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Polemic () is contentious rhetoric intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The practice of such argumentation is called polemics , which are seen in arguments on controversial topics. A person who writes polemics, or speaks polemically, is called a polemicist .[1] The word derives from Ancient Greek πολεμικός (polemikos ) 'warlike, hostile',[1] [2] from πόλεμος (polemos ) 'war'.[3]
Polemics often concern questions in religion or politics. A polemical style of writing was common in Ancient Greece , as in the writings of the historian Polybius . Polemic again became common in medieval and early modern times. Since then, famous polemicists have included satirist Jonathan Swift , Italian physicist and mathematician Galileo , French theologian Jean Calvin , French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher Voltaire , Christian anarchist Leo Tolstoy , socialist philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels , novelist George Orwell , playwright George Bernard Shaw , communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin , psycholinguist Noam Chomsky , social critics Christopher Hitchens and Peter Hitchens , and existential philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche .
Polemical journalism was common in continental Europe when libel laws were not as stringent as they are now.[4] To support study of 17th to 19th century controversies, a British research project has placed online thousands of polemical pamphlets from that period.[5] Discussions of atheism , humanism , and Christianity have remained open to polemic into the 21st century.
History [ edit ]
In Ancient Greece , writing was characterised by what Geoffrey Lloyd and Nathan Sivin called "strident adversariality" and "rationalistic aggressiveness", summed up by McClinton as polemic.[6] [7] For example, the ancient historian Polybius practiced "quite bitter self-righteous polemic" against some twenty philosophers, orators, and historians.[8]
Polemical writings were common in medieval and early modern times.[9] During the Middle Ages, polemic had a religious dimension, as in Jewish texts written to protect and dissuade Jewish communities from converting to other religions .[10] Medieval Christian writings were also often polemical; for example in their disagreements on Islam[11] or in the vast corpus aimed at converting the Jews.[12] Martin Luther 's 95 Theses , nailed to the door of the church in Wittenberg , was a polemic launched against the Catholic Church.[6] [note 1] Robert Carliell 's 1619 defence of the new Church of England and diatribe against the Roman Catholic Church – Britaine's glorie, or An allegoricall dreame with the exposition thereof: containing The Heathens infidelitie in religion... – took the form of a 250-line poem.[13]
Major political polemicists of the 18th century include Jonathan Swift , with pamphlets such as his A Modest Proposal , Alexander Hamilton , with pieces such as A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress and A Farmer Refuted , and Edmund Burke , with his attack on the Duke of Bedford .[14]
In the 19th century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels 's 1848 Communist Manifesto was extremely polemical.[6] Both Marx and Engels would publish further polemical works, with Engels's work Anti-Dühring serving as a polemic against Eugen Dühring , and Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme against Ferdinand Lasalle .
Vladimir Lenin would also publish polemics against political opponents. The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky was notably directed against Karl Kautsky , and other works such as The State and Revolution attacked figures including Eduard Bernstein .
In the 20th century, George Orwell 's Animal Farm was a polemic against totalitarianism , in particular of Stalinism in the Soviet Union . According to McClinton, other prominent polemicists of the same century include such diverse figures as Herbert Marcuse , Noam Chomsky , John Pilger , and Michael Moore .[6]
In 2007 Brian McClinton argued in Humani that anti-religious books such as Richard Dawkins 's The God Delusion are part of the polemic tradition.[6] In 2008 the humanist philosopher A. C. Grayling published a book, Against All Gods: Six Polemics on Religion and an Essay on Kindness .[15]
See also [ edit ]
Devil's advocate
Dialectic
Disputation
Internet troll
Irenicism
Philippic
Rhetoric
Social gadfly
Trash-talk
^ The story of Luther nailing his Theses to the church door has been doubted. See references in Martin Luther#Start of the Reformation – "the story of the posting on the door...has little foundation in truth."
References [ edit ]
^ American College Dictionary . New York: Random House.
^ Henry George Liddell ; Robert Scott . "πόλεμος" . A Greek-English Lexicon . on Perseus.
^ polemic, or polemical literature, or polemics (rhetoric) . britannica.com. Archived from the original on 11 April 2008. Retrieved 21 February 2008 .
^ "Rare books collections: Hay Fleming Collection" . St Andrews University Library. Retrieved 16 March 2022 .
^ a b c d e McClinton, Brian (July 2007). "A Defence of Polemics" (PDF) . Humani (105): 12–13. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 March 2016.
^ Lloyd, Geoffrey; Sivin, Nathan (2002). The Way and the Word: Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece . Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-10160-7 .
^ Walbank, F. W. (1962). "Polemic in Polybius". The Journal of Roman Studies . 52 (Parts 1 and 2): 1–12. doi :10.2307/297872 . JSTOR 297872 . S2CID 153936734 .
^ Suerbaum, Almut; Southcombe, George (2016). Polemic: Language as Violence in Medieval and Early Modern Discourse . Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-317-07929-3 .
^ Chazan, Robert (2004). Fashioning Jewish identity in medieval western Christendom . Cambridge University Press. p. 7.
^ Tolan, John Victor (2000). Medieval Christian perceptions of Islam . Routledge. p. 420.
^ Philippe Bobichon, "Littérature de controverse entre judaïsme et christianisme: Description du corpus et réflexions méthodologiques (IIe-XVIe siècle ») (textes grecs, latins et hébreux) , Revue d’Histoire ecclésiastique 107/1, 2012, pp. 5–48; Philippe Bobichon, "Is Violence intrinsic to religious confrontation? The case of Judeo-Christian controversy, second to seventeenth century" in S. Chandra (dir.), Violence and Non-violence across Times. History, Religion and Culture , Routledge, 2018, pp. 33–52.
^ Sidney Lee, "Carleill, Robert (fl. 1619)", rev. Reavley Gair (Oxford, UK: OUP, 2004) Retrieved 27 May 2017. Pay-walled.
^ Paulin, Tom (26 March 1995). "The Art of Criticism: 12 Polemic" . The Independent . Retrieved 6 November 2016 .
^ Grayling, A. C. (2008). Against All Gods: Six Polemics on Religion and an Essay on Kindness . Oberon Books. ISBN 978-1-840-02728-0 .
Bibliography [ edit ]
Gallop, Jane (2004). Polemic: Critical or Uncritical (1 ed.). New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-97228-0 .
Hawthorn, Jeremy (1987). Propaganda, Persuasion and Polemic . Hodder Arnold. ISBN 0-7131-6497-2 .
Lander, Jesse M. (2006). Inventing Polemic: Religion, Print, and Literary Culture in Early Modern England . Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-83854-1 .
External links [ edit ]
Look up
polemic in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Quotations related to Polemic at Wikiquote
R e t r i e v e d f r o m " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Polemic&oldid=1233696118 "
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● U s e d m y d a t e s f r o m M a y 2 0 2 3
● A r t i c l e s c o n t a i n i n g M i d d l e E n g l i s h ( 1 1 0 0 - 1 5 0 0 ) - l a n g u a g e t e x t
● A r t i c l e s w i t h B N F i d e n t i f i e r s
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● A r t i c l e s w i t h G N D i d e n t i f i e r s
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● T h i s p a g e w a s l a s t e d i t e d o n 1 0 J u l y 2 0 2 4 , a t 1 2 : 2 0 ( U T C ) .
● T e x t i s a v a i l a b l e u n d e r t h e C r e a t i v e C o m m o n s A t t r i b u t i o n - S h a r e A l i k e L i c e n s e 4 . 0 ;
a d d i t i o n a l t e r m s m a y a p p l y . B y u s i n g t h i s s i t e , y o u a g r e e t o t h e T e r m s o f U s e a n d P r i v a c y P o l i c y . W i k i p e d i a ® i s a r e g i s t e r e d t r a d e m a r k o f t h e W i k i m e d i a F o u n d a t i o n , I n c . , a n o n - p r o f i t o r g a n i z a t i o n .
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