Adages are more convincing than arguments, but not conclusive.
What is the point of staging an argument? Piers Morgan has tried to moderate a number of debates between Pro-Hamas and Pro-Israeli speakers. No one expects the other to become convinced of the views of the opposing debaters. What is to be gleaned is that one or the other side will have revealed itself as hypocritical or uninformed, at least to the satisfaction of Morgan or the other side and maybe to some in the audience, but strictly speaking each side can defend their own point of view to their own satisfaction even if the other side thinks the opposition is lame or deceptive. So a Pro-Hamas debater cannot admit to criticizing whatever Hamas says because the basis of the cause is very long lasting, as old as the Nakba, while the advocate of Israel disputes the casualty figures even though the amount is beside the point, just too much, though Natasha Housdorff argues that casually figures for civilians to military casualties are far less than what has happened in Iraq or elsewhere and so the Israelis are relatively humane, though I haven’t heard or read such figures in other media sources. So arguments are of limited usefulness. They do not result in a conclusive argument so as to shift sides though some of the points may rankle.
How do people change their views from their verbal remarks? How do they make propositions convincing, leaving aside that literature is able to reach their emotions and their points of view without the need of the proofs required about propositions, those propositions alone required to be qualified as either “True” or “False”. There are two classic ways of doing so: Plato’s idea of dialogue and Aristotle's declarative prose. These methods are applied by and large to propositions even if literature provides a whole other set of techniques whereby people can engage in a mental transformation as the result of being exposed to a story. We will attempt in this essay only to list and comment on some of those ways to make a proposition conclusive.
Even if Plato thought that “dialectic”, whereby one assertion came to enfold a different assertion and so lead to the agreement between parties and so is the royal road to conclusive argument, Plato’s formula for productive argument is an idealization of one way to argue rather than argument itself. That is not the way most arguments go. Consider the current abortion debate. The two sides do not engage one another but go past one another by defining away the claim of the other side. Pro abortionists say, directly, that abortion is “reproductive health care” and so eliminates that there is anything special about childbirth as opposed to an appendix burst or a skin cancer, both of which also have to be removed. Anti-abortionists, for their part, say that the foetus as a person begins with conception, though making exceptions for rape or incest would still be sacrificing a person for no fault of its own. And in vitro fertilization, where some fertilized eggs are sacrificed, are not discussed in the Bible as opposing abortion as a taking of life, though the Bible doesn’t say anything about anything on abortion at all, hardly surprising given the medical knowledge of the time, but religion nevertheless offered as the basis for being pro life. When faced with something like mammalian reproduction, where the offspring remain for a time in the womb, there is no clear way to decide when life begins, just as it is difficult to see when personal rights begin and government or customary intrusions in personal life are acceptable, except that people argue all the time, saying guns are free to own and hold concealed, while others say otherwise, the reasons getting past one another, one side saying guns are necessary to counter a national army and the other side saying that guns belong to an organized militia. The ancillary issues, such as whether there is a right for people to protect themselves against criminals, or there is a governmental obligation to keep people from killing one another, drop out of consideration before these essential issues that go past one another.
Aristotle revolutionized the process of discourse by modifying Plato’s presentation. Aristotle eliminates the interlocutor by identifying alternative definitions of what is essential and arguing about which one is right and saying that each putative definition is just one type of the general phenomenon. Lists replace dialogue and so a philosopher can reach a conclusive result. Rather than arguing whether formal, efficient, final and material causes is the real cause, something that happens every day when lawyers argue whether a punch in the nose or malign intent is the real cause of a criminal act, Aristotle says the word “cause” includes all four of those things, the four associated into the idea of whatever contributes to an effect. So Aristotle has recalculated language as a description of reality and some people are not satisfied with that, insisting on a single ideal definition, as when people say the efficient cause of a fetus is the only one that counts, while others say that its final cause, the intent of the mother, is the only thing that matters.
William Buckley, Jr. engaged in Aristotelian argument in a debate he had with Jesse Jackson concerning civil rights. Buckley agreed that there should be equality in law,regardless of race, but that there were other rights that were sacrosanct and so also had to be heeded. He said there was a right of private association that is not spelled out in the Constitution but seems fundamental for a free society. You can decide who your friends are and so cannot be forced to associate with people of a different race. Congress decided that in public accommodations such as hotels and barber shops you cannot exclude people on the basis of race because these businesses are open to the public, but Congress allowed “Mrs. Murphy’s boarding house” to discriminate on race because it was more like a family based enterprise rather than a Hilton. So you probe the point of opposition by multiplying types of incidence and arrive at conclusions.
A particularly ambitious attempt at arriving at a conclusive argument was offered during Scholasticism. St. Thomas offered if-then statements for important things such as the existence of God. Among his arguments, St. Thomas said that if God is God, then he is the best of things and it is obvious that it is better to exist than not to exist and so God must exist. That is to include the conclusion in its premise, which is that there is a god to be best rather than an idea that a perfect god would have to exist, that being the nature of the idea, not the proof of the demonstration. It is also to stretch the idea of “best” to mean whatever is made comparative when “exist” is not a comparative. It either is or isn’t.
Try another way of arriving at conclusive statements.An adage is a short statement, like “a stitch in time saves nine” that summarizes a moral precept or a social and existential situation that orients a person like a beacon shedding light without the need of learning all the social science that might be needed to inform that sentiment. (Do people prosper if they are prepared? Some people trust their instincts.) People are transformed into clinging to these adages as insights for how to behave because the adages are so cogent and well stated. Here are three of them that are part of everyone's wisdom.
“I coulda been a contenda” Marlon Brando intones in “On the Waterfront” about his own fate as someone who had become just muscle on the docks rather than someone respected long after he retired as a worthy pugilist. This is an insight into a personality humanizing him and making himself another victim of Rod Steiger, the labor boss. The phrase, however, resounds as an adage in its own right as a clear way to say and grasp the idea of what usual human ambition amounts to. People in their ordinary lives want to achieve enough to be admired for having amounted enough as much so that their peers can recognize a modicum of success, such as to become a factory foreman, or own a sporting goods store, or have published a set of papers that expanded human knowledge or been one of the engineers that surrounded a moon landing. That is accomplishment enough but without it seems a life that is lacking, at least in middle class societies, and not where peasants are grateful to get through the day. Even the hero of Pearl Buck’s “The Good Earth” aspires to and achieves having money enough to hire a fancy prostitute. Once heard, the phrase is self validating. It is obvious once it has been said, having so well said a slice of life that rings true.
Another adage which gains attention by revealing an insight which now seems fundamental now that it is stated is when it is said: “What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juliet is the sun”. So now obvious a metaphor that it had always been there, Shakespeare introduces the image of the sun slowly, pointing first that the light is coming from the east and so must be the sun and that when Juliet emerges she is like the sun because there are so many ways in which the comparison can hold: Juliet is awesome; she sheds light and warms who behold her; and she blinds people with her radiance and is the singular object which to behold, all of these ways to explain why love is so transforming even though the poetry elevates what is a tawdry and pathetic tale of teenage misjudgments. So the image remains with us as a standard way to understand love as something that cannot be easily denied.
A powerful adage is presented at the beginning of Thomas Paine’s “The American Crisis”, published just shortly before George Washington encamped his forces in Valley Forge. “These are the times that try men’s souls''. That is a very gifted bit of prose style. The alliteration of the early words is replaced by a lingering and hushed two single syllable words., as if to indicate the sorrow and pity of the situation. The content is also illuminating because it suggests that such moments are inevitable but also free in that people can respond to the situation with valor or without it.That is followed with the words: “This is not the time for summer soldiers” which ties together the literal meaning that even wartime was easier during the summer when food could be foraged with people who were at war only when it was relatively easy, Wonderful rhetoric that places a situation and frames the alternatives for the readers of the pamphlet or, as I understand, were the soldiers in Valley Forge had read to them to give them encouragement/. No argument but feather a statement so ringing and contentful to be persuasive.
Political adages, on the other hand, have little bite because the claims they make are meaningless or obscure or simply performative, in that they show a position and demand, such as when Kennedy said “Ich bin ein Berliner” to show we would defend a democratic West Berlin, or when Reagan said “Mr. Gorbachev, bring down that wall” to show that the Soviet system was over. Meaningless but memorable adages include FDR saying “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”, which was correct in that people should noy panic and run to take their savings from the banks but was manifestly untrue because the Great Depression was indeed creating havoc and so there were a lot of things to fear, but could be saved with the addenda that the government could address its problems. Equally vacuous on its face was FdR’s declaration of war against Japan saying “This will be a day that will live in infamy”, when all that was being said was that an arch enemy had attacked our nation. What was “infamous” about it? That Japan had not broken diplomatic relations before then? A trivial matter. That it was done on a Sunday? That was a smart move.e carefully considered as to relevance. It is hard to be reasonable rather than fall into loose talk.
Here are two recent political adages that have some degree of meaning. MAGA may be a term that becomes a sound, a proper name, like “Major Deegan”, as the name of a highway rather than a person who was honored by getting named for a highway, but “Make America Great Again” is meaningful. It contains three propositions: that America was great; that it has declined, and that it can be restored. It was great before Blacks and women got uppity and before porn became prevalent in elementary school libraries. It will be made great again when those people and practices are under control, life back in the Fifties, forgetting that the Jews, Irish and Italians were the other unassimilables of the time and so there never was a time when there were only “normal” people.
Adages are not reliable guides to truth even if they are prettily put.Trump is not eloquent but he makes assumptions that are to be treated as adages, as self evident on their face. Trump says the 2020 election was fixed but provides no evidence though you would think that if he had some he would proclaim them. He also says that his present trials are witch hunts sent by Joe Biden and also offers no evidence other than the cynical sense that everyone cheats. So I conclude that there are no conclusive statements, no royal road to true statements, except by analyzing words carefully and offering evidence that is relevent.