Polemic

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Polemic (/pəˈlɛmɪk/ Script error: No such module "Respell"., Page Module:IPA/styles.css has no content.US also /-ˈlimɪk/ Script error: No such module "Respell".) is contentious rhetoric intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The practice of such argumentation is called polemics, which are seen in arguments on controversial topics. A person who writes polemics, or speaks polemically, is called a polemicist.[1] The word derives Script error: No such module "params".,[1][2] Script error: No such module "params"..[3]

Polemics often concern questions in religion or politics. A polemical style of writing was common in Ancient Greece, as in the writings of the historian Polybius. Polemics again became common in medieval and early modern times. Since then, famous polemicists have included satirist Jonathan Swift, Italian physicist and mathematician Galileo, French theologian Jean Calvin, French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher Voltaire, Russian author Leo Tolstoy, socialist philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, novelist George Orwell, playwright George Bernard Shaw, communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, linguist Noam Chomsky, social critics H. L. Mencken, Christopher Hitchens and Peter Hitchens, feminists, such as Andrea Dworkin and existential philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Polemical journalism was common in continental Europe when libel laws were not as stringent as they are now.[4] To support study of 17th to 19th century controversies, a British research project has placed online thousands of polemical pamphlets from that period.[5] Discussions of atheism, humanism, and Christianity have remained open to polemic into the 21st century.

History

In Ancient Greece, writing was characterised by what Geoffrey Lloyd and Nathan Sivin called "strident adversariality" and "rationalistic aggressiveness", summed up by McClinton as polemic.[6][7] For example, the ancient historian Polybius practiced "quite bitter self-righteous polemic" against some twenty philosophers, orators, and historians.[8]

Polemical writings were common in medieval and early modern times.[9] During the Middle Ages, polemic had a religious dimension, as in Jewish texts written to protect and dissuade Jewish communities from converting to other religions.[10] Medieval Christian writings were also often polemical; for example in their disagreements on Islam[11] or in the vast corpus aimed at converting the Jews.[12][13] Martin Luther's 95 Theses was a polemic launched against the Catholic Church.[6][note 1] Robert Carliell's 1619 defence of the new Church of England and diatribe against the Roman Catholic Church – Script error: No such module "Lang". – took the form of a 250-line poem.[14]

Major political polemicists of the 18th century include Jonathan Swift, with pamphlets such as his A Modest Proposal, Alexander Hamilton, with pieces such as A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress and A Farmer Refuted, and Edmund Burke, with his attack on the Duke of Bedford.[15]

In the 19th century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's 1848 Communist Manifesto was extremely polemical.[6] Both Marx and Engels would publish further polemical works, with Engels's work Anti-Dühring serving as a polemic against Eugen Dühring, and Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme against Ferdinand Lasalle.[citation needed] Vladimir Lenin published polemics against political opponents. The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky was notably directed against Karl Kautsky, and other works such as The State and Revolution attacked figures including Eduard Bernstein.[citation needed]

In the 20th century, George Orwell's Animal Farm was a polemic against totalitarianism, in particular of Stalinism in the Soviet Union. According to McClinton, other prominent polemicists of the same century include such diverse figures as Herbert Marcuse, Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, and Michael Moore.[6] Conservative Jewish Austrian writer and journalist Karl Kraus (1890–1935) considers the topic of moral collapse in his polemic writings. Karl Kraus produced and published 922 issues of the fifteen-daily magazine called Die Fackel (The Torch) until his death. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sigmund Freud, Ernst Mach write in a similar manner and style to Kraus.[citation needed]

In 2007 Brian McClinton argued in Humani that anti-religious books such as Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion are part of the polemic tradition.[6] In 2008 the humanist philosopher A. C. Grayling published a book, Against All Gods: Six Polemics on Religion and an Essay on Kindness.[16]

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ The story of Luther nailing his Theses to the church door has been doubted. See references in Martin Luther#Start of the Reformation – "the story of the posting on the door ... has little foundation in truth."

References

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  1. ^ a b Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."polemic" (s.v.). Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster. 2005.
  2. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.American College Dictionary. New York: Random House.
  3. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Henry George Liddell; Robert Scott. "πόλεμος". A Greek-English Lexicon. on Perseus.
  4. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.polemic, or polemical literature, or polemics (rhetoric). britannica.com. Archived from the original on 11 April 2008. Retrieved 21 February 2008.
  5. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Rare books collections: Hay Fleming Collection". St Andrews University Library. Retrieved 16 March 2022.
  6. ^ a b c d e Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.McClinton, Brian (July 2007). "A Defence of Polemics" (PDF). Humani (105): 12–13. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 March 2016.
  7. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Lloyd, Geoffrey; Sivin, Nathan (2002). The Way and the Word: Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-10160-7.
  8. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Walbank, F. W. (1962). "Polemic in Polybius". The Journal of Roman Studies. 52 (Parts 1 and 2): 1–12. doi:10.2307/297872. JSTOR 297872. S2CID 153936734.
  9. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Suerbaum, Almut; Southcombe, George (2016). Polemic: Language as Violence in Medieval and Early Modern Discourse. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-317-07929-3.
  10. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Chazan, Robert (2004). Fashioning Jewish identity in medieval western Christendom. Cambridge University Press. p. 7.
  11. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Tolan, John Victor (2000). Medieval Christian perceptions of Islam. Routledge. p. 420.
  12. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Bobichon, Philippe (2012). "Littérature de controverse entre judaïsme et christianisme: Description du corpus et réflexions méthodologiques (IIe-XVIe siècle ») (textes grecs, latins et hébreux)]". Revue d'Histoire Ecclésiastique. 107 (1): 5–48. doi:10.1484/J.RHE.1.102664.
  13. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Bobichon, Philippe (2018). S. Chandra (ed.). "Is Violence intrinsic to religious confrontation? The case of Judeo-Christian controversy, second to seventeenth century". Violence and Non-violence Across Times. History, Religion and Culture. Routledge: 33–52. doi:10.4324/9780429466205-3.
  14. ^ Script error: No such module "template wrapper". (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
  15. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Paulin, Tom (26 March 1995). "The Art of Criticism: 12 Polemic". The Independent. Retrieved 6 November 2016.
  16. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Grayling, A. C. (2008). Against All Gods: Six Polemics on Religion and an Essay on Kindness. Oberon Books. ISBN 978-1-840-02728-0.

Bibliography

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Look up polemic in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

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