We the people were recently treated to a masterclass in political debate courtesy of the House Oversight Committee. "I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading," Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) told Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D., Texas). Rising to the challenge of her rival, and demonstrating a truly remarkable talent for alliteration, Crockett observed that her intellectual adversary had committed the "bleach-blonde, bad-built, butch body" fallacy (or in Cicero’s original Latin: candida, mala constructa, corpus butch).
Okay, so maybe this embarrassing back-and-forth wasn’t a great moment in argumentation. Unfortunately, it seems emblematic of, not an exception to, how the members of our political class address each other.
It’s not only politicians we need to worry about. As Ward Farnsworth explains in Classical English Argument, "most people learn about argument from social media, a kind of virtual campus on which the subject is badly taught indeed." Farnsworth, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law and its former dean, presents his book as "an alternative school," a superior place to learn about the craft of argument than the cesspool of the internet and, though he doesn’t say so, congressional hearing rooms and presidential lecterns.
Classical English Argument is the most recent entry in Farnsworth’s Classical English series, joining Classical English Rhetoric, Classical English Metaphor, and Classical English Style. A few years ago he published The Socratic Method, so a move to argument is, well, logical. Farnsworth sets out "to explain and illustrate patterns in debate—the range of moves that get made in arguments about all sorts of subjects in all times and places." This reference to "moves" echoes one of the most helpful college composition books, Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein’s They Say/I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, but this book is much more engaging than a manual of exercises or homework assignments.
Following in the sandaled footsteps of Aristotle, who built the rhetorical triangle of ethos, pathos, and logos, Farnsworth divides his book into three main sections. Each major section includes 10 to 11 categories, and nested within each of these categories are about 5 to 7 "patterns in debate." Some of them will be familiar from your high school and college rhet/comp classes (syllogisms, enthymemes, tautologies) and others will be new to you (abusus non tollit usum, audi alteram partem, and even some that don’t involve Latin phrases). Farnsworth illustrates each move with at least one example from the Golden Age of our language’s rhetoric. More on that era in a moment.
Farnsworth’s first section, Offense & Defense, comprises "the more personal and sometimes less rational aspects of" argumentation. Leading with this category allows Farnsworth to start the book with the most attention-grabbing—and perhaps most modern—chapters about "Insult and Invective" (including techniques for how to point out "deficiencies in the other side’s wit or ability" and express pain for "their behavior and the incompetence it displays") and "Irony" (such as phony expressions of generosity). Even in our snarky age, it is helpful to see how and why these moves can be most effective—before Farnsworth turns to contrasting expressions of humility, magnanimity, and empathy. The second section, titled Inference & Fallacy, covers "logic and kindred topics," such as deduction and induction, ad hominem arguments, and causation. Finally, Judgments & Tradeoffs considers "the practical problems in making and judging arguments," including the weighing of evidence, the consideration of bias, and the analysis of word choice.
Farnsworth presents brief but enlightening insights into each argumentative move. Of ad hominem arguments, he explains that "criticizing or praising the maker of an argument is usually easier than taking the argument seriously." He then goes a step further by noting some ad hominem arguments are claims about a person’s consistency, which "isn’t a fallacy if it’s used the right way. … It amounts to showing that your own beliefs require a conclusion contrary to what you’re saying or doing." Similarly, whereas many handbooks will identify the slippery slope as a fallacy, Farnsworth also recognizes that "a slope can be slippery when the logic of a principle is hard to contain." And thank goodness, Farnsworth devotes a page to begging the question ("supporting a conclusion with a premise that takes the truth of the conclusion for granted") and distinguishes that from simply raising a question. "Friends of literacy avoid this usage," he declares, good advice that would also make a worthy tattoo.
What does Farnsworth mean by "classical English"? Although the book certainly has roots in Aristotle, Cicero, and all them other high-falutin’ Greeks, that’s not what Farnsworth means by "classical English." The term refers to the rhetoric of the 18th- to early 20th centuries, which he calls "the heyday of public debate in England and America." Illustrations of individual moves come from such All-Stars of argument as Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Patrick Henry, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Macaulay, John Stuart Mill, Daniel Webster, Abraham Lincoln, and Winston Churchill. There are also many less familiar role players from the House of Commons, both houses of the United States Congress, and elsewhere. Literary passages from Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, and George Eliot make cameo appearances, but most illustrative quotations reflect Farnsworth’s belief that "the most talented masters of argument [have] stood and used the spoken word."
As that lineup of arguers suggests, being a master of argument doesn’t necessarily mean being on what recent orators like to call The Right Side of History. As Farnsworth puts it, some "illustrations are offered for the sake of instruction, others for inoculation." Yet precisely because these examples are from long-settled debates, readers are unlikely to ignore any of them out of bias or partisanship; one can easily see how that would not be the case were Farnsworth to rely on more modern instances.
Farnsworth abides by the Horatian imperative to instruct and delight, proposing the book "is partly meant for instruction" and "also meant for fun." It is ultimately a readable reference book, "the kind in which learning (and entertainment, too) may be helped by some serendipity. The curiosities of the readers will be the best guide to what to read and when." In other words, you’re probably not going to read this straight through, but dip in and out. (To make that a bit easier, it would have been nice if the book included an index of topics and authors quoted.)
What kind of a nerd would dip into a book like this? Writers and speakers interested in improving their argumentation skills. People who want to learn more about how experts in a particular public skill have been successful. Home schoolers, high school teachers, and college professors who want to help their children and students reason more clearly. It belongs in the hands of every politician, publicist, and speechwriter. Two senators, a Republican and a Democrat, blurb the book. I can think of at least two members of the House who could use it, too.
Yuval Levin (full disclosure: he’s my boss) writes in a new book of his own that "the breakdown of political culture in our day is not a function of having forgotten how to agree with one another but of our having forgotten how to disagree constructively." Classical English Argument offers many helpful reminders of how to do just that, as well as how to practice an art critical to democratic governance: persuasion.
Farnsworth’s Classical English Argument
by Ward Farnsworth
Godine, 264 pp., $28.95
Christopher J. Scalia is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.