Argument: 1. Thesis

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We often talk about the human species as tool-using people, but it might be as accurate to describe us as the argumentative. We're taking back control. Right on. Why are you so miserable? We get under independence. Like other animals, we came into conflict with each other. But somewhere in the development of our vocal cords and the development of our minds, that conflict became A difference of opinion which we tried to resolve through words. Instead of fighting, we argued.

Why do you have the insolence to think that your opinion is better than anybody else's way? Why can't you all You you want to talk? All of you We began to resolve our most important public questions by arguing in front of an audience and letting that audience judge who was right. That's to crack down on tax avoidance by large companies. Thank you. Conflict became argument. Argument became rhetoric. Never in the field of human country. Was so much owed. By so many. Go Southfield.

Rhetoric and argument became the way in which we answered the deepest questions of philosophy, established scientific rules, made legal decisions, and this process created the world we know today. It was the foundation of our democracies and the way in which we chose the policies for our state. All of this has a particular meaning for me. I could make an argument, Mr Speaker, about the philosophical principle here, but essentially the reason to do this is a reason of trust.

I grew up believing that the way to reach the truth was through argument. I was trained to argue in school. I even briefly taught classical rhetoric. and I became a Member of Parliament. Yeah. But the experience of being a politician has also shown me how dangerous arguments can be. Okay. and how bad arguments can threaten our democracies. The events in Washington have taken a violent and tumultuous turn in the past few hours.

The thing is, argument never quite loses its origin in combat. It's a painful process that can provoke anger and shame or even violence. Instead of helping us arrive at the truth, it can also propagate lies. It can become a way of pandering to someone or manipulating them or intimidating them or misleading them.

It just wouldn't make sense for me to come on here and tell people to calm down and that we can solve it all through civil discourse because I don't believe that is how we're gonna make progress at this point. Something has changed. Sometime around twenty fourteen, plus or minus, there was a transformation. Social life, political life moved on to social media. Political arguments changed in a dramatically short period of time. Bruce Caitlin Jenner, I'll call it him Caitlin Jenner because that's

Sure. You're not being polite to the pronouns disrespectful. Okay. Arguments can be supercharged through social media and Twitter. Forget about the disrespect. Facts don't care about your feelings. And these voices are no longer debating with each other, but speaking past each other. In this series, I want to try to understand this strange human phenomenon of arguing. Why do arguments matter? How can we make them better?

I came here for a good argument. No, you didn't, you came here for an argument. An argument's not the same as contradiction. Can be? No, it can't. An argument is a collective series of statements to establish a definite proposition. There it isn't. In this episode, I'll try to explain why speaking and arguing well was seen for millennia as the key to a good education and the cornerstone of our civilization.

In the next episode, I'll explore how modern Europe turned against argument and why rhetoric became a dirty word. And in the final episode, I will suggest how our democracy and our humanity may depend on rediscovering how to argue well. History of Episode one Thesis. Amen.

I spent six months during the Iraq War based at the ancient city of Ur, and there archaeologists have discovered the first known author. She was a woman called Enhedwana. And she was already making use of formal rhetorical techniques in the third millennium BC. In ancient China and in ancient India, eloquence was placed at the very heart of philosophy and politics.

But it's in the ancient Greek and Roman study of argument that so many of the foundations were laid for the way that we think about argument today. The pairing of oratory and democracy has always been central to our idea that we need to hear two sides of a debate, whether that's in a law court or in a political debate, in order to arrive at what is most likely to be the truth. I'll come on to the Greeks, but I want to start with a particular Roman.

Cicero. doctor Catherine Tempest is the author of Cicero Politics and Persuasion in Ancient Rome. Oratry and the art of persuasion have this impact throughout time, and Cicero was one who really reflected on these qualities in his earliest treatise on rhetoric, which he wrote when he was still a boy. Cicero was in many ways the icon of that age, politician, lawyer, philosopher, and a theorist of argument and rhetoric.

He was an outsider in a highly conservative, aristocratic society, and to get to the top he needed to speak well. This meant an astonishing investment in studying rhetoric. He began to study Greek rhetoric as a very young boy. At twenty he continued his studies under a famous Athenian teacher in Rome, and at twenty seven he travelled through what is now Greece and Turkey and on to Rhodes.

Where a new tutor worked on his body language and delivery. And the investment paid off. Cicero's ability to argue made him immensely wealthy, took him to the very top of the Roman state, and he believed, saved Rome itself. Classical orators were taught to memorize a comically vast number of techniques. And they had a different name for each turn of phrase. The fact that we don't more widely teach forms of argument, techniques of debate. Seems to me a great loss.

Sam Leith is literary editor of The Spectator and author of You Talking To Me Rhetoric from Aristotle to Obama. Because not only are you better able to march your own case if you have a kind of grounding in how these things work. But you're also sort of more able to see things coming. You know, if you can Spot a false analogy. If you can

see that something that seems very stirring is actually ah that's a you know an ascending tricolon and that's why it sounds so effective. It's an aural effect rather than a logical one. If you can pull apart arguments, I think you're better placed In case you're wondering, an ascending tricolon is a grouping of three phrases in which the power of the phrase grows with each step. I came. I saw. I conquered. Let me give you another one. He became a slave. The slave who became a gladiator.

The gladiator who defied an emperor. That's anadiplosis, the repetition of the last word of a sentence at the beginning of the next. And how about this? Ably demonstrated by Neil Kinnock in his speech to the nineteen eighty-five Labour Party Conference. Thank you. You said to each other in the cars dressing room, you said to each other in the committee rooms. Election. They are one in years That's anaphora. Repeating the same word or group of words.

These techniques are at the showier end of things, but these tricks of language were only supposed to be a means to something much more important, intellectually and morally.

Ah, well done Patrick, you've made it. Hello James. Hello everybody. And one of the best explanations of why this is the case comes not from ancient Mesopotamia, but from Liverpool today. yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r

This is James Thompson. In 2019 he and his classmate Patrick Clark were on the winning team in the English speaking union's Schools Mace Debating Competition. I spoke to them on a video called Myself and James started debating together in I think it was, was it year thirteen, James? I partnered with you at the end of year twelve, but we'd both been debating in the society since ye year seven, was it?

It was Miss Claire Bowie who ran our debating society and it was um Mr Dan Bradley who was our like debating coach who used to coach us for, you know, no money at all. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I'm delighted to welcome you all here to Dartmouth House, the international headquarters of the English speaking Union of the Commonwealth, and to welcome you to the grand final of the ESU School.

There will be no understatement to say that the education I received through the Bayton was essential in me not only getting into university but even applying in the first place. What kind of questions would you debate? I remember one, we we were talking about like the Burker and like really you know, the question of like religious freedom and whether women should be allowed to, you know, wear the I think it was around the time that there was a crackdown on it in France.

And as a sort of, you know, as a 13-year-old artist, which I've never thought about a lot before, Debating societies like these are extracurricular, demanding a huge amount of time and commitment. But the principles they embody were once central to our education system. For example, I'm a fan of the odd set. Should I be a part of the odd team? Of course not.

Today debating societies are often associated with public schools as parlour games for the privileged But Patrick and James went to Saint Francis Xavier's College, a comprehensive school in Liverpool. And they make a particularly impressive argument for argument. Byddwch chi'n amlwg i'n amlwg i'n amlwg i'n amlwg i'r person sy'n amlwg i'n amlwg i'n amlwg i'n amlwg i'n amlwg i'n amlwg i'n amlwg i'n amlwg i'n amlwg i'n amlwg i'n amlwg i'n amlwg i'n amlwg. Just maybe in a different way.

I hope people come to see things on the merit of the argument rather than entrenched. I do think learning to speak publicly and I think in a competitive environment as well. I think you can be led astray by it to some extent. And I think you can be there's something quite attractive about fame and the spectacle of it and the confidence it gives you. And I think you do need to be wary of that. I think me and James and I were quite lucky in that we rented.

school we went to in Liverpool, your feet were never allowed to fly too high above the ground, which I think was quite healthy. But I think in the long term I think it probably has made me a better person, not least because of how being able to try and see the truth in the other person's point of view. just give you a greater perspective on life and makes you a more understanding listener of other arguments.

I've never heard the arguments for rhetorical training made more powerfully than in this video call with Patrick and James. They make three central claims for being trained in arguments. It teaches you to think clearly, it teaches you to empathise with other people, and it teaches you how to persuade.

This is what the classical world believed too. My first name's Mary Margaret. But you're known as her ma'am. Mary makes me anxious because my Latin teacher used to call me that. We'll stick at MM then. MM McCabe is Emeritus Professor of Ancient Philosophy at King's College London. She's written lots of books about Socrates and Plato. We're talking about the history of argument, and one of the things that strikes me as an amateur looking at

Argument is somehow right at the very beginning of the philosophical tradition that arguing is something Greeks did and it was one of the ways in which they thought. Is that right? In a direct democracy that's exactly what's going on. So if a direct democracy is everybody piled into the agora and they're all arguing about stuff I guess they're arguing in the Iliad. They're arguing in Plato's dialogue. And in tragedy and in Thucydides everywhere, yeah.

In ancient Greece, as in ancient India, philosophy emerges from argument, a debate in which two or more people with different points of view try to establish the truth. But it's not an interaction between two It's an open dialogue between two humans. Not only a comparison of facts, but a difficult encounter between emotions and values, with a potential for creativity, a new understanding. And that is why Plato presented the teachings of Socrates as a dialogue.

One of the things that Plato's interested in, it seems to me, is not just the shapes of argument, rather the ways in which arguments are connected to how people understand. if we're trying to account for something I have to listen to you in order to hear your account. And you have to listen to me in order to hear my account. That is to say, the sense of accountability is accountability to others.

As Plato said, philosophy must be done face to face. Once it's written down in a book it's no longer the same thing. The psychiatrist and author Ian McGillcrit. And I think what he meant there is that there is a kind of intuitive understanding of another person's position that it can come from

being with them, talking a great deal. He said living a life alongside them and he actually says in the seventh epistle there is this spark that comes from one to the mind of the other. It's a very beautiful idea about An illumination that comes from a discussion, rather than just the kind of business of slogging the opponent until they're they've no wind left in their body. Adieu! Arrestant Ping! Big ha! You will not cut your influence.

Doug! Doug! Ha! You will repeat your arrogance royalist snake! In a good argument, I am connecting with you. I'm not only trying to persuade you, I'm open to being persuaded. That's only going to work. There's trust, accountability, and honesty. And the minute those are lost It's not particular decisions that get damaged. In fact, particular decisions may not get damaged, but the Structure falls down.

that delicate kind of conversation that you're describing, which is a conversation both in the public and in the private domain, has to have these Attitudinal. I trust you, I'm listening to you. If you say something that is outrageous, you're accountable for what you say. You're going to tell me the truth. I'm going to tell you what I think is the truth. And we manage it from there.

I've always believed that argument is the best way of getting to the truth, but MM McCabe is suggesting something more fundamental. For Plato, argumentative dialogue isn't simply about sifting out falsehoods in order to arrive at the truth. He's crucially concerned with the moral context in which argument takes place. Let me see if I can put this really carefully.

We shouldn't be so hung up on truth that we forget about the other stuff, right? There's a difference between somebody saying something that turns out to be untrue and somebody lying. And that difference is crucial to understanding whether any kind of conversation is going to work. So let's bring some of these ideas together. We might say that one of the earliest conceptions of the difference between a good argument and a bad argument is that a good argument is a debate conducted in good faith.

But expressing a truth is not a simple thing, it requires discipline, thought, and precision. That's why to be really effective, to get your message across, also demands an extraordinary skill in language. It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation. Yes we can. Obama inspired me to write a book about rhetoric because he was For the first time in a while a speaker who was, if you like, consciously rhetorical, who was using an unapologetic high style.

It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail towards freedom. Through the darkest of nights. Yes we can. He's extremely linguistically able. I mean he also he's a fabulous performer. His ability to kind of land on the right stress, to make the music of the words work for him orally. is extraordinary. You know, it didn't sound like someone trying to speak normally, it sounded like tr somebody trying to speak well and inspiringly.

It was the call of workers who organized, women who reached for the ballot, a president who chose the moon as our new frontier, and a king who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the promised land. Yes, we can to justice and equality. Thank you. Samleith is right, but of course the deep power of the speech lies in the underlying wisdom, the optimism, the hope, the moral stance behind the words. And that was how ancients saw it too, as Catherine Tempest explains.

For Cicero, the pairing of wisdom and eloquence was what made the figure of the orator. And I think that might go a long way towards explaining why oratory has always been held in such high esteem by those who practice the art and those who appreciate the art. Cicero's arguments always linked the politics of his day to deeper principles. Just as you might to day try to suggest that small trivial lies by a politician are actually symbolic of a much deeper moral corruption.

This is what Cicero did, for example, when he attacked the dishonest governor of Sicily. How do you get the Roman people to care what the Sicilians have suffered? You have to make the Roman people see the threat of behaving in that kind of way. So Cicero would take that case and say, Sicily provides us with all of our bread, all of our grain. We need them to flourish, we need them to work in cooperation with us.

But he also wants the people to understand the suffering that the Sicilians are going through. And the way he would do that is to portray his opponent as a tyrant figure. And if a tyrant figure can behave like that abroad, there's nothing going to stop him from behaving that way elsewhere. I've been trying to make the case for what it meant to argue well in the classical tradition. Fine words are not enough. They have to be combined with wisdom and a concern for morality.

To bring everything together, let's go to Aristotle, who laid down so many of the ground rules for arguing well. For him, every good argument has to have three elements, or modes of persuasion. Ethos, your character, pathos, emotion, and logos, which is your rational argument.

My line of work of course is within the courtrooms and so I spend my days arguing, but argument based on evidence. And the thing within the courtroom is you always have to anchor onto evidence in order to put your point across and hopefully succeed. Kirsty Brimelo QC is a defence barrister. She's just described logos. That's the evidence-based logical thread, the structured reasoning of an argument. But what else might you want to anchor onto evidence, as Kirsty puts it?

According to Aristotle, you also need pathos, the appeal to emotion, which might be anger, envy, or sympathy. You have to connect with a jury. They have to, through you, understand your client. and perhaps understand why your client is in the situation they're in. I was defending in uh murder case And in my closing speech, I referred to some lyrics from the American rapper two.

And the reason I did that was because I didn't feel that the jury could understand how my client with his background could have been in a situation that he was in where a murder had taken place. his case was he was not part of it. But most people on a jury will think, well how do you get yourself in that situation at in the first place that you're Friendship. Are crack addicts. uh drug dealers, heroin dealers, and on the fringes of extreme violence. And it was really to explain Thank you.

that my clients have very little start in life. As well as the balance between reason and emotion, in order for an argument to really take off, you need ethos. You need your audience to feel that they can trust your character. Barristers you tend to see in trials in different ways will work to get the trust of the jury.

And fundamentally that will mean in presenting a case you don't ever want to make a mistake in front of the jury, which whether you're prosecuting or defending, because that could start to shake their trust in you. I think I would feel that I've had some impact in making my jury listen to me and uh take on my points. by their body language on occasions and sometimes you see that their limbs across

And I do think there's something in that. If if you have a jury all with their arms crossed, there is some barrier to you. And at the end of your speech when you address them, if their arms are uncrossed, it feels That you have an open line of communication. Ethos appeal in politics is what we might call authenticity.

I think Corbin had created for him a fantastic Ethos appeal which was You know, i that he stood outside the system, that he was you know, a man of absolutely unyielding integrity and modesty, Sam Leith. yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, yna, And I think that carried him an awfully long way. As an orator, he's not great, I think. But if you see on your television an enormous crowd of people roaring, you know, oh Jeremy Corbyn, when he simply s takes the stage.

that has a great rhetorical force. Thank you very much, Justin Bree. Thank you for inviting me in. I'm proud to be here. Thank you very much.

But in this episode we focused on argument before television or social media. It's a world in which an orator is debating another human in front of a live audience, where he or she can read the crowd, adjust to their emotions, be heckled or questioned, operate in a living dialogue. The American poet Emerson writes By having a real other respond to me, I am spared one thing only. most cumulative effects of my own echo chamber of words.

Argument is then what makes us humans. It's the foundation of our most precious institutions. It's the way in which we struggle with truth, live in democracies, and encounter the humanity of others. But as I'll explore in the next episode, it has always had its critics. It's all a question of power, who has the power and the platform to speak and who doesn't. And it can fail spectacularly. when it encounters the real world.

I have the most loyal people. Did you ever see that? Where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay? It's like incredible. On what set of rules of debating should he succeed?