Are there opinions that are so objectionable or outrageous that they fall outside the parameters of fair debate? In today’s often toxic discourse, we often hear one side of a debate insist that the holders of the rival position aren’t just wrong, but they shouldn’t even be allowed to voice their view. Is this a legitimate position to take, and if so, when?
I’ve recently been looking at Jewish traditions in relation to argument, and I’ve been struck by how relevant these are to many of the difficult conversations we find ourselves having today.
In a forthcoming book ‘Beyond Dispute: Rediscovering the Jewish Art of Constructive Disagreement’%+%2, I suggest that this may be because this Jewish approach to argument arose two millennia ago against the background of a social crisis characterised by loss of trust in authority and information, and growing tribalism and echo-chambers, in short a social crisis very similar to one many Western societies are facing today.
The book mines Jewish sources for useful tools to help us have more productive arguments, but it also finds guidance in the tradition on the question of when it may not be worth engaging in an argument at all.
The thrust of the Jewish approach is clear: when in doubt, hear them out. To the rabbis closed minds are far more a of a danger than open ones. The Talmud is spiced with cautionary tales in which the rabbis reject an outrageous supposition only to be proven wrong (in one case a rabbi berates a student for asking a far-fetched hypothetical question about a two headed baby, only to learn that one has just been born).
But the rabbinic teaching that there are ‘seventy faces to the Torah’, that is a multiplicity of positions that all have their own validity, doesn’t rule out the possibility of a seventy first face, a position that doesn’t deserve the oxygen of debate. The rabbis recognise the danger of being, as G.K. Chesterton put it, so broad-minded that your brains fall out.
Daniel Taub
So it’s not surprising that, in the course of the Talmud, there are instances of individuals being ruled out of order and banished from the house of study. What is striking, however, is that the exclusion almost never relates to the position taken by the individuals. It is almost always because they don’t accept the rules of the debate.
For the rabbis, almost any position, however arcane, deserves a hearing. What is crucial to them is less the content and more the commitment to the process. Any argument has to be conducted according to agreed rules. Someone who rejects the underlying rules loses the right to be heard. The point is made by contemporary writer Ian Leslie in his book Conflicted.
I don’t think we can say that some people are impossible to engage with on the basis of the views they hold. What I do believe though, is that * There are those who are relentlessly close-minded, aggressive and mean spirited, who always assume bad faith, who always grandstand and never listen… people who might pretend to disagree productively, only to suck you into futile battles.
Making this distinction between content and process can be helpful to us in dealing with some of today’s most contentious debate. In recent years debates about vaccines, Brexit, gun control or the environment have become highly charged, with each side convinced that they are protecting society with the other is set on destroying it.
One way to defuse some of the tension in these debates would to adopt the rabbinic approach of focusing, in the first instance at least, not on the substance but on the process. Are the participants open, in theory at least, to changing their positions in the light of new evidence?
If not, the discussion is likely to be futile. So too in relation to debates relating to Israel and the Middle East. Those who insist on shutting down or deplatforming opposing views are not so much advancing an opinion as clinging to an article of faith. And, as Jonathan Swift is reputed to have said, “it is useless to attempt to reason a man [or woman] out of a thing they were never reasoned into” .
In the world of peace negotiations, it is often said that “peace is made between enemies”. That might be true, but not entirely.
In fact, peace can only be made between enemies who are at least open to making peace with each other. Implacable enemies are unlikely to reach peace. So too implacable disputants.
Before entering into an argument we would be wise to ask ourselves, does this argument have the potential to be constructive? Is our partner open to the possibility of changing their mind? And perhaps, we should find a quiet moment to ask ourselves a follow up question: Are we?
- Daniel Taub is a diplomat, negotiator and writer, and former ambassador of Israel to the United Kingdom
