In Praise of Incivility: Rediscovering Politics in the Public Sphere

• In Event: Populism, Publicity and Public Deliberation

Abstract

In these increasingly irrational times, a common response has been to wax nostalgic for a political era when civil, rational debate was the norm. Claiming roots in works like John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration and James Madison’s Federalist #10 and #51, this nostalgia yearns for a form of democratic politics in which the public sphere is imagined as a discursive realm in which reason reveals the truth. However, this paper argues that this understanding of politics does not serve the truth, but obscures it, and that a particular form of incivility, found in ad hominem argument, is actually the rhetorical mechanism by which the truth emerges.

Rather than engaging the substance of a belief or opinion, ad hominem arguments instead attack the character or the motive of the speaker. Consequently, they are considered an invalid form of argument and are universally decried. However, as this paper argues, not only are ad hominem arguments a valid form of argument, they are a necessary one, as they are the only tool we have for exposing the political agendas that often lie behind political opinions. That is, as this paper argues, the truth of our opinions does not typically reside in the substance of our opinions, but in the motivations that led us to believe in them, so that ad hominem argument actually exposes their truth. Therefore, avoiding ad hominem argument actually serves to depoliticize the public sphere, by reducing it to the substance of our opinions rather than the motivations that lie behind them, whereas the use of this form of argument has the effect of rediscovering the political nature of the public sphere.

Socrates is generally considered to be the arch-rationalist who set the trajectory of Western thought. And for many, this trajectory culminated in the liberal notion of civil, rational debate, as enshrined in documents like the first amendment of the Bill of Rights. Therefore, in order to make the broader case about ad hominem arguments, this paper begins by examining the trial and death of Socrates so as to demonstrate that Socrates’ life does not reveal the efficacy of rational debate, but its limits. As this paper argues, while Socrates himself remained true to a model of rational discourse, what he actually exposed was not the efficacy of reason, but its failure. That is, despite Socrates’ fidelity to rational discourse, he was never able to change the mind of his opponents, who all typically maintained their original opinions even after they had been disproven. Therefore, Socrates’ failure helps reveal that rational debate is not an effective tool of political discourse, because our opinions do not typically follow from informed deliberation, but are instead determined by our underlying motivations. Consequently, ad hominem argument, which contextualizes our opinions against the underlying motivations that led to them, is a necessary tool for exposing the truth.

Finally, this paper ends by turning to Plato’s Republic. While Plato is typically imagined as further establishing Western thought on the trajectory of reason, this paper demonstrates that Plato learned a similar lesson from his mentor Socrates. That is, while Plato clearly valued reason, he also understood that the public sphere was governed by the irrationality of our desires, and that a form of ad hominem was therefore necessary, as it allowed us to identify and address the motivations that guide our opinions, rather than losing sight of these motivations by merely addressing the substantive opinions under which they hide. And so, rather than believing that a Socratic style of civil, rational debate should be enshrined in the public sphere, Plato recognized the need to look beyond the substance of our opinions to the underlying motivations that truly governed our actions.

In sum, this paper demonstrates that a discursive approach to politics that stresses civil, rational debate does not serve the public sphere, but instead hides the true nature of politics, which is instead found in the motivations that guide our opinions and actions. And the incivility of ad hominem argument is the tool that helps reveal this.

Author

• Jamie Aroosi, St. Olaf College