Not many people think about there being a relationship between these synonyms, but that’s exactly the point – they are not synonyms and have a wide variance of possible relations we can put them in. It is our binary-oriented society that is high on the supposed power of empiricism and statistics that conflates the two into one. For if you are debating with someone you are arguing; to argue with someone is to engage them in debate. There is no discernable difference to most of us today because the only operation here is to hit them with the same fact bar or truth bar in different places until they relent.
Consider this meme that has been making the rounds on my social media, it’s a good place to start.
Whoever Sarah Maddox is, she’s doing something we all have done – wish to be in a different discursive environment than the one we find ourselves in currently. This is a pretty clear rejection of debate based on a very sound understanding of what debate is. The definition here we get through what is being rejected: A form of discourse that cares little to nothing about the people involved in the exchange of reason and cares a ton about the resolution of that exchange.
In short, debate is best defined as a discourse where you have ultimate fidelity to your position, and you attempt to make your position as strong as possible on standards that have very little to do with the person engaging you. In debate, you either imagine those standards (Perelman & Olbrects-Tyteca’s Universal Audience perhaps) or you have third parties who clarify the standards or have presented them to you. You don’t really mind hurting the opponent because they have nothing to do with the evaluation of the strength of your position.
Debate is distasteful because we think of it exactly in these terms – “They will say anything to advance their point of view,” “they are unmovable!” etc. This is the earmark of good debate discourse. It’s not a flaw, it’s a feature because this kind of discourse is used to test the firmness of the case around one’s beliefs. In the debate you would never relent your position, that’s not the discourse here. Instead, what you might do is reflect on the weakness of part of that position and try to shore it up for next time. The result of all this is that you gain insight into how reasons interact with the claim and can better see – perhaps from an outside point of view – what it is you are advocating here.
Contrasted with this is argumentation, which is much more fluid and cares nothing for fidelity to the position. Instead, fidelity is to your opponent. In argument we are almost always trying to convince our opponent(s) to change in some way. This connects argumentation to rhetoric in the same sort of relationship that has been posited between rhetoric and dialectic (antistrophos). I would say it’s not exactly right, because argumentation and debate both care about reasons, but reasons for different purposes. In argumentation we cannot lose the connection to our interlocutor because then we’d stop talking. In debate, we want to place our opponent in a position where they cannot come up with something to say – it means we have defended our position and accomplished our goal.
Argumentation’s goal involves the alteration of people, the malleability of the opponent. Much like the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, argumentation has the other as “first philosophy.” Debate has no such ethics. Debate’s ethics circulate around giving your position due diligence no matter what – making the best possible defense you can. For those who find such an ethic distasteful, please consider that the American justice system – and many across the world – have this ethic in their laws about the right to trial, representation, and a fair hearing. When we want to be certain about a matter, we can turn to debate.
When we want to change perceptions and change relationships between others, ourselves, and reason, we rely on argumentation which pretty clearly captures what Maddox would like out of what she is assuming is better debate. Argumentation means that you have nothing but respect for the person, meaning although you are trying to influence them you will only do it on the terms that keep the conversation, connection, and relationship alive and thriving. That is, you adapt what you are saying and how you are saying it to the other. If they turn away, or disconnect, you’ve failed in your goal – and you have failed the position, attitude, or perspective you think matter so much.
Douglas Ehninger, in his essay “Argument as Method” (Speech Monographs, June 1970) takes the definition of argument to the highest level in this vein, arguing in his work that the invocation of argumentation with another is one of the most direct attributions of human rights we can make. We are in effect saying that the only way I can get you to agree, change, or alter your view is to rely on your human mind – your ability to reason – which is enough like mine that I know I can reach that goal with these familiar and convincing reasons:
Because argument is “person risking” it is “person making.” By accepting the risk implicit in an attitude of restrained partisanship the arguer both bestows “personhood” on his opponent and gains “personhood” for himself. For to enter upon argument with a full understanding of the commitments which as a method it entails is to experience that alchemic moment of transformation in which the ego-centric gives way to the alter-centric; that moment when, in the language of Buber the Ich-Es is replaced by the Ich-Du; when the “other” no longer regarded as an “object” to be manipulated, is endowed with those qualities of “freedom” and “responsibility” that change the “individual” as thing into the “person” and “not-thing.”
The association of argument with alchemy is not to transform the worthless into the valuable, but is the constitution of the valuable, the concrete articulation of humanity and human-rights:
[Argument is] a way of achieving “personhood” for oneself by bestowing “personhood” upon another. . . it paves the way toward “personhood” for the disputants, and through them and millions like them opens the way to a society in which the values and commitments requisite to “personhood” may some day replace the exploitation and strife which now separate man from man and nation from nation.
Ehninger’s definition of argumentation is an advocacy to treat it like mathematics or literature, a process of study and engagement that can create knowledge and actionable truths about people in the world. This is because argument requires at the very opening of it the assumption that one is engaging with a person, a human being, someone who also is capable of argument. Why argue if the opponent/audience is incapable of understanding reasonable discourse?
Argumentation is required when we want to change people; debate is required when we want to test our own convictions and understandings of a position. Both share the necessity of human minds in the equation as essential to the rubric, but only one puts the other person, as a thinking, caring human being, as first principle.