What I suggest is that we cast aside a notion of argumentation as quarrelsome or rancorous and disagreeable and instead, think of it as the practice of giving reasons to justify claims seeking the adherence of an audience.
There's another term that we need to examine [in the study of argumentation] and that's the term 'ethics'. Any attempt to influence other people necessarily raises some ethical questions. After all, if I try to get you to do something or to believe something, it's a limitation on your freedom of choice. I'm not leaving you alone to do whatever you want - I'm trying to induce you to do what I want. And what's more, it's the application of superior to inferior force, even if the force is intellectual and persuasive rather than physical. And so an attempt to limit other people's freedom of choice and to impose superior on inferior force automatically raises questions about whether it's ethical to do.
Please rest assured, neither The Teaching Company nor I knowingly promote unethical activity. In fact, argumentation seeks to achieve ethical influence. What is it that makes it ethical? Well, for starters, it does not influence other people against their will. It seeks their free assent. It seeks their agreement to a claim on the basis that they have come to accept the reasons for the claim and the connection between the reasons and the claim. So it seeks free assent.
Moreover, what's the alternative? If there were no attempts to influence people, then the conditions of society and community are not possible. Everyone would go his or her own separate way with no sense of social cohesion, no bonds with others. What is it that creates the bonds with others on which communities and societies are built? It's the interaction between people in which we relate to and try to influence others. So it won't do to say that any attempt to influence other people is to be questioned because we can't avoid influencing other people. The issue is how we go about it.
It's my belief that the most ethical way to go about influencing other people is through argumentation which respects their individuality and respects their freedom and seeks their free assent. Argumentation respects listeners and it respects that they have different ways of thinking and reason. So I hope and I trust that this study on which we are about to embark is indeed an ethical as well as a noble activity.
- David Zarefsky, Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning
