The Giving of Reasons
 
Comments at the 4th annual Wyoming Forensics Institute, Pre-Tournament Assembly, July 21, 2004, Laramie:

Like many of you, I stand in absolute awe and admiration for the minds and the hearts of the people you have been listening to tonight.  I stand in awe of what they do, and of what we all do.  And it's funny--what we do seems so very esoteric, so very unique, to other people.  But we are engaged in the study of something as fundamental to the human condition as eating, building, art.  Our subject is not merely communication, but the giving and receiving of reasons. 

I drove to DIA a few days ago to pick up Brian Norcross, one of UW's coaches.  Of course, when you leave camps like ours, you realize there's a world out there, and you find yourself in possession of unexpected tools to assess it.

So I was listening to the news on the radio and here's what I heard: Three brand new Habitat for Humanity homes were burned to the ground on the same night, before the new families could move in.  Who would do that, I thought, and why?  Then I heard that a nun, in full habbit, had been mugged.  She had been carrying $80.  I heard an update on the parents in Riverton who are alleged to have beaten their 15-month old child to death.  My son, Andrew, is 15 months old and I can't fathom this at all.  In fact, all these acts seemed not only evil to me, but alien.  Otherly.  Without reason. 

Of course they were without reason, and were so by their very nature.  Oh, I don't mean they were without explanation.  There are explanations for criminal, pathological and violent behavior.  I don't think American policymakers spend nearly enough time seeking those explanations.  What I mean is, by their very nature, those acts were without that gesture of justification that emerges in contexts of respect and the valuing of other people.  Because that's what giving reasons means.  Not just saying something about your claim, or your act, but being committed to making sense and bringing your good will to other people.

I'm one of those in debate that thinks the line-by-line, structural methodology of the activity actually makes it more conducive to ethical behavior than the unstructured alternatives offered in the "real" world.  I believe what we do could teach millions of people how to better give and receive reasons, and in doing so, help people better understand and accept one another.  At the same time, I believe the exploration and enactment of new formats of debate also provides both ethical and intellectual relevance to projects designed to improve the world.  The most beautiful debates I have seen, the very few best ones, exemplified everything from music to drama and dialogue to multiple languages to near-incomprehensibly fast debate and demanding levels of intricacy, to slow, methodical debate.  What makes them all good is that the debaters give reasons...not merely provide warrants, but speak to the souls of their audiences.

There is a difference between the inability to give reasons and the refusal to do so.  The hungry person in front of you begging for food may lack the capacity to give reasons; you ought to still feed that person.  But when administrations, governments, organizations, fail to give reasons, that isn't due to some physiological problem. 

In a world of fairness, in a world of creativity and intellectual excitement, reasons flow like water.  Everyone is happy to give them, compelled to give them.  Other people receive them gratefully, giving back some of their own.  Like water, people's reasons flow and blend together, or separate into complimentary streams moving in the same direction. 

In a world of mutual suspicion, paranoia, and scarcity of goods (either naturally or by design), reasons are commodities to be hoarded, disguised, hidden, refused.  Anyone might be a threat to you.  Your giving of reasons also risks your having to change, and you can't do that without pain--revolutionary pain. 

In a world where all people are acknowledged to have equal and genuine value, the giving of reasons is the giving of gifts.  In a world of extreme hierarchy, some people are entitled to reasons and not others.  Some people's reasons are entitled to be half-assed, while others are required not only to be perfectly constructed, but constructed in subordination to the needs of others. 

The failure of public institutions to provide public reasons ALWAYS hurts others, ALWAYS signals a decrease in the quality of political life, and often results in unnecessary suffering, and the infliction of pain on innocent people for the sake of comfort and convenience among those refusing to reason.  

I have to believe that we, speakers and debaters, are part of whatever alternative must emerge to fight this absurd, unjust system.  Regardless of our styles, our preferred arguments, or our paradigms, we are all capable of in some way cutting against this enforced scarcity of reasons. 

As you compete with each other tomorrow and on Friday, and as you leave here to go back to your regions and speak, strategize and win, try to remember this view of reason-giving and reason-receiving.  Toss your arguments to one another like precious jewels rather than throwing them like cutting stones.  Catch each other's arguments and open them and watch them grow, placing them next to yours, even as you ask for ballots and wins.  Demand and beg for the giving and receiving of reasons in every forum and place you find yourselves. 

Remember, also, the words of Emmanuel Levinas: "All generous thought is threatened by its own Stalinism."  As you give and receive reasons, suspend your self-certainty and give equal weight the attempted justifications of others--not equal argumentative weight, but equal ethical weight.  For, as Jurgen Habermas says, it is in that process, that giving and receiving of points and counterpoints in communication, that we find that commonality that unites us all even underneath our radical, violent differences. 

We have been incredibly lucky to discover and share reasoning together for the past two weeks.  You should all be incredibly proud of yourselves and thankful for each other.  I am thankful for each and every one of you.