Defeat by Truth is Victory

I have often wrote on this blog that love is over rated and changing ones mind is one of the most important trait in the world. 

I have also written reams on not waste time to arguing although knowing the Socratic tradition of finding the truth via argument. But currently,  most people argue for ego or support their tripe while truth disappears into abyss. Hence, my position on anti argument. 

Plus, one of my all time favorite papers: Why do humans reason? Arguments for an argumentative theory

This touching speech by Harvard president, Lawrence S. Bacow unveils an important historical Jewish trait of arguing to find the truth and then changing your mind (its the opposite of Pyrrhic victory)

Over time, truth is revealed; it needs to be tested on the anvil of competing ideas. If you really seek the truth, you must engage with those who think differently than you and be willing to change your mind. 

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Now in my own tradition, in the Jewish tradition, we have no definitive authority for resolving differences of agreement over the interpretation of texts or doctrine. None. There’s no bishop, there’s no pope. The way we resolve these differences is through argument. And indeed if you were to go into any yeshiva, a religious school, and observe students who are studying our sacred texts, they always do it in pairs. In fact, the imperative is to study with someone else. Why? Because more emerges through the dialogue between two students, through the different interpretations, than one can ever hope to achieve on their own.

I think this concept was captured beautifully by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks’ argument for argument. And he said the following: We ought to argue, he asserts, “out of a desire to discover the truth, not out of cantankerousness or a wish to prevail over [our fellows],” not “out of envy and contentiousness and ambition for victory.”

When we argue for the sake of the latter, he continues, “what is at stake is not truth but power, and the result is that both sides actually suffer. If you win, I lose. But if I win, I also lose, because in diminishing you, I diminish myself […] The opposite is the case when the argument is for the sake of truth. If I win, I win. But if I lose, I also win—because being defeated by the truth is the only form of defeat that is also a victory.”

Rabbi Sacks referred to this type of argument as argument not for the sake of victory but argument for the sake of heaven. As we begin again to imagine the future—as individuals and as a community—may we all find ways to resist the lure of righteousness. To resist the lure of moral certitude. May we embrace the possibility of transcendence through argument. And may we live life again with greater appreciation of its fragility—and for our dependence also on one another.