Rhetorica:
Magnanimity, Part III:
The Weakness of Largesse
By Gabriel Blanchard
Part of the secret of magnanimity is that knowledge is not a zero-sum game.
Trahison des Clercs
The nature of magnanimity, the fact that it is far more aligned with justice than with generosity, these things most of us can stomach without too much difficulty. But there is a danger that comes in the train of magnanimity. Some of our readers may have thought of it already. This talk of “intellectual chivalry” is all very well; but if, while you are dismounting from your metaphorical horse to level the playing field, your opponent metaphorically stabs you in the back as thanks—what then?
Imagine the following. A debate is to be held between two political groups. Call them the Blues and the Greens. Mr. A, a well-known champion of the Greens, has prepared his most eloquent, most vigorous case for Greenery, and yet one that he hopes does justice to the good he can see in elements of the opposition. Miss B, meanwhile, reputedly promising but not widely known, has been chosen to champion the beliefs of the Blues.
The appointed day comes. Being an old-fashioned sort of gentlemen, Mr. A waives the offer to present first in deference to the lady, who takes the podium. From out of her mouth there proceeds disaster. Not that she demolishes his case; far from it. Miss B opens by explaining that she is not a Blue at all, but a White. This is already a minor breach of manners; positions were agreed beforehand—but never mind that, what is she saying? This doesn’t sound anything like Blue arguments. Or arguments at all: Miss B asks rhetorical questions, she insinuates things, she persistently invites the audience to draw a Blue conclusion; yet she does so without ever committing herself to a position. Along with this goes a lack of any evidence. She cites no authorities. In fact, Mr. A realizes, as she is finishing her opening statement to a roomful of applause, that she has shown no clear grasp of the issue at stake between the Blues and Greens in the first place. She did tell two or three lies, only they were such blatant, obvious lies to anyone with the slightest familiarity with the subject, Mr. A thought at first that they were jokes. He now can’t even think how to rebut them, as a professional astronomer might struggle to rebut the seriously-made claim that the Moon is made of cheese.
The vacuity Miss B has made of her own argument should have been the end of her in a context like this, but it has been delivered with such charm that it has instead won the audience over. Every argument and rebuttal Mr. A has prepared has been rendered useless. It would be rude to call Miss B a liar, and not only rude, but excessive, for she may have been genuinely fooled by the small number of lies she did share. It would be both true and fair to point out that she has made practically no real argument; but what would be the point? To most of the audience, that will merely sound like grasping at straws. Worse, Miss B has managed by rhetorical sleight of hand to make herself seem to be not the partisan supporter of the Blue cause she is in practice, but an impartial observer who has just pointed out a few facts. It is the sort of fraud that could be practiced by only two sorts of people: utter fools, and those who wish (for reasons best known to themselves) to seem to be utter fools.
Le Grand Jeu
What then is Mr. A to do? That is his choice, and we must leave him to it. This may be narratively frustrating; but, in order to proceed, we must first re-frame things a little. For, like Mr. A himself, we have momentarily fallen into the trap of thinking that the aim of holding a debate is to win it.
Aslan didn't tell Pole what would happen. He only told her what to do.
There are activities where this would be appropriate: e.g., winning a soccer match means scoring more goals than the other team. But that is not how truth works. If one person discovers a truth, even (conceivably) in the process of a debate, and shares it with another person, both of those people have “won.” Scores divide when they are shared out; but knowledge is something divine—it does not divide when shared, but multiplies.
In 1975, not long after the heyday of the civil rights movement, the great novelist (and CLT Author Bank writer) Toni Morrison participated in a panel at Portland State University in Oregon. While there, she said:
When you really want to take away, to oppress, and to prevent, you have to have a reason for despising your victim. Where racism exists as an idea, it … really is the red flag that the toreador dances before the head of a bull. Its purpose is only to distract … Nobody really thought that Black people were inferior. … They only hoped that they would behave that way. … It’s important, therefore, to know who the real enemy is, and to know the function, the very serious function of racism, which is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. … None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.1
Redeem the Time
Mrs. Morrison’s point is, of course, of far broader application than to racism alone. Viewed through this lens, we begin to appreciate why there is a sense in which all fallacies are variations on the red herring. The innocent fool or beginner may not mean to waste our time; the conscious and deliberate sophist (who, though uncommon, does exist) is quite deliberately wasting our time. No matter. It is focusing on truth, not unweaving falsehood, that will establish truth; “for,” as Aristotle said, “men are good in one way, but bad in many.” There will always be one more lie.
That said, it may be called for to unweave particular lies that have gotten ahold of people. Intellectual chivalry calls for us to recognize that our opponent may be honest, and to treat them publicly as if they were (if only because treating people that way invites them to be or, at worst, to become honest). However, it does not require us to pretend that there are no such things as lies, or as liars. One may prepare the rebuttal of a lie, and hope one does not need to use it; one may quietly wear a bulletproof vest under one’s jacket, instead of ostentatiously donning it atop one’s jacket.
Admittedly, this is hard and often thankless work. But you’ve never shrunk from that; I admire that about you.
1This quotation (emphases original) was taken from a transcription of a recording of the panel. The transcription was made by Ms. Keisha E. McKenzie; the selection can be found on pp. 6-7 of this PDF of her transcript. Morrison’s address during this panel is often known under the title “A Humanist View.”
Gabriel Blanchard is CLT’s editor at large. He lives in Baltimore, MD.
Thank you for reading the CLT Journal. If you’d like to learn more about the kind of education the CLT exists to promote, we suggest taking a look at our Author Bank, which features men, women, and anonymous works from the whole history of western civilization (and a few that hail from beyond this civilization too); here at the Journal, we’ve profiled each of them, from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Thucydides, St. Augustine, and Christine de Pizan to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Anna Julia Cooper, Albert Einstein, and Mahatma Gandhi.
Published on 13th March, 2025. Page image of Presa di Cristo nell’Orto (“The Taking of Christ in the Garden”) (1602) by Michele Amerighi da Caravaggio.
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