Pro Hominem Arguments

The key to healthy debate is making Pro Hominem Arguments, disagreeing freely, while embracing each others’ characters, as in “I love you, and I think you’re wrong.” Hume said “Truth springs from arguments amongst friends.” Democracy at home and in society thrives on such friendly arguments, a pro hominem culture in which we neither deliver nor hear challenges to each other’s beliefs as character attacks, cultures where never is heard a discouraging word about us, though plenty freely shared about our ideas.

Now, I don’t really think we can divorce our characters entirely from the products of our thinking any more than we can become fully open, fearless, positive, accepting or any other such universally-touted virtue. A pro hominem culture is therefor a goal we can’t entirely achieve. It’s not a plan or an instruction but something to aspire toward both on the sending and receiving side of feedback. To the extent we fall short of this goal, my best bet is irony, a half-breezy, half-earnest ironic “ouch!” that gets breezier with time and practice.

Also just remembering that we only pretend to be the sole authors of our ideas, as though we’re neutrally choosing the ideas we embrace free from all cultural influences. The Veridical Stance I call it, the posture of neutrality like “Hey, we’re just after what’s true, right?” After all, if I were born to a family perpetrating the Spanish Inquisition, I’d probably be in favor of it too. Our stances aren’t our own. To a large extent they’re inheristances, inherited stances.