I receive from Merriam-Webster an e-mail with a word of the day. I read todays e-mail and wanted to share it,because for me it gave a label and a definition to what our political ,two party system has evolved into being. I think political debates should become more Dialectical and much less eristic. I found the origin of the word to be particularly interesting, as well. See what you think. Merriam-Webster Logo Word of the Day November 2 eristic Audio Pronunciation \ih-RISS-tik\ DEFINITION adjective: characterized by disputatious and often subtle and specious reasoning EXAMPLES Dialectical argument is a cooperative, two-sided truth-seeking art that requires a constructive and balanced attitude, whereas eristic dialogue is one-sided, quarrelsome, and antagonistic. — From Douglas Waltons 1999 book One-Sided Arguments Does free speech tend to move toward the truth or away from it? When does it evolve into a better collective understanding? When does it collapse into … the pointless and eristic game of talking the other guy into crying uncle? — From an article by Mattathias Schwartz in the New York Times Magazine, August 3, 2008 DID YOU KNOW? Eristic means argumentative as well as logically invalid. Someone prone to eristic arguments probably causes a fair amount of strife amongst his or her conversational partners. Its no surprise, then, that the word traces its ancestry back to the Greek word for strife. Eristic and the variant eristical come from the Greek word eristikos, meaning fond of wrangling, from erizein, to wrangle, and ultimately from eris, which means strife. The adjective appeared in print in English in 1637. It was followed approximately 20 years later by the noun eristic, which refers to either a person who is skilled at debates based on formal logic or to the art or practice of argument
Posted on: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 11:05:30 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015