Modern Rhetoric And Arguing Well
By: Lizzie Bestow
Tags: Life Lessons, Society, Life, Philosophy, Ethics

Ad Hominem

I really underestimated how helpful learning about the ad hominem fallacy was, for me, at least. It’s something I pick up on a lot now; especially when I’m watching the news, or interviews with controversial figures.

This fallacy involves attacking the person who is espousing the view, rather than actually attacking the argument itself. It’s often said that this kind of argument is the last frontier people fall back to — that they use this argument when they have nothing better to say. But it can just be that you really don’t like the person who is making the point, and so you immediately disregard their argument. But just because somebody is a bad person, or a bit of a hypocrite, doesn’t mean that their argument is necessarily wrong.

I remember when I was first introduced to this fallacy, and my class was shown a clip from the classic TV panel show Have I Got News For You (non-Brits: it’s basically a long-running show that invites commentary from panelists on a compilation of silly news).

On that show, a panelist made a point about how big corporations like Starbucks have been accused of tax-dodging, and how people should try to shop local. There were quite a few nods of agreement from other panelists, and murmurs of concurrence among the members of public who had come to watch the live recording. Another panelist promptly scorned the woman with the very valid point — it turned out that she had been pictured holding a Starbucks cup just the week before.

Everyone laughed, called her a hypocrite, and her point was brushed aside. While it certainly might make her a hypocrite, it doesn’t make her wrong. Her point still stands; the second panelist has merely attacked her, rather than her argument. That’s the crux of the ad hominem attack; its etymology is “to the man” — as in, an attack directed at the human being, rather than the argument itself.

Learning about this fallacy has certainly made me a better philosopher; furthermore, it’s made me a better writer. I can write characters that utilize ad hominem attacks, and I can make it clear to the reader that the character is really upset at another character, and not their argument. It creates another dimension for you to play around with. You can really get inside a character’s head.

Say that character dislikes a certain political party. Conversing with a member of that political party, she might utilize ad hominem attacks, because she doesn’t want to address the argument. She wants to address the arguer; she is angry with his political identity, rather than his particular argument. It might be something that they actually agree on. Like we’ve already touched on, this is something we see time and time again with logical fallacies. The user of the logical fallacy wants to catch someone out. They don’t really want to address the argument; they want to address the arguer. They want to address the emotion that the argument brings out in them.

A classic ad hominem argument is the “I don’t want to listen to my doctor; he looks very overweight himself. What gives him the right to advise me on my health?”. The utilizer of the ad hominem argument, here, is probably upset about being told to change their dietary habits — understandably, as that’s something a lot of us feel uncomfortable and sensitive about — and they’ve become angry at their doctor. The reality is that they feel might feel embarrassed or humiliated, and so they’ve become angry at the doctor’s appearance. They might well feel the doctor is a hypocrite to tell them to lose weight; he probably is. But it doesn’t mean the doctor is wrong.

Some people have argued that identity politics involves posturing yourself as an authority on certain situations. Christopher Hitchens, in his ‘Letters to a Young Contrarian’, tells the reader to ‘beware of identity politics’. He characterizes it as ‘a reaction to the defeats and downturns…a consolation prize’. I’m not sure I agree with Hitchens.

I think identity politics has a firm place in our society, for good. It can be incredibly empowering for minority groups (or even non-minority groups) to get their voices heard. I recently wrote a piece for An Injustice! on the prejudice I faced in trying to get my chronic illness — ME/CFS — diagnosed by doctors. That piece was rooted in my lived experience as a disabled woman.

Lived experience can be a great way to argue; if you say that there’s no sexism or ableism in society anymore, I can refer to my lived experience to beg to differ. So, the authority needn’t be a professional in a field, for example. It can just be a person who has experienced the thing you are discussing.