On judgmentalism and the argumentum ad hominem

If you study logic and rhetoric and the ways liars trick the gullible into believing their lies, you learn fairly early on about the "tactics of distraction." There you will meet one of the very few logical terms that the average educated American actually still knows and uses properly: the ad hominem argument, or, in English, "the argument based on the person," that is, attacking your opponent's character rather than his arguments.

The essence of the tactic is to make the people to whom one is lying (this usually includes oneself) stop paying attention to the question, "What is true?" and instead to start paying attention to the question, "Who is evil?" Whenever you hear a sentence that starts, "You only say that because you're a [man/racist/callous Republican/godless Communist]," you can be pretty confident you're dealing with an ad hominem. ...continue reading...The tiresome "chickenhawk" argument used by mindless anti-war types to say that anybody who isn't a soldier is not allowed to defend the wisdom of going to war, is a particularly obvious example. So is a statement such as, "I do not choose to be lectured on sexual morality and social responsibility by the man who walked away and left Mary Jo Kopechne to die."

I've said before on this blog that I find it useful to distinguish between discussions (in which two people who disagree set out together in pursuit of the truth), debates (in which either each person is trying to get his own way, or else each person is trying to prove that he's smarter than the other), and arguments (in which each person is trying to prove that the other one is a jerk). I'll make use of that distinction in what follows; be sure you grasp my meaning before proceeding.

The argumentum ad hominem happens in two situations, generally speaking.

(1) A guy who's likely to get into trouble in a battle of wits, and who doesn't have a lot of ammunition when it comes to evidence for his point of view, will commonly take refuge in the argumentum ad hominem because it turns discussions and debates into arguments. And since a fool can usually convince himself that the other guy is a jerk, he can usually convince himself that he's "proved" that the other guy is a jerk, and therefore that he has won the argument. Arguments are the refuge of the stupidly self-deceived, precisely because all you have to do is tell yourself, "Oh, yeah, the guy's a bastard," and you feel like you've won.

By comparison, debates and discussions are much more problematic. I believe Ambrose Bierce once defined the word "pitiful" as "the state of an opponent after an imaginary confrontation with oneself." But the trouble with debates and discussions is that, unless you're actually pretty sharp and really have done your homework, the outcome of a real confrontation is too often that it's not the other guy who winds up looking pitiful. Arguments, by contrast, are a safe harbor: you can almost always convince yourself that you won the argument, and march off the field of battle in triumph, oblivious to the degree to which onlookers are holding you in the same contempt in which you hold your opponent. For in an argument, each guy thinks the other guy's a jerk, and by the time the argument is over, usually each guy has proved...that the other guy is right.

(2) In the particular fields of ethics and morality, there is a distinction between passing judgment on a particular action, and passing judgment on the character of the person who does that action. It's perfectly possible to say that a person has done a bad thing without saying that that person is a bad person. People are flighty things, buffeted about by emotions and confusion and ignorance and stress, and so they very often fail to live up to their own standards, not because they are evil people, but just because they had their facts wrong, or they got bad advice, or they did something muddled-headed (allowed themselves to be persuaded, for example, by an argumentum ad hominem), or felt that they had no choice other than a lesser-of-two-evils choice, or just flat had a bad day and did something they knew they shouldn’t have done. And people have their own strengths and weaknesses: a man can be regrettably weak in some ethical areas while being remarkably admirable in others. It is, therefore, perfectly possible to discuss the question of whether a particular kind of action is in itself a good or bad action, without interesting yourself at all in whether some particular person who has done that thing is a good or bad person.

But a lot of people think it's much more fun to worry about whether other people are good or bad people. And the word that describes a person whose primary interest is in decreeing whether somebody else is a good person or a bad person, is judgmental.

Ironically, judgmental people generally wish to reserve that privilege for themselves; if you pass judgment on them -- or even just on some particular one of their actions -- they bitterly condemn you for being, you guessed it, judgmental. Even more ironically, if you are a person who is interested in serious questions of ethics, and you have had the bad luck of saying that a certain kind of behavior is immoral in the presence of a judgmental person who disagrees with you, then you don't need me to tell you that they will instantly leap to accuse you of being "judgmental" -- even though you were not, and even though by making that charge they prove that they are. You also don't need me to tell you that they are blind to their own judgmentalism.

Just to make the distinction clear between judging an action and judging a person, let's take a well-known example from literature.

In Jane Austen's Emma, the title character is a sweet and well-intentioned, but very naive and innocently vain young lady, whose wealth and social standing has caused her to know little in the way of inconvenience and even less in the way of criticism. She is loved (though she is too naive to recognize the fact for most of the book) by a quite intelligent man some years her senior. As Austen knew perfectly well, they know best who love most truly, and while Mr. Knightley loves Emma very much, Austen is careful to emphasize, in the very first scene in which Mr. Knightley appears, that, "Mr. Knightley, in fact, was one of the few people who could see faults in Emma Woodhouse, and the only one who ever told her of them."

At one point, in an uncharacteristic moment of spite, Emma says something needlessly cruel to an impoverished and kind, though garrolous, old family friend. And Mr. Knightley takes Emma aside and gives her a tongue-lashing that is worth quoting in full, precisely in order to show how a clear-headed and loving person can condemn an action utterly while yet not condemning the person who has committed it:

While waiting for the carriage, she found Mr. Knightley by her side. He looked around, as if to see that no one were near, and then said,

"Emma, I must once more speak to you as I have been used to do: a privilege rather endured than allowed, perhaps, but I must still use it. I cannot see you acting wrong, without a remonstrance. How could you be so unfeeling to Miss Bates? How could you be so insolent in your wit to a woman of her character, age, and situation?—Emma, I had not thought it possible."

Emma recollected, blushed, was sorry, but tried to laugh it off.

"Nay, how could I help saying what I did?—Nobody could have helped it. It was not so very bad. I dare say she did not understand me."

"I assure you she did. She felt your full meaning. She has talked of it since. I wish you could have heard how she talked of it—with what candour and generosity. I wish you could have heard her honouring your forbearance, in being able to pay her such attentions, as she was for ever receiving from yourself and your father, when her society must be so irksome."

"Oh!" cried Emma, "I know there is not a better creature in the world: but you must allow, that what is good and what is ridiculous are most unfortunately blended in her."

"They are blended," said he, "I acknowledge; and, were she prosperous, I could allow much for the occasional prevalence of the ridiculous over the good. Were she a woman of fortune, I would leave every harmless absurdity to take its chance, I would not quarrel with you for any liberties of manner. Were she your equal in situation—but, Emma, consider how far this is from being the case. She is poor; she has sunk from the comforts she was born to; and, if she live to old age, must probably sink more. Her situation should secure your compassion. It was badly done, indeed!—You, whom she had known from an infant, whom she had seen grow up from a period when her notice was an honour, to have you now, in thoughtless spirits, and the pride of the moment, laugh at her, humble her—and before her niece, too—and before others, many of whom (certainly some,) would be entirely guided by your treatment of her.—This is not pleasant to you, Emma—and it is very far from pleasant to me; but I must, I will,—I will tell you truths while I can; satisfied with proving myself your friend by very faithful counsel, and trusting that you will some time or other do me greater justice than you can do now."

If you go back over Mr. Knightley's speech, what you discover is that everything negative he has to say is concerned with this act. He does not try to say, "You always do things like that;" indeed, he says explictly that, based on his general opinion of Emma's good character, "Emma, I had not thought it possible." Indeed, it is clear throughout that he thinks that Emma is fundamentally a good person, and that that is precisely why he is bothering.

And there is one other absolutely critical statement: "This is not pleasant to you, Emma—and it is very far from pleasant to me." Mr. Knightley is perfectly sincere.

Two marks of the judgmental man are both absent in Mr. Knightley. (1) The judgmental man takes the bad action and attempts to use it as evidence that his target is a bad person. It is the person, not the action, that the judgmental man wishes to condemn. Indeed, if there is evidence that there might actually be some good in the target, the judgmental man leaps to prove that the apparent good is really just an illusion and the detested one is through-and-through detestable. (2) The judgmental man finds pleasure -- a particular brand of moral self-satisfaction -- in contemplating his target's moral inferiority to himself. He is reluctant to accept that his target might be more moral than he, the judgmental man, wishes his target to be.

Now, judgmental people wield the argumentum ad hominem as a matter of preference. They turn from discussion and debate to argument, they shift their interest from the ethics of their target's actions to the blackness of their target's character, not because they are in danger of losing the debate, but because the moral condemnation that the argument allows them to spew out, is precisely the black pleasure they crave in the first place.

We all have our judgmental moments. In fact most of us know people whose very presence in a room, or the very mention of whom in a discussion, throws us irresistably into a judgmental fever. But God protect us from allowing jugmentalism to wear a groove into our character until we have become judgmental people, rather thus just people who have judgmental moments.

And if He does protect us, it will most likely be by giving us our very own Mr. Knightley -- that is, the kind of friend who will pass stern judgment on our actions, while still having a high enough opinion of our character to be willing to take us aside and tell us the truth. God grant us such friends -- and the humility to know better than to resent their honesty as "judgmental."

This post started out merely as a couple of introductory paragraphs to this one, which looks in detail at a particularly interesting variant of the argumentum ad hominem.