens against a scapegoat. However, by looking in detail to the construction of the three artistic proofs (logos, ethos, pathos) in Roosevelt’s speech, I will challenge the very idea of blame as an effective tool to reinforce hearers’ adhesion to shared values.

2. Blame without ceremony
My first comments have to do with the framework of the speech, with the context in which the speech took place. Roosevelt issued his blame at the beginning of his first state of the Union speech, delivered on the 3rd of December 1901 that is, three months after the president McKinley was shot to death by a young anarchist (a 28 years old steel worker named Leon Czolgosz).

First of all, it is worth noting that the state of the Union speech is a genuine institution in the American democracy. State of the Union speech was instituted by the American constitution and has been delivered almost every year by American presidents since George Washington’s presidency[iv]. Those speeches have often been an opportunity to reinforce the feeling of brotherhood between American citizens. To do so, American presidents use several rhetorical techniques such as idealized stories of the first steps of the American nation or the narration of the deeds of the founding fathers[v]. Since Ronald Reagan presidency, American presidents were accustomed to conclude their speeches by the praise of an everyday hero: an officer of government, a successful businessman, a brave soldier, all of them embodying cherished American values[vi]. This brings me to my first point.

Speeches of blame are rare in the body of state of the Union speeches. This might be due to the fact that praise, contrary to blame, do not necessarily need to be connected to any particular current event: the state of the Union speech is itself an opportunity to deliver a speech of praise. By contrast, one does not blame just for the sake of it. In other words, I would argue that praises are ceremonial while blames are speeches for crisis. As a consequence, blames might be more spontaneous and more passionate than praises. With this in mind, I will now turn to the study of the three artistic proofs (logos, ethos and pathos) in Roosevelt’s rhetoric.

3. The artistic proofs
In this section, I intend to provide an explanation of the absence of distinction, in most literature about epideictic rhetoric, between the political effects of praise and blame. My claim is that scholars have a strong tendency to focus their attention on logos. Such an overemphasis maintains the illusion of blame as a reversed mirror of praise. To dispel this illusion, I will analyse the construction of ethos and pathos in Roosevelt’s blame. The diverging political function of praise and blame might thus appear.

3.1 Logos: a symmetry between praise and blame?
As stated above, logos is, in my view, the only feature of the rhetoric of blame that can be considered as similar to the rhetoric of praise. This similarity, as far as logos is concerned, is explicitly acknowledge by Aristotle in his Rhetoric. In the 9th chapter of the first book, Aristotle details the lines of argument one should use in epideictic speeches. Most of those lines of argument have to do with speeches of praise. At the very end of his chapter, Aristotle concludes by stating that, in order to produce a speech of blame, the orator only has to do the contrary of a speech of praise: “No special treatment of censure and vituperation is needed. Knowing the above facts, we know their contraries; and it is out of these that speeches of censure are made” (Rhet. I, 9, 1368a).

Aristotle comment on the symmetry between lines of argument in praise and blame can be illustrated with Theodore Roosevelt’s speech. Let us take, for instance, the idea according to which “fine actions are distinguished from others by being intentionally good” (Rhet., I, 9, 1367b). As a consequence, the orator “must try to prove that our hero’s noble acts are intentional” (Rhet., I, 9, 1367b). It appears that, in order to blame the anarchist, Roosevelt used precisely the contrary of this line of argument. For instance, when saying: “The anarchist is a criminal whose perverted instincts lead him to prefer confusion and chaos to the most beneficent form of social order” (Roosevelt, 1901). The symmetry between praise and blame works here. The hero deserves praise because, engaged in a situation in which there was a good and a bad option, he chose the good one. One the contrary, the bad man deserves blame since he is bound to always make the bad choice because of his perverted instincts. So far, praise and blame seem to be two sides of a same coin. Let us now turn to ethos and pathos.

3.2 Ethos: would a phronimos blame?
By now analysing the ethos of the orator issuing a blame, I intend to demonstrate that blame cannot be considered as the reversed mirror of praise.

Let us begin by analysing the orator’s ethos in a speech of praise. It has often been noted that not anybody is legitimate to perform an epideictic speech (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1958, p. 68; Kennedy, 1998, pp. 42-43; Hauser, 1999): the epideictic orator must, somehow, be a delegate of political power. I would thus argue that a speech of praise might reinforce social order because it offers the orator an opportunity to embody shared values. Indeed, by praising deeds that anybody will consider as praiseworthy, the orator will strengthen his legitimacy as a delegate of the people: he demonstrates his respect for the values cherished by his audience. In other words, the harmony between orator’s ethos and the ethos of the praised hero might reinforce people’s confidence in their leaders’ morality and, thus, maintain social order. Now, my point is that such a way to maintain trust between members of a society only works with praise and not with blame. Indeed, in a speech of blame, the harmony occurs between the ethos of the orator and the ethos of the blamed character. As a consequence, the orator will present himself at odd with hearers’ expectations about a truthful ethos. Let me now support my claim by analysing Roosevelt’s ethos in his blame. The following quote is representative of his rhetorical choices:

For the anarchist himself, whether he preaches or practices his doctrine, we need not to have one particle more concern than for any ordinary murderer. He is not victim of social or political order. There are no wrong to remedy in his case. The cause of his criminality are to be found in his own evil passion and in the own evil conduct of those who urge him on, not in any failure by others or by the State to do justice to him or his. He is in no sense, in no shape or way, ‘a product of social condition’. (Roosevelt, 1901)

I would like to contrast Roosevelt’s rhetoric with the qualities of the truthful ethos according to Aristotle:

There are three things which inspire confidence in the orator’s own character-the three, namely, that induce us to believe a thing apart from any proof of it: good sense (phronesis), good moral character (arete), and goodwill (euonia). (Aristotle, Rhet, II, 1, 1378a)

All those qualities are lacking in Roosevelt’s blame. There is obviously no goodwill in a speech of blame. In addition, by insisting on the reasons why one should not find any attenuating circumstances to the criminal, the orator appears as merciless and obsessed: those features are hardly consistent with a good moral character. Finally, as far as phroneisis is concerned, the orator seems to be overwhelmed by his anger and thus unable to make a wise decision. How then could an audience be willing to be governed by such a leader? Because of fear, possibly. This brings us to the third and last artistic proof: pathos.

3.3 Pathos: can we reach homonoia by anger and fear?
Let me begin by an explanation of the way emotions produced by a speech of praise might contribute to reinforce the links between members of a society. Following Philippe Kreutz (2001), I would argue that a speech of praise is likely to arise mainly two emotions: admiration and proudness. Those emotions might create a willingness to follow the hero’s example and thus stimulate a disposition to act in accordance with shared values. I would add to this picture that praise might have a quietening effect: hearers feeling proud of what they are will not challenge the existing social order. To use a physiological term, I would say that praise maintains social homeostasis (Damasio, 2003, pp. 176-180): the smooth and balanced functioning of a metabolism.

On the contrary, blame is likely to raise the anger of the hearers and their impulse for revenge. I would thus argue that blame is likely to disturb homeostasis. The last sentence of Roosevelt’s blame supports this view: “The American people are slow to wrath, but when their wrath is once kindled it burns like a consuming flame” (Roosevelt, 1901).

Let me now summarize my analysis. My first point is that seizing the diverging political effects of praise and blame requires looking beyond logos. My second point is that praise is a circumstantial discourse; by contrast, blame is a speech of crisis. By this I mean that it only makes sense to deliver a speech of blame if there is someone to blame. On the contrary, a speech of praise can be a part of a ceremony, unrelated to current events. This second point has consequences for the ethos of the orator. In a situation of crisis, such as the killing of a president, the orator might be genuinely outraged, his rhetoric might be more spontaneous and out of control than in a speech of praise. Still about ethos, my third point is that it seems difficult for the orator delivering a blame to build a truthful ethos. And I would argue that the distance that might thus be established between the orator and the audience disrupts the sharing of a feeling of brotherhood. Finally, about emotions, I suggested that praise is pacifying while blame is disquieting.

Starting from this analysis, I would express serious doubts about the opportunity to use blame as a federative rhetorical tool[vii]. Blame is, in my view, more a symptom of a lack of control in a crisis situation than a rhetorical tool to face a crisis. This brings me to the title of my paper: how to blame in a democracy? In other words, is blame worthy of interest for rhetoricians, as a kind of speech one should teach in rhetorical courses? I will conclude with a proposal on this issue.

4. Conclusion: exploring the cathartic function of blame
To begin with, I shall go back, one last time, to Theodor Roosevelt’s speech. It is worth noting that, at the time of the delivery of the speech, the judiciary institution had already fulfilled its role: the president’s killer had been arrested, his case has been debated in justice court, a jury decided to sentence him to death and he was electrocuted. Why blaming a dead man? My interpretation is that Roosevelt’s need to reopen the anarchist’s case in the form of blame illustrates a basic need for an archaic practice of justice: a justice in which the good people can satisfy their revenge against the bad people. In the long history of the domestication of violence by human institutions (Freud, 1930; Pires, 1998; Pinker, 2011), blame appears as a regressive force. There is, however, a view in which blame might, on the contrary, contribute to a pacification of society: if blame were to be used as a tool for catharsis (Aristotle, Poet., vi, 1449b), that is, as a harmless means to relief hearers from their violence (Tisseron, 1996, pp. 188-191).

We don’t have yet any evidence that blame might actually perform such a function. Psychological studies, so far, gave contradictory results on this issue: observing violence might increase or decrease observers’ propensity for violence (Konecni & Doob, 1972; Leyens, 1977; Scheff & Bushnell, 1984; Scheff, 2007; Gentile, 2013). What would be the rhetorical features of a blame that would perform a cathartic function? Is there any way in which blame might be used as a sophisticated alternative to basic violence? Here is an interesting challenge for a rhetorician.

NOTES
i. On the pedagogical value of dissoi logoi for the training of critical thinking skills, see Danblon (2013, pp. 127-148) and Ferry (2013).
ii. I refer here to Aristotle’s Topics, Sophistical refutations and Rhetoric.
iii.Roosevelt issued the blame in his first state of the Union address, on the 3rd of December 1901.
iv. The third section of the second article of the U.S. Constitution states that: “He [the president] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient”.
v. The peroration of Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 state of the Union speech offers telling examples of those rhetorical tools. For instance, when saying: “It was once barren land. The angular hills were covered with scrub cedar and a few large live oaks. Little would grow in that harsh caliche soil of my country. And each spring the Pedernales River would flood our valley. But men came and they worked and they endured and they built. And tonight that country is abundant” (Johnson, 1965).
vi. Ronald Reagan famously concluded his 1982 state of the Union speech by praising a young employee of government, Lenny Skutnik, who jumped in the water to rescue a woman after a plane crash on Potomac River. After describing the deeds of this everyday hero, Reagan attempted to spread a feeling of proudness among his hearers: “And then there are countless, quiet, everyday heroes of American who sacrifice long and hard so their children will know a better life than they’ve known; church and civic volunteers who help to feed, clothe, nurse, and teach the needy; millions who’ve made our nation and our nation’s destiny so very special-unsung heroes who may not have realized their own dreams themselves but then who reinvest those dreams in their children” (Reagan, 1982).
vii. I am aware that there is a strong counterargument to the view expressed above. There are many instances of political regimes grounded on fear of the leader and on a rejection of the “others”: blame therefore seems to be an effective tool to gather citizens. Against this view, I would argue that the emotions from blame, anger and fear, do not federate citizens in the same way that admiration and proudness do. Political regimes based on fear of the leader and on the opposition to the “others” (such as Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s USSR, Khomeini’s Iran or contemporay North Korea) are more characterized by general mistrust between citizens (and by massive practices of neighbours’ denunciations) than by a generalized feeling of brotherhood.

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