Intellectual contestation requires courtesy toward contested positions
Evidence
Finally, then, the question of the manner in which our tensions are worked through matters a great deal. I don’t want to prescribe but I want to draw your attention to the problem of courtesy, of living with a tension that matters without eating each other. Because there is a kind of competitive way in which intellectuals live with their tensions in which they can only do so by climbing on the backs of those people whose positions they’re trying to contest. We have a great deal to learn about respecting the positions being advanced while contesting them because something important is at stake. I don’t think we’re very good at that. We have a lot to learn about the manners of a genuinely dialogically critical engagement. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 276
Categorization
Category: Craft and Method
- APHORISMS: ‘Living with a tension that matters without eating each other’ is timeless advice for intellectual exchange.