Have you ever been in a conversation like this?

You are trying to make yourself understood to another person. He is listening very carefully, responding point by point, and each point makes sense… but somehow you know you are not really being heard.

You attempt to express this feeling. The response is something to the tune of: “So, if I don’t agree with you, that means I don’t understand?”

At which point you try to defend yourself, stammering, groping, struggling for coherence. You know there’s something unfair about that characterization, but you can’t seem to answer it. You’re not persuaded at all that you are wrong, nor that the other is right, but you do not know how to argue your position. What you are trying to say eludes you, and it feels as if the elusiveness of your point is being exploited. You can’t prove that, either. You listen to yourself and hear how poorly you are representing yourself and you begin to despair.

Eventually you concede just to make the conversation end, just to avoid hearing yourself sound like an idiot.

“Excellent!” He says, “We have reached an agreement.”

This “agreement” is filed away like a Supreme Court decision. It will be used to settle future cases.

You were never persuaded, though. You were only somehow, mysteriously prevented from communicating. The more this happens the less you want to keep arguing. Silence is taken for agreement, but the silence is estrangement.

What is going on there?

You wanted dialogue, but what you got was debate.

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Dialogue is an attempt by two or more parties to reach mutually persuasive common ground. One party or the other might be persuaded to the other’s original position, or they might arrive together at some kind of middle ground, or a synthesis might be discovered that transcends both positions. Each party goes out to the other and tries to see the other’s position in the best possible light (that is, as a whole, from its own perspective), including, most importantly the legitimate reasons why the other party prefers their own position.

Debate is an attempt by two or more parties to represent one’s own position as superior to that of the other. In general, the arguments are intended less for the opponent and more for the audience. The debater wishes to put his opponent in a position that will demonstrate to his supporters that their position is indeed the right one, and secondarily to undermine the the resolve of his opponents and weaken their resistance. Each party fortifies itself against the other and tries to put the other’s position in the worst possible light, to delegitimize it, and sometimes to cast doubt on the other party’s true intentions.

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In dialogue:

1. The parties involved speak directly to one another.
2. The parties involved try to see the other’s position in the best light.
3. The intention is to arrive at a mutually beneficial outcome.
4. The process aims at unanimity.
5. The process is creative: it generates new possibilities.
6. Each party believes the best way to reach a satisfactory conclusion is to yield as much as they can to the other.
7. Trust is necessary and presupposed.
8. Often, the parties believe in pluralism – that multiple, legitimate ways to see the situation can exist side by side, with none being the sole or even objectively superior perspective

In debate:

1. The parties involved speak through one another to an audience, and primarily to those who share one’s perspective and  already actively or latently in agree.
2. The parties involved try to put the other’s position in the worst light.
3. The intention is to promote one’s own favored outcome, at the expense of the other
4. The process aims at convincing an overpowering majority.
5. The process is destructive: it eliminates flawed, weak or underdeveloped possibilities.
6. Each party believes the best way to reach a satisfactory conclusion is to win as much ground as possible from the other.
7. Trust is not necessary and sometimes active distrust is presupposed.
8. Often, at least one of the parties believe in objectivism – that the truth of a situation is what it is, and that conflicting opinions signal that someone is mistaken about, or is misrepresenting or distorting the objective truth.

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Debate – ORIGIN Middle English : via Old French from Latin dis– (expressing reversal) + battere ‘to fight.’

Dialogue – ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French dialoge, via Latin from Greek dialogos, from dialegesthai ‘converse with,’ from dia ‘through’ + legein ‘speak.’

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Debate is pursuit of coersion without bloodshed. Dialogue is the pursuit of friendship.

Debate can win an argument, but it cannot win friendship.

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A debate with no audience – what does that mean? Who does he mean to persuade, if not you, the partner in this discussion? Is he persuading himself that you are unreasonable and that dialogue with you is impossible?

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A debate before a reasonable audience is won through reason. A debate before an unreasonable audience is lost through reason.

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Am I arguing for dialogue? Obviously.

Am I arguing dialogicially for dialogue? Obviously not. This post is a one-sided debate. I am speaking to those who already agree with me. Dialogue with the unreasonable must be imposed. They must be politically forced to practice dialogue. As long as an unreasonable man believes he can undermine and circumvent dialogue, he will continue to attempt it.

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I consider the defense of dialogue a chivalrous and deeply androgynous act.

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Martin Buber:

I had a friend whom I account one of the most considerable men of our age. He was a master of conversation, and he loved it: his genuineness as a speaker was evident. But once it happened that he was sitting with two friends and with the three wives, and a conversation arose in which by its nature the women were clearly not joining, although their presence in fact had a great influence. The conversation among the men soon developed into a duel between two of them (I was the third). The other ‘duelist’, also a friend of mine, was of a noble nature; he too was a man of true conversation, but given more to objective fairness than to the play of the intellect, and a stranger to any controversy. The friend whom I have called a master of conversation did not speak with his usual composure and strength, but he scintillated, he fought, he triumphed. The dialogue was destroyed.