Effective writing is dialectical

By Guest Commentary

Is there a good way to turn a B paper into an A? To write more honestly? To nudge your essays closer to being truthful and even deathless?

A year's experience running our University's Writing Center has given me the opportunity to step outside my disciplinary field of literary studies and explore commonalities and differences in cross-campus styles of writing, from business to nursing to biology. The most striking quality I have found common to almost all writing is this: effective writing is dialectical.

That's a fancy word for having the courage to wrestle with the contradictions in what we think, know and write. The dialectical method has been used at least since Ancient Greek times (think of Socrates' relentless questioning). But it took someone with a name as imposing as G. W. F. Hegel to codify the process and apply it on an epic scale. Hegelian dialectics employed a formulation that became popularized in the equation: thesis + antithesis = synthesis. That is, an argument, set in explicit conflict with its opposite, will resolve itself into a harmonious and precise synthesis.

In the honest interiority of our minds, we are dialectical machines, our thoughts churning hourly between confidence and insecurity, between optimism and pessimism, between selfishness and selflessness, ever seeking some kind of workable synthesis for the day. But in the public presentation of ourselves (in person or in writing), we suppress that process in a defensive effort to perform stability.

We neglect the fermentation of dialectical thinking at our peril. Our defensive minds are inclined to cling to our visceral beliefs, giving rise to many a tweet and rant – raw opinion rather than wisdom. Americans are supremely trained in being skeptical of such things as audience-praising media, optimistic politicians, our parents ... so it's curious that we do not train that skeptical eye upon ourselves in our writing. If we don't confront potential antitheses to our claims, then it's likely we're just blowing smoke up our assessments.

In contrast, the dialectical method's insistence on inhabiting the other camp enables us to get to know our arguments more intimately. (Says John Stuart Mill, "He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that"). The method affords us the chance to empathize with those who think otherwise, and this awareness equips us with new strategies of qualifying our points and convincing our audience. Thomas Paine seized upon such awareness in "Common Sense," the best-seller that moved colonial America toward independence. He took his idealistic and illegal vision of a new kind of nation and grounded it dialectically with the realistic logic of the sensibility indicated in his title.

On campus, a student enthusiastic about rising rates of education, web resources and educational technology might write a paper arguing how no generation has ever found it easier to learn than the present one. No matter how much evidence and enthusiasm the student brings, the argument will inevitably fail with a portion of its audience unless it confronts evidence from the other side (contemporary learning compromised by internet misinformation, grade inflation, the distractions of technology). The essay will be more successful if it finds a way to confront and wrestle with such counter-evidence, making such moves as conceding its validity and working this into the argument, or demonstrating how the counterevidence is ultimately insubstantial.

Of course, if I'm trying here to argue for the use of dialectical writing, I'm going to have to devote at least a paragraph to the opposite side: why wouldn't you want to consider the opposite side of your argument? For one thing, it's time-consuming (it's hard enough thinking of reasons to champion an idea). It's dispiriting (our energies were invested in promoting something – not deflating it; doing both leads to confusion). It enables your reader to see all the weaknesses in your argument (we'd hoped they wouldn't notice).

These are valid points. But I find that they ultimately validate my argument for counter-arguing. For good writing should be time-consuming (it's something earned). If the task is dispiriting, reaching truth demands it, for without energy put into both sides, your essay is little more than advertising puffery. And your audience needs to be exposed to your argument's vulnerabilities, for if truth is your goal (rather than self-promotion), your audience needs access to all the facts. By addressing the counterarguments and working with them, you arrive where your most skeptical readers will inevitably go, and head them off.

It's a paradox that the best way to inhabit your argument is to spend time outside of it, countering it, undermining its validity. But centuries of first-rate minds have shown how the honesty and comprehensiveness of the dialectical process make it so. By playing devil's advocate, our writing is touched by the better angels of our nature.