Why Should Educators Care about Argumentation? 

HARVEY SIEGEL University of Miami 

Key words: argumentation, education, educational aims, educational ideals, rationality, critical 
thinking, character, respect, feminism, postmodemism, indefiniteness of language, Derrida, 
particularity, male bias. 
Abstract: Educators who are reflective about their educational endeavours ask themselves 
questions like: What is the aim of education? What moral, methodological, or other constraints 
govern our educational activities and efforts? One natural place to look for answers is in the 
philosophy of education, which (among other things) tries to provide systematic answers to 
these questions. 

One general answer offered by the philosophy of education is that the aim of education 
consists in fostering the development of students' rationality. On this view, education has as its 
fundamental task both the development of students' reasoning ability, and also the fostering of 
a complex of attitudes, habits of mind, dispositions and character traits, such that students are 
not only able to reason well; they also care about reasons, and organize their beliefs, judgments 
and actions in accordance with the deliverances of the reasoned evaluation of reasons. 

Argumentation theory is also concerned with the analysis of the power and convicting force 
of reasons. When do reasons for a claim warrant acceptance of that claim? By what criteria are 
reasons evaluated? How are these criteria themselves justified? Such questions as these are the 
meat and potatoes of argumentation theory, which, in pursuing these questions, promises to 
shed light on the character of rationality as the aim of education. Rationality, which links 
education and argumentation theory, provides educators with a reason to care about 
argumentation-if rationality can be cogently defended as an educational ideal. 

In this paper I will try to provide such a defense, and in doing so explain why educators 
should care about argumentation. The defense will be a moral one: I will argue that we are 
morally obliged to endeavour to foster the rationality of students, because that is what is 
required to meet our obligations to treat students with respect as persons. 

I will also consider some general criticisms of the Enlightenment ideal of rationality, offered 
by Feminist, Multiculturalist, and Postmodemist scholars. If these criticisms are cogent, then 
both argumentation theory and the view that the aim of education is the fostering of rationality 
are threatened. I will argue that the criticisms, while important and instructive, are not so 
destructive of the ideal of rationality as some contemporary scholars suppose. 

Educators are busy people. They must worry about classroom management and 
discipline, about students' self-esteem, about building- and system-politics, about 
parents and their attitudes and involvement (or lack thereof), about misguided 
administrators and teachers, about funding, and about a million other things as 
well. Why on earth should they care about argumentation? 

In what follows I will argue that they should so care, and I'll try to explain 
why they should. 

1. What should educators care about? 

As is typical in philosophy, so it is in this case: in order satisfactorily to answer a 
given question, it is necessary to tum one's attention to a prior question. In order 
to know whether educators should care about argumentation in particular, we 

Informal Logic Vol. 17, No.2 (Spring 1995): 159- I 76 © Informal Logic 1995 



160 Harvey Siegel 

must first figure out what they should care about in general. Then we'll know 
whether argumentation is included in that broader set of legitimate educational 
concerns. So: What should educators care about? 

Obviously, they should care about many things. Educators are people, after 
all; they should care at least about all the things people generally ought to care 
about: hunger, world peace, whether the newly invented proof of Fermat's Last 
Theorem is successful, whether there will be a World Series this season-and if 
so, whether the Blue Jays will win it-and so on. But these cares, legitimate and 
important as they are, are pretty clearly not the sorts of things with which our 
question is concerned. So we need to sharpen our question a bit. We need to ask: 
What should educators, qua educators, care about? 

The first answer here is obvious: educators, qua educators, should care about 
education. However intrinsically important the (Major League Baseball) umpires' 
strike and owners' lock-out might have been, given the looming resultant 
prospect that the Blue Jays would have had to play their home games this season 
not only not in their home stadium, but in an alien, hostile, foreign land, it is clear 
that these are not the concerns of educators qua educators, since they have 
nothing directly to do with education. 

So educators qua educators ought to be concerned with education. So far, so 
good. But this doesn't tell us very much, since education is a many-layered, 
many-faceted activity. Should they be concerned with student crime? Of course. 
With the architectural layout of the proposed high school classroom addition? 
Obviously. The list could be extended indefinitely. What unites all these 
legitimate educational concerns is their relation to the aim of the activity: they are 
legitimate educational concerns because they impact upon our ability to achieve 
our educational ends. 

Consequently, a central and abiding concern of educators qua educators 
involves the nature of those ends. What are we trying to accomplish by engaging 
in our educational activities? What ends are we trying to achieve, and how 
should we try to achieve them? The legitimate concerns of educators qua 
educators depend upon the ends, aims and ideals of education. Therefore, a 
fundamental concern of educators qua educators involves the nature of those aims 
and ideals. What are they? And why are these, and not some other things, our 
ultimate educational aims-that is, how are our educational aims and ideals 
themselves justified? 

These questions are among the most basic questions addressed by the 
philosophy of education. So, as a next step, we can say that educators qua 
educators ought be concerned with philosophical questions concerning education, 
especially those concerning the nature and justification of basic educational aims 
and ideals. 

So what are our fundamental educational aims and ideals? While 
philosophers of education have, throughout the history of the subject, addressed 
this question, they have not done so in a single voice. Many putative ideals have 
been advanced: creativity, good citizenship, various conceptions of good 



Why Should Educators Care about Argumentation? 161 

character, self-confidence, self-esteem, positive self-image, obedience to (usually 
select) others, obedience to the moral law, caring for and about others, reverence 
for and devotion to God, various kinds of knowledge, aesthetic sensitivity, and 
many others. Fortunately for us all, this is not the time to review and assess the 
strengths and weaknesses of these assorted proposed educational ideals. To do so 
would require that we stray far from our subject here: that is, argumentation. 
Instead, I want to focus on one particular educational ideal, which, I will argue, is 
both a fundamental educational ideal and is closely related to argumentation-
that of rationality. 

The idea that education should be fundamentally concerned with the 
fostering of rationality is one with a long and distinguished pedigree in the history 
of Western philosophy of education. In various tenns and with various emphases 
and twists, it has been advocated by the vast majority of philosophers of 
education in the Western intellectual tradition, including Socrates, Plato, 
Aristotle, and others in the Ancient period; Anselm, Aquinas, Scotus, and other 
important Medieval philosophers; Locke, Hume, Kant, Rousseau, Mill, and others 
in the Modern and Enlightenment periods; and, in this century, by, among many 
others, Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, R. S. Peters, and Israel Scheffler. 1 

While I certainly don't place myself in the company of those towering 
philosophical figures, I have also defended the claim that the fostering of 
students' rationality is a fundamental educational aim, and I have tried in various 
places to articulate and justify the ideaU I shall next say a bit more about this 
ideal and its justification, in order to make clear its fundamental connection to 
argumentation. 

To say that rationality is a fundamental aim or ideal of education is to say 
that educational activities ought to be conceived, designed, and carried out in 
such a way that they will conduce, ceteris paribus, to the maximal development 
of students' rationality. In what does this rationality consist? Briefly, in two 
independent features: in skills and abilities of reason assessment; and in a 
complex of attitudes, dispositions, habits of mind, and character traits that can 
collectively be labelled the critical spirit. 

The first of these involves the ability of students to evaluate the epistemic 
force of reasons which can be offered in support of candidate beliefs, claims, and 
judgments-to be able to distinguish between reasons which genuinely do and 
genuinely do not support those candidates, and, in the cases in which they do, to 
detennine the strength of that support. A person is rational only insofar as she 
can, among other things, systematically and appropriately evaluate such reasons. 
When we say that rationality is a fundamental educational ideal, we are claiming 
that education ought to strive to foster in students the skills and abilities which 
will enable them competently to assess reasons. 

The second feature-the critical spirit-involves the character of the 
student. The student who has it not only is able to assess reasons well; she is 
disposed to do so, and to be moved to confonn her beliefs, judgments and actions 
to the results of such assessments. She has, as Professor Binkley so admirably 



162 Harvey Siegel 

put it, a "love of reason" (Binkley 1980, p. 83), and her entire life is shaped by 
this view of reason and its value. When we say that rationality is a fundamental 
educational ideal, we are claiming that education oUght to strive to foster in 
students the complex of attitudes, dispositions, habits of mind and character traits 
constitutive of the critical spirit. 3 

The obvious next question to ask is: why should we regard rationality, so 
understood, as a fundamental educational ideal? Why are we justified in 
regarding it as such an ideal? While there are a variety of considerations which I 
think argue in favor of so regarding it, the fundamental one is moral: we are 
morally obliged to treat students in such a way as to foster the development of 
their rationality, because only in treating them in that way do we honor the 
Kantian injunction to treat them with respect as persons.4 (This invocation of 
Kant's "Enlightenment" view of the importance of the individual and her 
autonomy has come under serious criticism of late, and we will consider it further 
below.) 

The final preliminary, before we resume our consideration of argumentation, 
is to draw your attention to the normative character of the conception of 
rationality just sketched. Rationality, conceived as an educational ideal, is in at 
least two respects normative. First, obviously, it places a strong positive value on 
rationality; the defender of the ideal ranks it more highly than at least a lot of 
alternative educational ideals. But more relevant for the present discussion, it is 
normative in its approach to what we might call the substance of education, and 
indeed of thinking more generally: the defender of the ideal puts forward the 
claim that it is important for students to reason well, and takes as fundamental the 
educational task of helping students to maximize (ceteris paribus) their ability to 
do so. Students who reason poorly would not measure up well against the ideal. 
It is this aspect of the ideal's normativity that allows us to forge a link between it 
and argumentation. Arid so we are, at last, ready to consider the connection 
between education and argumentation afforded by the ideal of rationality. 

2. Education and Argumention 

Argumentation-whatever else it may be-is aimed at the rational resolution of 
questions, issues and disputes. When we engage in argumentation, we do not 
seek simply to resolve disagreements or outstanding questions in any old way-if 
we did, then instances of brainwashing, getting one's interlocutor to ingest 
appropriate chemicals, and issuing threats of force would count as episodes of 
argumentation, since these are ways of resolving questions and disputes. These 
ways of forging resolutions are rightly rejected as instances of argumentation 
precisely because the resolutions so forged are not rational ones: that is, such 
procedures for forging resolutions afford no confidence that the resolutions so 
reached are in any way rationally superior or preferable to other possible 
resolutions. Argumentation, that is, is concerned with/dependent upon the 
goodness, the normative status or epistemic forcefulness, of candidate reasons for 
belief, judgment, and action.s 



Why Should Educators Care about Argumentation? 163 

When argumentation is conceived in this way, then the theory of 
argumentation is relatedly conceived as exploring such questions as: under what 
conditions are episodes of argumentation successful? That is, under what 
conditions are achieved resolutions of disputes rational? By what criteria is such 
rationality determined? 

So understood, argumentation and its theory are fundamentally concerned 
with rationality, and with the normative evaluation of argument. As such, 
argumentation and argumentation theory (and informal logic) are of direct interest 
to educators. For as we have seen, educators-at least, those who embrace the 
ideal of rationality-<iesign their educational activities in such a way that they 
(ceteris paribus) maximally foster the rationality oftheir students. Educators qua 
educators want their students (to be able to and) to argue well-not in the 
sophistic sense of being able to "win" arguments by virtue of their powers of 
persuasion, but in the sense of being guided by good reasons in that they base 
their beliefs, judgments and actions on them. Educators likewise want their 
students to understand why particular reasons for belief, judgment and action are 
more epistemically forceful than others, and to understand the criteria by which 
such evaluations are made, and how those criteria are themselves justified. And 
to these educational aims, argumentation and its theory are directly relevant. In 
short, since educators want their students both to argue well, and to understand 
the constitution of good argument, they should be interested in the theory and 
practice of argumentation. 

Education and argumentation are united, then, by their mutual concern with 
rationality and the normative dimensions of reasons and reasoning. Since 
argumentation and its theory promise both to help achieve, and to provide insight 
concerning the constitution of, the educators' aim offostering the development of 
rationality, the educator should care about argumentation and its theory. Here we 
have the answer to our initial question: educators should care about 
argumentation because of the close connection between the educational ideal of 
rationality and the normative concerns and dimensions of argumentation and 
argumentation theory. 

It would be nice if my story could be brought to an end here. I have 
explained why educators should care about argumentation. The key item in my 
explanation is educators' commitment to the ideal of rationality, which forges the 
link between argumentation and education. But it would be remiss to ignore the 
fact that, at present, the ideal of rationality is in some circles in disrepute. So my 
explanation will succeed only if! can blunt recent criticisms of that ideal. It is to 
this task I tum next. 

3. Recent challenges to rationality as a worthy educational ideal. 

In this postmodern world, there is trouble for rationality. Earlier I briefly 
attempted to justify the educational ideal of rationality in terms of the Kantian 
moral principle of respect for persons. But it is no secret that many critics of 



164 Harvey Siegel 

"liberal", "Enlightenment" philosophy reject the individualism, and the value of 
rational autonomy, apparently presupposed by the Kantian principle. More 
fundamentally, many critics of the Enlightenment project reject the modernist 
valorization of rationality altogether. If they are right to do so, then the 
educational ideal of rationality apparently goes by the boards, and with it, my 
explanation of why educators should care about argumentation. So, in order to 
make good that explanation, I must try to defuse extant criticisms of rationality. 

The critical literature here is vast, and I cannot hope to finish the job 
completely, or even address it adequately, in the limited space remaining. I will 
try to show, though, that there is reason to think that the ideal of rationality can 
survive at least some extant criticisms of it intact. Let me consider some of these 
criticisms. 

3. J Language is too unstable to license the ideal. 

Jacques Derrida famously points to the "indefiniteness" of language and linguistic 
meaning and, in Rene Arcilla's words, "the thrall of aporia in language."6 In an 
excellent discussion of Derrida and the implications of his views of language for 
the philosophy of education in general and multi-cultural education in particular, 
Arcilla (1995) suggests that those implications are sinister for traditional 
philosophical aims of education: 

... although philosophers continue to spin discourses in order to defer 
indefiniteness, this indefiniteness, like a force of nature, is bound to come back 
and haunt terms in the discourse. Once altered and alienated from their 
context, these now questionable terms stand to provoke new mouths to 
unweave the old discourse and another generation of pens to declare their 
independence from its terms. So philosophy perpetuates itself. Yet so too 
does indefiniteness, which remains the condition for the possibility of calling 
different thinkers into the conversation that keeps philosophy alive. (Arcilla 
(1995), pp. 168-169) 

Is language as aporetic, as indefinite, as Derrida and Arcilla suggest? If so, 
what follows from it concerning the educational ideal of rationality? I would 
argue, first, that any claim to the effect that the indefiniteness of language 
undermines either that or any other educational ideal is itself undermined by the 
fact that the relevant indefiniteness, if genuine, would apply to the claim itself. I 
don't see why the indefiniteness and aporia which are alleged to undermine the 
modernist quest for educational ideals don't also impinge upon, and undermine, 
the very view of language that is supposedly doing the damage to the ideals-for 
the Derridean thesis appears to depend upon the definite establishment of the 
indefinite (to wit: "I, Derrida, have definitely and firmly established, in language, 
that all language and meaning is indefinite"). Let me amplify this point a bit. 

First, consider the basic form of Arcilla's argument: 
(1) Language is provisional and indefinite. 

(2) Therefore, dialogue is interminable. 



Why Should Educators Care about Argumentation? 165 

(3) Therefore, philosophical ideals, which depend upon dialogue, are 
indefinite, inconclusive, and subject to disruption. 

The first, fundamental premise is that which expresses Derrida's claim 
concerning the aporetic nature of language. Should we accept this premise? Not, 
I don't think, without qualification. Qualification is required because, 
unqualified, the claim it expresses is subject to a damning difficulty: if language 
has only provisional meaning, and is indefinite, then the premise expressing the 
claim is itself only provisional and indefinite. But if so, the claim is at least to 
some extent undermined, because its grand pronouncement about the nature of 
language is (to say the least) significantly limited. In other words, if language and 
meaning are, in general, provisional and indefinite, then so is the language 
expressing, and the meaning of, the Derridean claim itself. But if so, then, first, 
neither (2) nor (3) above follow from it; and, second, it is incapable of 
undermining the possibility of establishing rationality as a legitimate educational 
ideal. The fact that Derrida's thesis concerning aporia applies to itself 
undermines its ability to do the work it is here being asked to do. 

Second, the self-applicability of Derrida's thesis raises another difficulty. Do 
we 'know' that language is aporetic? How could we, if language is in fact 
aporetic? This depends, of course, on what we mean by 'knowledge'. If the 
thesis is that one understanding oflanguage is as good as any other, then we can't 
know any claim expressible in language; this of course applies to the thesis itself 
as well as to everything else. This is a recipe for epistemological skepticism, 
based on a Derridean linguistic skepticism concerning meaning. I won't pause 
here to consider the merits of such skepticism. But the thesis needn't be read in 
this stark way; it is I think more plausibly understood as recommending a form of 
fallibilism rather than skepticism, to wit: since language is subject to aporia, it is 
always possible that what we think we know (e.g., to take Arcilla's example, that 
he is a male) we may at some point decide that we don't know. Given the ever-
present possibility of new insights, new theorizing, new evidence, and new 
alignments of meaning, we must always hold open the possibility that putative 
knowledge-claims can be revised. That knowledge is in principle revisable in this 
sense does not lead to skepticism, but only to fallibilism. In this sense we can 
know, fallibly, that language is aporetic. (Whether we do know this is of course 
another question.) But this is possible only if we don t hold that one 
understanding of language is as good as any other; but, rather, that the Derridean 
understanding of language as aporetic, while in principle open to revision, is the 
best understanding we currently have. Here knowledge, understandings, and 
meanings admit of evaluations in terms of better and worse. This sort of 
fallibilistic but non-skeptical interpretation is the one Derrideans require, if their 
arguments about anything are to rest upon the Derridean premise (1). But if so, 
then, as I argued above, that premise is actually much weaker than it appears. 
Indeed, no mention ofthe premise is required: we are all fallibilists now, and have 
been since Peirce; Derrida's discussion and thesis, understood fallibilistically, 
contributes nothing. Understood skeptically, it defeats itself and so also 



166 Harvey Siegel 

contributes nothing. Either way, then, the Derridean thesis is a lot less impressive 
than it appears at first blush. It has no apparent tendency to undermine either the 
quest for educational ideals in general, or the establishment of rationality as a 
fundamental educational ideal in particular. 

3. 2 'Meta-narratives' must be rejected. 

Many postmodernist writers have argued that any 'metanarrative' concerning 
general educational ideals, relevant to all people, is suspecU Within the broader 
Postmodern literature, Foucault and Lyotard are famous for their rejection of 
metanarratives. In the literature of educational theory, Henry Giroux, for 
example, voices the same objection: 

General abstractions that deny the specificity and particularity of everyday life, 
that generalize out of existence the particular and the local, that smother 
difference under the banner of universalizing categories are rejected [by right-
minded postrnodemists] as totalitarian and terroristic. (Giroux (1988), p. 14) 

Other educational theorists also press the objection. If it succeeds, then it 
appears to undercut the explanation offered above concerning educators' interest 
in argumentation, since that explanation depends upon just such a metanarrative, 
concerning rationality. Relying on that Enlightenment metanarrative, then, would 
not only fail; it would also constitute, in Giroux's words, "totalitarian and 
terroristic" hegemonic philosophizing, and, once seen in that light, would 
presumably be rejected by 'liberal' philosophers as well as postmodern ones. 

This objection does not succeed. For one thing, the relevant metanarrative 
concerning rationality does not "deny the specificity and particularity of everyday 
life", "generalize out of existence the particular and the local", or "smother 
difference under the banner of universalizing categories". It can and should 
acknowledge specificity and particularity, the particular and the local, and 
difference. It can and should, moreover, accept that difference, particularity, 
locality, and specificity, are highly relevant to particular educational questions. 
However, while the 'modernist' view accepts and acknowledges these 
particularities and differences-and so does not deny or smother differences, and 
therefore is innocent of the charges Giroux articulates-it does deem them to be 
irrelevant to certain questions, especially to those concerning the justifiability or 
correctness of the relevant principles. For example, if it is wrong to marginalize, 
silence, or otherwise oppress members of minority cultures, then it is wrong to do 
so-independently of the particularities of the cultures victimized by that 
oppression. Thus the Enlightenment view presumed in regarding rationality as a 
fundamental educational ideal acknowledges difference and particularity, but has 
a nuanced view of the relevance of difference: sometimes it is highly relevant; 
sometimes not. That view rejects the idea that difference is always relevant to 
everything. But that rejection escapes Giroux's criticism. 

Moreover, the Postmodern rejection of metanarratives in general is 
notoriously troubled. As many writers have noted, that rejection itself constitutes 
a metanarrative. To say that all metanarratives are to be rejected, that they are all 



Why Should Educators Care about Argumentation? 167 

defective, is to make a universalizing claim of exactly the sort that the person 
making the claim wants to (universally) reject. But if rejecting metanarratives 
requires embracing a metanarrative, then there is a logical difficulty inherent in 
the very idea of rejecting them all. The bottom line is this: if the rejection of 
metanarrative requires metanarrative, then metanarrative cannot (coherently) be 
universally rejected. If not, then the claim that rationality is a fundamental 
educational ideal cannot be tellingly criticized on the grounds that it relies upon a 
metanarrati ve. 

3.3 The 'universalistic' conception of rationality is itself problematic. 

A further charge made against the view defended here is that it relies upon a 
hegemonic conception of 'universal reason'. It is true that that view does 
presuppose a particular conception of reason and rationality, according to which 
reasons can afford objective warrant for particular claims. This view is 
'universalistic' in the sense that the goodness-the power and probative force-
of reasons is universally applicable: if p is a good reason for q, then everyone 
who is justified in believing that p, and who believes that q on the basis of p, is 
likewise justified in believing that q. Particularities and differences among the 
candidate believers or their cultures do not effect the ability of p to warrant q. 

I have already argued that universality itself is not a plausible target of 
criticism, since it is required for its own rejection, and therefore cannot be 
coherently universally rejected. But many writers suggest that there are special 
problems here for the universality of reason or rationality in particular. Not only 
do different cultures and persons evaluate particular reasons differently with 
respect to their probative force-what you or your culture regard as a good reason 
for q, I or my culture regard as a bad reason-but a special problem arises with 
respect to the justification of that conception of reason or rationality itself. For 
how can I argue for my, or indeed any, universalistic conception of rationality? If 
I do so on the basis of reasons I offer in its defense, I appear to beg the question 
against those not already committed to that conception; if I do so on any other 
basis, my proffered justification fails by my own lights. Thus these two problems 
threaten, from another angle, any universalistic conception of rationality. 

Both of the problems just raised are fundamental epistemological 
difficulties. I can't possibly address them here, though they have been addressed 
elsewhere. Siegel (1987) is aimed at defusing the first, relativistic, difficulty-i.e. 
that a universalistic conception of rationality is defective because the power and 
convicting force of reasons appears to differ from person/culture to 
person/culture. Siegel (1989) and (J992a) attempt to offer a non-question-
begging, non-circular rational justification of rationality itself. If the efforts 
undertaken in these works are successful, then these two difficulties with 
'universal reason', at least, can be met. 



168 Harvey Siegel 

3.4 We must embrace the particular, and in doing so, reject the universal. 

It has also been argued that educational ideals, like everything else, are inevitably, 
necessarily, particular; that the particular and the universal are mutually exclusive; 
and, consequently, that the attempt to identify 'universal' educational ideals such 
as rationality is doomed. 8 That entailment is illusory, I will argue; a recognition 
that our proposed ideal is particular, in that it arises in a particular cultural-
historical location, in no way precludes its universality. 

The idea that particularity and universality are mutually exclusive and 
exhaustive, i.e. the idea that we must opt for one or the other, is clearly defended 
in the work of Richard Rorty. Rorty contrasts "objectivity"-the view that as 
philosophical inquirers we must "step outside our community long enough to 
examine it in the light of something which transcends it, namely, that which it has 
in common with every other actual and possible human community", perhaps "an 
ahistorical human nature" (Rorty (1989), p. 36}-with "solidarity", according to 
which people locate themselves with reference to some community, and which 
conceives inquiry and inquirers as fundamentally "ethnocentric" (37). Rorty 
embraces solidarity: "we must, in practice, privilege our own group, even though 
there can be no noncircular justification for doing so"; in doing so, he embraces 
"[t]his lonely provincialism, this admission that we are just the historical moment 
that we are". (44) He argues that striving after objectivity is but "an attempt to 
avoid facing up to contingency". (46) 

I don't want here to offer any sort of systematic criticism of Rorty, though I 
believe that his general view suffers from overwhelming difficulties. 9 I want 
instead to emphasize that, in embracing solidarity over objectivity, Rorty is 
rejecting the sort of universalistic, trans-historical perspective he identifies the 
latter tradition as striving to articulate and embrace. He holds that this sort of 
universality is philosophically untenable, and that the only alternative is to settle 
for solidarity with non-universalistic particularity. (e.g. (l989a), pp. 190-192) 
That is, he holds that the objectivity/solidarity dichotomy, and consequently the 
universality/particularity dichotomy, is exclusive and exhaustive; that, while one 
must embrace either particularity or universality, one cannot embrace both. Is this 
correct? I think not. [will next present an argument intended to establish the 
compatibility of the universal and the particular. 

My argument is simple. The fact that humans are always located in specific 
culturallhistorical settings does not undermine our collective ability to reach 
beyond our local settings and speak to broader audiences and arenas of concern. 
We always judge from the perspective of our own conceptual scheme; there is no 
way to escape from all schemes and judge from a God's-eye point of view. Since 
our schemes reflect our culturallhistorical circumstances, then these 
circumstances constitute limits on our judgment; we can't escape them entirely. 
With these premises I agree. But some draw from them the conclusion that 
universality, or a perspective unencumbered by our particular situation, is 



Why Should Educators Care about Argumentation? 169 

impossible; that our judgments cannot, in principle, have any force beyond the 
bounds of our own location or scheme. From this conclusion I dissent. 

I will not dally over the obvious logical difficulty that anyone who presses 
that conclusion on the basis of those (or any other) premises presumes the 
legitimacy of the very sort of universality she is out to reject, since she thinks that 
the conclusion follows-for everyone, judging from whatever conceptual/ 
culturallhistorical scheme-from those premises. Instead, I want simply to argue 
that the argument is a non sequitur, and that its conclusion is false. If all of our 
judgments are made from the perspective of whatever scheme we happen to 
employ-which they are-then, according to that argument, none of them have 
any such legitimacy. But counter-examples to this thesis abound. Many of our 
arithmetical and mathematical judgments, for example, though made from our 
scheme, surely have legitimacy, and are correct, even though small children, and 
members of certain other cultures,1O do not share either our scheme or our 
judgments. Important scientific theories similarly have application, and validity, 
beyond the scheme of those who invented them and their cultural mates-space 
'curves', and mass is convertible with energy, for example, even for those whose 
schemes do not sanction these judgments. 

Counterexamples to the thesis under discussion-that the epistemic 
legitimacy of judgments is bounded by the perspective of the scheme from which 
the judgments are made-are not restricted to the mathematical and scientific 
domains. Moral and social/political judgments also aspire to, and sometimes 
achieve, extra-scheme legitimacy: for example, our judgment that oppression and 
marginalization are wrong, though made from the perspective of our own scheme, 
is thought (by us) to have legitimacy beyond the sharers of that scheme. Similarly, 
even though racist, patriarchal, and heterosexist schemes approve of their 
associated forms of marginalization and oppression, we have no difficulty in 
criticizing such schemes, or the judgments made within them, as inadequate or 
unjust. Indeed, to advocate any particular moral/social/political value is to insist 
upon the scheme-independent II legitimacy of such criticism. If our stances with 
respect to such values do not permit this, on what basis can we advocate and try 
to ensure that others endorse and conform to such values as well?12 

The central point is this: though we judge from the perspectives of our own 
schemes, our judgments and their legitimacy regularly extend beyond the bounds 
of those schemes. Thomas McCarthy, in discussing the conception of truth as 
ideal rational acceptability advocated by Hilary Putnam (1981), and utilizing 
Putnam's "immanent/transcendent" distinction, articulates the point well: 

... any adequate account of truth as rational acceptability will have to capture 
not only its immanence--i.e., its socially situated character-but its 
transcendence as well. While we may have no idea of standards of rationality 
wholly independent of historically concrete languages and practices, it remains 
that reason serves as an ideal with reference to which we can criticize the 
standards we inherit. Though never divorced from social practices of 
justification, the idea of reason can never be reduced to any particular set of 
such practices. Correspondingly, the notion of truth, while essentially related 



170 Harvey Siegel 

to warranted assertibility by the standards or warrants of this or that culture, 
cannot be reduced to any particular set of standards or warrants. To put this 
another way, we can, and typically do, make historically situated and fallible 
claims to universal validity. (McCarthy 1988, p. 82) 

As Putnam puts it: 
If reason is both transcendent and immanent, then philosophy, as culture-
bound reflection and argument about eternal questions, is both in time and 
eternity. We don't have an Archimedean point; we always speak the language 
ofa time and place; but the rightness and wrongness of what we say is not just 
for a time and a place. (Putnam (1982), p. 21, emphasis in original) 

Immanence does not preclude transcendence: as both Putnam and McCarthy 
suggest, our judgments, while immanent, strive also for transcendence. There is 
no difficulty in thinking that occasionally they attain that transcendence; nor is 
there any reason to think that it is impossible in principle that they might 
Consequently, the fact that our judgments are immanent does not entail their non-
transcendence. Thus, the argument that immanence and transcendence are 
mutually exclusive and exhaustive, and that, since we can't escape immanence, 
we must reject transcendence, fails.13 

Just as immanence does not entail the denial of transcendence, particularity 
does not entail the denial of universality. Our judgments and ideals inevitably 
reflect particularity: they are made by particular people, in particular historical 
and cultural circumstances. But this fact in no way undermines the universality of 
some of our ideals. Any statement, of universal principle or of anything else, will 
be situated and located, and will reflect the particularities of that locale; but this 
does not force the conclusion that such statements are not universal, either in their 
applicability or in their legitimacy. The particular and the universal are not 
mutually exclusive; at least some of our judgments are both. If so, then we are 
free to regard rationality-however particular the circumstances of its origin and 
advocacy might be-as a universal educational ideal. 

3.5 The ideal of rationality is problematically oppressive and 'male '; 
allegedly 'neutral' standards of rationality are not neutral. 

Many feminist philosophers, e.g. Susan Bordo, Genevieve Lloyd, Evelyn Fox 
Keller, Sandra Harding, and Hilary Rose, among numerous others, have argued 
that 'reason' is problematically 'male' .14 The central contention is clearly 
articulated by Louise M. Antony and Charlotte Witt: 

Feminist challenges have, indeed, reached into the "'hard core' of abstract 
reasoning" itself, with charges that the most fundamental elements of the 
Western philosophical tradition-the ideals of reason and objectivity-are so 
deeply corrupted by patriarchy that they must be greatly transformed (if not 
utterly abandoned) by any philosopher committed to the development of 
conceptions of knowledge and reality adequate to the transformative goals of 
feminism. (Antony and Witt (1993), p. xiii. The embedded citation is from 
Harding and Hintikka(l983), p. ix.) 

and by Sally Haslanger: 



Why Should Educators Care about Argumentation? 171 

... a rational stance is itself a stance of oppression or domination, and accepted 
ideals of reason both reflect and reinforce power relations that advantage white 
privileged men. (Haslanger (1993), p. 85) 

and, in a critical discussion of Catharine MacKinnon, by Elizabeth Rapaport: 
For MacKinnon, rationality is an enemy to be unmasked and destroyed. 
(Rapaport (1993), p. 129) 

As MacKinnon develops the point: 
The kind of analysis that such a feminism is, and, specifically, the standard by 
which it is accepted as valid, is largely a matter ofthe criteria one adopts for 
adequacy in a theory. If feminism is a critique of the objective standpoint as 
male, then we also disavow standard scientific norms as the adequacy criteria 
for our theory, because the objective standpoint we criticize is the posture of 
science. In other words, our critique of the objective standpoint as male is a 
critique of science as a specifically male approach to knowledge. With it, we 
reject male criteria for verification. (MacKinnon (1987), p. 54, last two 
emphases added)lS 

What follows from the rejection of "male criteria"? There are only two 
possibilities: either that there are no criteria in terms of which theories can be 
evaluated, or that there are different criteria which should be appealed to in theory 
evaluation. The first of these is deeply problematic. If there are no criteria in 
terms of which we can legitimately evaluate theories, then the very possibility of 
evaluation is rejected. But this option is self-defeating: if evaluation in general is 
rejected, then we are unable to evaluate, or rationally prefer, the suggestions that 
male criteria should be rejected or that evaluation itself should likewise be 
rejected. But then we have no reason to accept these suggestions. Normative 
evaluation cannot be entirely given up; to attempt to do so is, as Putnam suggests, 
to attempt "mental suicide"16. 

On the other hand, the rejection of male criteria of theory evaluation in favor 
of other, incompatible, 'female criteria', must itself-if the preference for the 
latter is to be itself defensible and non-arbitrary-rely upon (meta-)criteria in 
accordance with which these two rival sets of criteria can themselves be fairly 
evaluated. Standards and criteria are in this way required for the conducting of 
any sort of serious scholarly endeavor, including that of arguing for the rejection 
of the ideal of rationality as biased and oppressive, and likewise for the embrace 
of alternative feminist ideals. In short, one cannot coherently embrace the ideals 
of philosophical feminism, or reject as biased and oppressive the 'male' ideal of 
rationality, and at the same time reject standards entirely.17 And with respect to 
MacKinnon's rejection of the standards of science, and so science itself, as male, 
it is difficult not to see this as a classic instance of cutting off one's nose to spite 
one's face. Consider in this regard Martha Nussbaum's suggestion that feminist 
philosophers err if they reject reason and objectivity in their endeavor to combat 
patriarchy: 

Convention and habit are women's enemies here, and reason their ally. Habit 
decrees that what seems strange is impossible and "unnatural"; reason looks 
head on at the strange, refusing to assume that the current status quo is either 



172 Harvey Siegel 

immutable or in any normative sense "natural". The appeal to reason and 
objectivity amounts to a request that the observer refuse to be intimidated by 
habit, and look for cogent arguments based on evidence that has been carefully 
sifted for bias. (Nussbaum (1994), p. 59) 

Of course, to say that standards are required for the rational defense of the 
ideal of rationality, or that rational standards are required for any sort of serious 
intellectual work whatever, is not to say that particular standards, or particular 
understandings of them, are themselves beyond critical challenge. On the 
contrary, one major sort of intellectual advance is precisely the sort which allows 
us to realize that our standards, or our interpretations of them, have in one way or 
another been defective and stand in need of criticism and improvement. Indeed, 
one of the main contributions of feminist scholarship has been precisely to 
establish that particular standards, or particular applications of them, have been 
problematically biased against women. But it is not possible coherently to reject 
particular standards as biased, and simultaneously to reject standards of 
evaluation generally.18 For in doing the latter, one gives up the very possibility of 
evaluation, in which case the rejection of the rejected standard is unwarranted. 
Moreover, one cannot reject all standards and evaluation, and at the same time 
embrace particular standards. In particular, one cannot reject all standards, and 
the very possibility of evaluation, and at the same time embrace philosophical 
feminism as an ideal or as a standard of evaluation of discourses and/or theories. 
But if the move to reject all standards fails, then, in one form or another, 
standards of rationality will inevitably be embraced and endorsed by all who 
seriously consider the question of the justifiability of standards of rationality; and 
in this embrace, the ideal of rationality will be endorsed as well. Consequently, 
that ideal survives this particular objection unscathed. 

Conclusion 

I have considered, and found wanting, five challenges to the ideal of rationality; I 
have argued that that ideal survives the challenges put to it by (l) Derrida's view 
of the indefiniteness of language, (2) criticisms of metanarratives, (3) criticisms 
of 'universalistic' conceptions of rationality, (4) the unavoidability of the 
particular and the mutual exclusivity of the particular and the universal, and (5) 
the feminist claim that the ideal is oppressive and biased. Obviously I have dealt 
with these challenges quite briefly; much more needs to be said concerning them 
all-and concerning other challenges as well. But I hope to have said enough to 
suggest that the ideal is not in such trouble as its critics often suggest. 

If so, then the link forged between education and argumentation, in terms of 
their joint interest in/commitment to the ideal of rationality and the normative 
evaluation of reasons, at least provisionally stands. And if so, then perhaps I will 
have accomplished my main aim here: to explain why educators should care 
about argumentation. 

I For a brief discussion ofthis history, see Siegel (1992), pp. 108-9. 



Why Should Educators Care about Argumentation? 173 

2 Most systematically in Siegel (1988). 

3 For further discussion of these two dimensions of the ideal, see Siegel (1988), chapter 2. 

4 For further discussion of the problem of justifYing rationality as a fundamental educational 
ideal, see Siegel (1988), chapter 3. 

5 This epistemic view of argumentation is articulated in Biro and Siegel (1992) and Siegel and 
Biro (1995). In conceiving argumentation in this way, I differ with Binkley (1995), who 
assigns to logic the task of establishing standards for the correctness of reasoning, and who 
denies that argumentation involves any such normative, epistemic dimension. 

6 This discussion is taken from Siegel (l995a). I have shamelessly taken my discussion in that 
paper, which is concerned mainly with Arcilla's treatment of self-knowledge, and transferred 
my points to the present discussion of educational ideals. Although a bit unusual, I believe 
the transfer is successful. References to the relevant Derridean texts are provided in that 
paper. 

7 The discussion in this and the following sub-section is taken from Siegel (1995). Again, 
relevant changes have been made. 

8 The discussion in this sub-section and the next is taken from Siegel (1995b); again, relevant 
changes have been made. 

9 In particular, it is unclear why we should accept Rorty's claim that the impossibility of 
objectivity or universality follows from or is entailed by contingency-especially in light of 
the fact that the very notion of entailment on which this argument depends is itself only 
understandable in universalistic terms, i.e. such that the premises entail the conclusion, 
whoever is considering the argument. (Of course Rorty wants sometimes to reject the very 
idea that he is arguing (Rorty (l989a), p. 44), despite the fact that his writing is full of 
arguments, and would be unintelligible without the assumption that he is in fact engaging in 
argumentation.) The argument-language, self and community are contingent; therefore, 
universality is impossible or unachievable--is simply a non sequitur. 

10 For example, the ancient Greeks before the invention/discovery of irrational numbers; 
nineteenth century mathematicians before Cantor's discoveries concerning the sizes of 
infinite sets; nineteenth century geometers before the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries; 
bettors and businesspeople of the middle ages before the development of the modern 
probability calculus; etc. . 

II I here use "scheme-independent" not in the sense of being not embedded in any scheme, but 
rather in the sense of having legitimacy and point beyond the bounds of the scheme in which 
it is embedded. 

12 It is worth pointing out that universalistic "Enlightenment" ideals, e.g. of the dignity of 
human reason and the commitment to decide matters on the basis of reasons, themselves can 
and should be understood in this way. These ideals arose and gained currency in particular 
historical/cultural circumstances (in ancient Greece, and in the "Age of Enlightenment" in 
Europe), but that fact in no way undercuts whatever universal validity they enjoy. 

13 I hasten to note that I do not myself advocate the idea that truth should be understood in 
terms of ideal rational acceptability; I favor a conception, advocated by an earlier Putnam, of 
truth as "radically non-epistemic" and as unconnected to considerations of rational 
acceptability. For further discussion see Siegel (1 989a), pp. 132-3 and passim. 

14 Among many other sources, see the essays in Alcoff and Potter (1993) and in Antony and 
Witt (1993). Several essays in the latter dispute this contention, though. 

11 It should be noted that, on MacKinnon's view, 'rationality' is synomymous with 
"objectivity"; she does not distinguish between the two, but rather rejects it/them both. 
(Rapaport (1993), p. 129) MacKinnon understands objectivity as "the nonsituated, distanced 
standpoint" (1987, p. 50); as I hope is clear, this is not the understanding of it I am utilizing 



174 Harvey Siegel 

here, since situatedness does not preclude (on my understanding of it) objectivity. For what I 
hope is a more nuanced and defensible understanding of the concepts of rationality and 
objectivity, and their interrelationship, see Neiman and Siegel (1993). 

16 Putnam (1982), p. 20. For more general discussion of the self-defeating character of the 
rejection of normative evaluation, see Siegel (1987) and (1996). 

17 For discussion of the general case, see Siegel (1987). Antony (1993, esp. pp. 190,208-210) 
argues determinedly that radical feminists need to recognize and utilize a traditional 
conception of truth and traditional ideals of objectivity and impartiality, and to recognize 
(more or less) traditional standards of philosophical and empirical argumentative quality, if 
they are to achieve the aims either of feminism in particular or of political radicalism in 
general. 

II Nor is it wise, as Nussbaum points out (1994, pp. 60-1), to reject a standard on grounds ofits 
misuse. Concerning those who "have used the claim of objectivity to protect their biased 
judgments from rational scrutiny", Nussbaum writes: "More than a little perversely, some 
feminists have blamed this behavior on the norm of objectivity itself, rather than on its 
abusers." 

References 

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Arcilla, Rene Vincente (1995): "For the Stranger in My Home: Self-Knowledge, Cultural 
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Why Should Educators Care about Argumentation? 175 

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176 Harvey Siegel 

Siegel, Harvey, and John Biro (1995): "Epistemic Normativity, Argumentation, and 
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SICSAT, pp. 286-299. 

HARVEY SIEGEL 
DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY 

UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI 
po. BOX 248054 

CORAL GABLES, FL 33124-4670 
o