Philosophy and Polemics: The Difference
Towards a sharp distinction between philosophical and polemical discourse.
A reader poses the following question:
1. To what extent can one extend hospitality, generosity, or charity to the arguments and premises of one’s opponents or rivals in polemical situations? It seems to me that apart from the unflinching commitment of many of the parties involved to their respective positions despite the absence of perfect justification, there is also the issue of mutual misunderstanding and misrepresentation (unintentional or otherwise), exacerbated by the fog of war. For instance, many conservatives, libertarians, and socialists appear to be rarely acquainted with the intricacies of each other’s theoretical standpoints and values, even as they dispute about practices and proposals.
How far do hospitality, exegetical charity and the like extend in a polemical situation? Not very far if the situation is truly polemical and one's interlocutor is not merely an opponent, but an adversary or enemy. I make a sharp distinction between polemical discourse and strictly philosophical discourse, and I engage in both. I engage in both because both are needed in the world as it is. It is a mark of the conservative that he deals with the world as it is without illusions or evasions or escapes into u-topia (no place). In a phrase of Richard M. Weaver, the conservative stands on the "terra firma of antecedent reality," a reality logically and ontologically antecedent to one's hopes, dreams, wishes, and desires.
As I see it, philosophy ceases to be philosophy when it becomes polemical. That goes for political philosophy as well which ought not be confused with political discourse in general, most of which is, of course, polemical. ‘Polemical’ is from the Greek polemos, war. Polemical discourse, then is war-like discourse. It is the fighting with words that precedes and supposedly justifies the fighting with fists, sticks, and supersonic bombers.
Philosophy, by contrast, is inquiry. It is inquiry by those who don't know (and know that they don't know) with the sincere intention of increasing their insight and understanding. Its patron saint is Socrates, he of the learned ignorance. Beginning in self-aware nescience, it is the unrelenting quest for science, and if possible omniscience. Philosophy is motivated by the love of truth, not the love of verbal battle or the need to defeat an enemy or shore up and promote preconceived opinions about which one has no real doubt and which one refuses to examine. The unexamined life is not a normatively human life, to paraphrase a famous saying of the man who knew his nescience. When real philosophy is done with others it takes the form of dialog, not debate. It is conversation between friends, not opponents, let alone enemies, who are friends of the truth before they are friends of each other. Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas.
There is nothing adversarial in a genuine philosophical conversation. The person I am addressing and responding to is not my adversary but a co-inquirer. In the ideal case there is between us a bond of friendship, a philiatic bond. But this philia subserves the eros of inquiry. The philosopher's love of truth is erotic, the love of one who lacks for that which he lacks. That is the root meaning of eros, and I am using the term in its root meaning. It is not the agapic love of one who knows and bestows his pearls of wisdom.
What I have described above, however, is rare in this fallen world of contention and strife. There is no philosophy without spectatorship, but here below we are embattled spectators. We would observe life’s parade from on high, but we are condemned to march in it as well. The duality of spectator and participant is definitive of our nature. Hence the necessity of self-defense in several forms, from verbal polemic to shooting wars. The spaces of civility, wherein philosophy, science, the arts, humane living, and everything civilized flourish have always been encircled by evil forces against which one must be prepared to deploy violent remedies.
Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you want peace, prepare for war. (Cf. Plato, Laws, 628d) Civility is for the civil only. One must oppose and in extreme situations kill the enemies of civilization. The aim, however, is political neutralization, not murder. It is just that some can be ‘killed’ politically only by being killed literally. It is a ‘double effect’ situation: I shoot the home invader to stop his deadly attack on me and my family, not to kill him. It is just that effectively to stop him I must do something to him that can be expected to kill him. But my intention was not to kill him, bit to stop his deadly attack. That may sound like sophistry, but careful thought should convince you otherwise.
But why not stick to one's stoa and cultivate one's specialist garden in peace and quiet, neither involving oneself in, nor forming opinions about, the wider world of politics and strife? Why risk one's ataraxia in the noxious arena of contention? Why not remain within the serene precincts of theoria? For those of us of a certain advanced age the chances are good that death will arrive before the barbarians do. Why bother one's head with the issues of the day? Many of us will most likely collapse before the culture that sustains us does. Rome was not built in a day, and it did not fall in a day.
We enter the arena of contention because the gardens of tranquillity and the spaces of reason are worth defending, with blood and iron if need be, against the barbarians and their witting and unwitting leftist enablers. Others have fought and bled so that we can live this life of beatitude. What has been passed on to us, we must pass on. That is a moral ‘must.’ And so though we are not warriors of the body we can and should do our bit as warriors of the mind to preserve for future generations this culture which allows us to pursue otium liberale in peace, quiet, and safety.