I recently picked up a college textbook on critical reading and writing which views “argumentative rhetoric” as an essential tool for “self-defense . . . against manipulation by politicians, the media, teachers, and assorted propagandists.” The book advances the proposition that learning the tools of “argumentative rhetoric” will enable you “to fight back against those trying to take verbal and intellectual advantage of us. . . ”
In my experience – both as one who has read a fair number of college rhetoric and writing textbooks and as one who follows current political discourse in this country – this statement reflects a widespread opinion of the purpose of analyzing a text for its meaning, of reading critically (where “critically” does not mean to be able to criticize, but rather to be able to analyze sharply and thoroughly). I have no general criticism of this view. To the contrary, I think that this approach is useful and appropriate in many circumstances. There is no shortage of wrongheaded (and potentially harmful) arguments about how we should live together as a community that need to be defeated in a democratic society. The tools you will find (or have found) in Reading Argumentative Texts will enable you to engage in this sort of intellectual combat if that’s your purpose.
But before you go down that path, or fall into the mistaken belief that the only purpose of “critical reading” is to wage intellectual battle, consider where this view can lead. The British essayist and novelist George Orwell, while serving in India during World War II, wrote this about British propaganda:
“We are all drowning in filth. When I talk to anyone or read the writings of anyone who has an axe to grind, I feel that intellectual honesty and balanced judgment have simply disappeared from the face of the earth. Everyone’s thought is forensic, everyone is simply putting a “case” with deliberate suppression of his opponent’s point of view, and, what is more, with complete insensitiveness to any sufferings except those of himself and his friends.”
Quoted in Christopher Hitchens, And Yet. . . , p. 317 (New York: Simon & Schuster 2015) (this quote apparently is taken from Orwell’s diaries, though Hitchens does not make the source clear).
The view that we should learn the tools of analyzing texts to use them as swords in our intellectual battles doesn’t necessarily lead to a stinking pile of intellectual “filth,” such as Orwell describes. But it may and sometimes does. Certain cable “news” outlets prove that.
So, I ask you to consider another purpose of learning to analyze a text for its meaning, of learning to read critically. For many years before his retirement, Leon Kass, a medical doctor and ethicist, taught undergraduate humanities courses at the University of Chicago. He was widely regarded as an excellent teacher. In a recent interview he was asked, “what is the value of . . . close reading?” Part of his answer is especially salient:
“If you want to learn from the text, and not only learn about it, you can’t read just for argument or ammunition. You have to learn what it says and what it means, and why the author might have put things this way rather than some other way. It’s also to learn, by going slowly, how a book wants to be read, . . .
To read a great text, one wants to live with it, and have it dwell with you. You do this in the belief that it might just teach you something you really want to know but might not otherwise learn. To do that, you have to slow down, ponder the words. It’s only in this way that a book will really open up to you, as opposed to fitting into your preconceived notions of what the world is like.”
“A Questioning Mind,” University of Chicago Magazine, Summer 2021, pp. 32-33.
Notice the different postures that you, the reader, take with respect to a text when you are reading to engage in intellectual combat, on the one hand, and when you are reading to learn, on the other hand. In the former activity, you and the text (or the author of the text) are adversaries, and the goal is to defeat the meaning (the ideas, emotions, or way of looking at the world) that the text is trying to communicate. In the latter activity, when you are reading to learn, the text (and its author) is a teacher and you, the reader, are in the role of a student. You are engaged in a cooperative activity in which ideas, emotions, a way of looking at the world and everything in it – in short, meaning – is communicated to you, is shared with you. (The greater the text, the more it has to teach you.)
I am not arguing that one of these postures is “right” and the other “wrong.” Only a fool would attempt that. I am saying that if you have never taken the latter posture, the posture of being an engaged student who is analyzing a text to learn from it, there is a world of possibilities open for you to explore.
Reading to learn is a close cousin of reading for understanding. Reading to learn – it need not be a novel or rare activity, and we all benefit when it is not.
Reading Argumentative Texts 