Argumentation Books I Can’t Do Without

Chatting with a friend of mine online the other day and he asked me for my favorite argumentation\debate books. Thought I would list them here as well.

Here’s the list I came up with:

The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation by Perelman and Olbrects-Tyteca

A masterwork, read it only 2 times all the way through because it is both massive and technical. Many of the examples don’t resonate with modern American readers since they are all mid 20th century European social science or literary examples. And many of them are somewhat obscure even if you think you are pretty well-read.

The plus sides of the book far outweigh. Here is a comprehensive attempt to map in totality the common topoi of contemporary argument from a purely inductive basis. No discursive stone is left unturned – philosophy, courtrooms, literature, sociology, and more are examined for the presence of the new rhetorical forms.

If the book intimidates, check out Perelman’s later book The Realm of Rhetoric for a boiled down approach to what is in the Treatise.

Uses of Argument by Stephen Toulmin

Essential, game-changing study for rhetoricians that study argumentation. For philosophers or others who study argument, the book is not so revolutionary. For people involved in academic debate or intercollegiate debate, the Toulmin model is almost not a model, but the right way that arguments are made.

More important of a contribution, I think, is the situatedness of argument that Tolumin suggests. The idea that argumentation is field dependent is a vital concept that places real importance on the method of argument over the truth of the argument. This allows for evaluation of argument away from tools from empirical science, or analytic philosophy.

Informal Logic by Douglas Walton

This is a nice treatment of the formal, validity-based discipline of logical reasoning in the terms of the Toulmin turn, or the turn toward the study of argument that has some resonance with the daily practice of argument. One critique that can be lodged at philosophers who study argumentation is that there’s too much theory, not enough practice in their analysis. Not a lot of discussion of the daily practices of argument and the way people reason in and out of arguments all day long. This book bridges the gap between the situatedness study of rhetoricians and the theoretical structures of the philosophers interested in argument.

Rhetorical Argumentation by Christopher Tindale

A great attempt at looking through the eyes of argumentation studies at rhetoric, and then at argumentation studies through rhetoric’s eyes. A wonderful read, very lucid, and with plenty of ideas for praxis between the two fields. The idea of argument as object in recent years, brought about by many field’s attention to argumentation, finds some needed complication in the pages of this good book.

But these are scholarly treatments of argument! What about teaching it to debaters or potential debaters?

I always havethe Art of Deception by Capaldi hanging around. Great intro to formal reasoning, critical thinking, emotional appeals, formal fallacies, and causal reasoning. Cheap and easy to read with tons of examples and exercises. A fantastic book for anyone interested in improving his or her argumentative skill.

Also perhaps Argumentation Schemes by Walton might be good for teaching, but it’s fairly technical and complex, and mostly for argument analysis. But there are some good ways in that book of breaking down arguments into structural forms or elements just to see how they work.

Pedagogy of Skillful Means

My body seems to know when I have weekends off from debate and schedules all my illnesses for those times. Yesterday and today I’ve been fighting a nasty cough and not really feeling motivated to do much of anything. I’m about to take my laundry down in a few, and I went grocery shopping yesterday, but that’s about all I can handle for now.

I’ve been working on my larger project of attempting to find a non-rational, non-propositional justification for academic debate since I can’t do much else but sit around, and I came across the wonderful concept from Zen Buddhism of “skillful means.” What I’ve been researching is the koan (kung-an) as a pedagogical method. What I’ve found so far is that it suggests a rhetoric of teaching and learning quite different from what’s in vogue right now.

Here is Thich Nhat Hanh describing it, in relation to kung-ans:

The kung-an is a useful instrument in the work of awakening, just as a pick is a useful instrument in working on the ground. What is accomplished from working on the ground depends on the person doing the work and not just on the pick. The Kung-an is not an enigma to resolve; this is why we cannot exactly say that it is a theme or subject of meditation. A kung-an is only a skillful means to help a practitioner reach his or her goal. – Zen Keys, 57.

The koan, or kung-an is a tool that helps the student work independently on another problem – the problem of understanding. It is not a thesis, or main idea, or “curriculum.” It’s not a clever intro. I think it is a rhetorical “wedge” that allows the field of “to be understood” to be “mined/mind” (Going with the metaphor here). The metaphor suggests that as a tool it is only as good as the skill of the person who is wielding it. It must be crafted to the particulars of the situation of master/student, then it becomes “merely” skillful means.

So skillful means are a trick? Some sort of clever educational activity? Hanh goes a bit further with it:


To help practitioners cross the river to the shore of awakening, Zen masters hold out the staff of skillful means. But the disciple must grab hold of it. If his eyes remain shut and his mind blocked, the practitioner will miss the staff. (72)

I find this entire discussion fascinating, as it appears to line up with a clearly conservative pedagogy – the blame lies with the student if he or she can’t “grasp the staff of skillful means.” The student has to see it, realize what it is, and grab onto it. If he or she doesn’t, well then, that’s tough. Or perhaps they are not smart enough.


But “skillful means” cuts both ways. The phrase suggests that the means deployed are chosen, refined, calculated, and (most importantly) produced by the master. The master is making a judgement as to what “skillful means” to extend. It is his or her choice, and to extend the exact same means to all students is to fail one’s pedagogical ethic.

A master must know the mentality of his disciple well in order to propose a kung-an that is appropriate. Every master meets success sometimes, but also knows failure when he proposes an inappropriate kung-an. (61)

Clearly the failure is not the student’s all the time. The master must use a “skillful means” that is rhetorically appropriate – it must be recognizable as help for the student. This is the opposite interpretation we get of Zen practice from popular culture, where the master must offer puzzle within puzzle that the student (near the end of the film) recognizes as simple liberal modernism, and finds within his heart the strength to push on toward his uncontroversial quest to eliminate two-dimensional evil from the world (normally with a flying kick).

Negotiation and discrimination are also a part of the rhetoric of Zen pedagogy. If the kung-an is the instrument handed to the student for his or her own labor toward understanding, then the master must be careful not to give it too early or late, and also must make sure the student stays interested long enough to reach the moment of “skillful means.” However, “skillful means” could be extended to describe the rhetoric of the entire master/student relationship, which at first glance appears Hegelian, but I don’t think it fits. There is a different economy at play here, and I think it’s one of the elimination of any fixed points from which one could identify with the opposite term. Instead, Zen masters attempt through “skillful means” the recognition that one is always already “master” and always already “student.” The distinction between the two terms is something that can count as a “skillful means,” but it is clearly the opposite of the goal of Zen practice. This is why Hanh usually uses the adjective “mere” when describing it.

As for debate, do we use “skillful means” to extend assistance to students? Or do we toss one ladder in the water and hope they find it?

Do we take responsibility for the students’ failure to understand, or do we recognize our failure to provide “skillful means” for the topos “to be understood.”

How much time do we waste trying to explain to students “here is the finger, the finger is very important, we must always look to the finger, the finger will show you the way,” when the moon shines brightly just above our head?

LOL Scientists

Someone wrote a book on the paranormal! Sadly though, the author of this article feels that it’s shocking to know that in the book these phenomena (ooooh? What? what??) are real.

It’s so funny and annoying at the same time when smart people approach a complex phenomenon – let’s say the paranormal and the realm of the psychic – and then conclude something totally beside the point. Well, beside any sort of interesting point that we humans could do something with.

Please answer me this question: Why do all of our supposedly most insightful investigations feel that announcing that something is “real” or “really works” is a conclusion?
What about its implication, meaning, role in the social, cultural, political? What about it as a phenomenon and what it says about identity, humanity, the other, the economic? Wasn’t your investigation started because the phenomenon, as such, existed? Isn’t that “real?”
I just don’t understand how anyone can be satisfied with the claim “it’s really real” being synonymous with insight.
But then again, I don’t understand why the tools of scientific investigation (objectivity, experimentation) have been globalized to the point where one has difficulty imagining an alternative way of “finding out” that would be considered legitimate.

Mandatory Debate Training?

Here is an article by Susan Herbst advocating for mandatory debate training as a return to the principles of the civic in the U.S.
Of course, this article oversimplifies. But the conection between participation in debate and the practice of civility seem questionable.
For the general public, I think the connection is axiomatic. Of course training in “how the other side sees the argument” is perhaps what civil discourse and the political are founded upon to the modern lay mind.

But further than all of this is the idea I forward that debate is training to a new way of life – a self-discipline and an attitude toward the world and the self that is not just revolutionary or some sort of skill development, but a self-renewing revolutionary perspective that allows one to shift and adapt no matter the moment. Something like martial arts and something a bit more rigorous than generic spirituality is what I’m after.

So I like the article, but it’s only scratching the surface, or perhaps it damns with faint praise, and limits the potential of argument and debate.