The author is a professor of literature in Montreal, a contributor to the magazine Argument and an essayist. He notably published These words that think for us (Liber, 2017) and Why do our children leave school ignorant? (Boreal, 2008).
We are increasingly deciding by applying what could be called “Suzanne’s principle”. The Suzanne in question is this character from Marriage of Figaro de Beaumarchais who retorts to her future husband, who wants to obtain an explanation from her: “To prove that I am right would be to grant that I could be wrong. » We often act in the same way, preferring peremptory assertions to the presentation of arguments or proofs on which they could be based, posing the boldest hypotheses as if they were self-evident, refusing all doubt and all questioning as if we We held irrefutable certainties on all subjects, even a very pontifical infallibility.
We are partly to blame for this situation on the Internet and social networks. On the one hand, because this new medium favors brief and thunderous messages, those which will ensure their recipients likesthumbs up, retweets and other signs of connivance which delight them and which reinforce their convictions. From this point of view, arguing at length (because arguing always takes time) is not profitable.
On the other hand, since by enclosing, as the philosopher and writer Alain Finkielkraut writes, everyone “in their own request”, the Web, notably through the magic of its algorithms, induces a thought which, like a hamster in its wheel , only works in isolation. We are rarely faced with a contradiction or a serious counter-argument, and, when this happens, we can easily, with a click or a pirouette, get rid of everything that does not go in the direction of this that we think… or think we think.
“Let us believe we think”, because a question remains, which has nothing rhetorical: do we really think then what we think? Indeed, as the philosopher Alain reminds us in his text The radical spirit : “He who is content with his thoughts no longer thinks anything. » This apparently paradoxical axiom is only so in appearance; it had already been expressed, although formulated in a different way, by the philosopher and economist Stuart Mill, the latter believing in Of freedom that an opinion which is no longer confronted with opposing reasoning ends up withering away, becoming impoverished, fading, being reduced to a few vain “formulas” to which we no longer grant “anything more than a mute and torpid assent” .
think better
As unpleasant and disturbing as a criticism, a tight counter-argument which attacks the thesis that we defend, may be, these are, in fact, beneficial, forcing us to refine our demonstration and our arguments, constraining us , in other words, to think better. But to progress in this way from argument to counter-argument, from precision to precision and from nuance to nuance, we must – rather than playing Suzanne to Figaro – not fear that we might be wrong and be ready to “rub and file”, according to the beautiful expression of Montaigne in his Trialshis “brains against those of others”.
This attitude is not only the best way to approach the truth little by little; counter-arguing is also a deeply moral attitude. Opposing someone’s point of view may at first seem aggressive, but it is the only response, unlike physical or verbal violence, that is authentically humanist. Taking the time to oppose someone’s opinion, on the condition of doing so honestly, without distorting their words or deviating from the minimum rules of good manners, amounts to dragging them with you into the circle of the reason. It is therefore reaching out to him and holding him as a rational being at the same time as a fellow human being. It doesn’t happen without a certain amount of confidence either.
Isn’t trust what we lack the most now? We see only duplicity, perfidy and wickedness everywhere, which leads us to imagine that dangers constantly threaten our self and to consider those who simply do not agree with us as enemies. Any contradiction therefore appears as a personal attack. A microaggression. Intolerable violence.
Suzanne was simpering with her fiancé. We very seriously believe that these opponents have malicious intentions towards us, which justifies us in not paying the slightest attention to their arguments, to their concerns. Which also prevents us, obviously, from even trying to convince them. We prefer to ignore them, ridicule them, insult them, attitudes which only exude sectarianism and contempt.
The little-footed Suzannes of today, who too often believe that sentences repeated ad nauseam end up resembling truths, should also consider, in the very interest of the ideas they defend, that this repetitive propaganda in reality only generates ephemeral truths and convictions as fragile as glass. Because even if the slogans of the moment and the fashionable ideas can for a time give the impression of winning the support of the greatest number, only the arguments really convince.