How might one turn bad faith on its head to help rather than harm? (lemm.ee)

submitted 9 months ago by ALostInquirer@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

In thinking on the classic Sartre quote concerning the folly of arguing with anti-Semites as if they're arguing in good faith, as well as the Swift quote regarding reasoning being unable to correct an ill opinion one didn't reason themselves into...It's left me thinking that perhaps a way to alter the path of those astray is to "play" them out of it, so to speak, but what might this look like?

After all, despite Sartre's last somewhat optimistic sentence, you may easily find that many that argue in bad faith rarely fall silent for long, if at all, when pressed.

For those unfamiliar, here are the quotes in question:

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre

And: "Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired." ― Jonathan Swift.

(This second one takes on various forms.)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 9 points 9 months ago

Interesting question. Funnily enough, i‘ve been asking myself about bad faith arguments a lot since the last couple of days. Seems like lemmy is getting run over again.

I personally dont immediately detect bad faith arguments so I always treat them like normal arguments. People then often get really annoyed at me, probably because they wanted me to be outraged or shocked. Then they lose it which really amuses me.

Calling out if I detect something like it has also helped. „So you are saying a group of people deserves to be abused and ultimately killed?“ to stay with satre‘s example.

Have a good one.

this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024

31 points (94.3% liked)

Asklemmy

43890 readers

1088 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS