Is!…Isn’t!…Is!

By Vasti Roodt

Another debate is upon us. Following the uproar over her snubbing of a risque art exhibition, Arts and Culture minister Lulu Xingwana has called upon South Africans to debate the line between art and pornography.

We will have to find space for this new debate among various other debates that are clamouring for our attention: the nationalisation debate, Jacob Zuma’s proposed debate about our national moral code, as well as the ongoing economic debate, energy debate, poverty debate, crime debate, education debate, transport debate, healthcare debate, land reform debate, culture debate and the on-again-off-again race debate.

South Africa, it seems, is hooked on debate. Yet, while pretty much anything that happens in the public domain is routinely lauded as either an incentive for or a demonstration of “vigorous debate”, it isn’t obvious that we know what we mean by “debate” itself.

Most often, the term is used to refer to a) people stating their opinions on a given matter, b) people attacking opinions different from their own, or c) attacking other people for having opinions different from their own. However, while a debate certainly includes people stating and disagreeing about opinions, these features alone do not yet make a debate. There are important differences between a debate and other kinds of disagreement. A debate is a specific practice that is defined by its own set of rules. It is the rules that define the practice. A game of soccer, for instance, is only a game of soccer as long as the participants obey the rules of the game. If they start picking up the ball and running with it, or hitting it with sticks, or hitting each other with sticks, they are no longer playing soccer.

The same goes for debate. If the participants fail to honour the rules, they are no longer engaged in the practice defined by the rules − i.e., a debate − but in something else: a fight, a shouting match, a popularity contest, a war.

Who wins a fight? Whoever is strongest, either in weapons or in numbers. Who wins a shouting match? Whoever shouts the loudest. Who wins a popularity contest? Whoever pleases the crowd. Who wins a debate? Whoever has the best argument.

To offer an argument is not merely to state one’s opinion on a given matter and be done with it. Nor is it a matter of attacking the opinions of others, or stirring up emotions and playing to the crowd. An argument is a defence of a particular conclusion by means of reasons. To win a debate one must offer convincing reasons – reasons convincing to the other party – for accepting one’s conclusion. It doesn’t matter how many people can be made to feel angry, fearful or resentful towards one’s opponents or sympathetic towards oneself. What matters is being able to convince those opponents themselves to change their minds.

There is a corollary here: one must also be prepared to change one’s own mind when confronted with compelling reasons for doing so. The rules of debate hold for both parties. If I wish you to be convincible – which means: willing to change your opinion in the face of valid reasons – I cannot very well refuse to be convincible in turn. To use the soccer analogy again: I cannot expect the other players to keep to the rules of the game while breaking them myself. The game only works as a game, and a debate only as a debate, when the same rules apply equally to both sides.

The even-handed application of the rules also prohibits us from making the validity of an argument dependent on the person who utters it rather than on the reasons that make up the argument itself. I cannot say to an opponent: “I refuse to accept whatever argument you present to me, because you are a [fill in the blank]”, and expect him or her to accept the validity of my argument, irrespective of who I am. If the same rules apply to both sides, then each side must present reasons for their own position that the other side can in principle accept as valid.

Apart from breaking a basic rule of debating, attacking the person rather than the argument is a losing strategy, for it reveals that I am unable to beat my opponents by means of a better argument. Resorting to name-calling and character defamation is a sure-fire signal that one is out of ammunition, metaphorically speaking.

If we consider the long list of disagreements that typify our public life, it is obvious that many of these have degenerated into crowd-pleasing antics, shouting matches and personal attacks. This is deeply regrettable. Unlike debate, these tactics can never resolve any conflict, precisely because they allow each party to disregard their opponent’s opinions as mere noise.

This is not to say that citizens should refrain from expressing their opinions in public. However, as we have seen, merely saying what one thinks about a given matter is not the same as offering an argument in support of one’s opinion. And then we are back to the point that such an argument, if it is to be taken seriously, must rely on reasons that can in principle be accepted, or at very least understood, by those who do not initially share that opinion.

Of course, not all debates have clear winners and losers. It is possible for reasonable people to disagree, and continue to disagree, about what should count as valid reasons for accepting a given opinion. In such cases, the debate can range back and forth, with both sides refining their arguments, without either of them being able to trump their opponent. This does not mean that the debate has failed; merely that it is still unresolved and therefore open to further inputs.

One could think of this kind of open-ended debate as the essence of democratic politics. To live together as citizens in a democracy is to live together with those who do not share our opinions. This does not mean that we should be indifferent to our differences. On the contrary, democratic citizenship demands from us the willingness and the capacity to see matters from a point of view other than our own. This is precisely the virtue of debate: it enables us to come to understand the reasoning behind opinions with which we do not necessarily agree.

In this regard, South Africans have nothing to fear from debate. We have much to fear, however, from the unsavoury clashes that have been trading under the name of debate, for they are threatening to destroy the very basis of our civic community.

If we wish to avoid this threat, we must learn to exchange arguments instead of insults, reasons instead of empty rhetoric. Showing ourselves capable of real debate would mark the beginning of our moral and political maturity.

Dr Vasti Roodt lectures in political philosophy at the University of Stellenbosch. Her current research focuses on cosmopolitan citizenship as an alternative to identity politics. The purpose of this contribution is to encourage critical reflection about our use and abuse of language in the political domain.