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Ad Hominem
Audio Essay

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"No idea above scrutiny. No person beneath dignity."
-Maajid Nawaz

An ad hominem argument is one that judges the merits of an idea on the qualities of the person expressing it. (Ad hominem is Latin for "to the person".)

It's a trick, just a way of changing the topic. Don't like what somebody's saying? Don't have a good argument for why it's false or invalid? No problem: just say what you don't like about the person instead. It can be anything, take your pick: their tone, their appearance, their speaking style, their political affiliation, their marital history, that thing they said in third grade, whatever. Just make it as heated and distracting as possible.

If you're in an especially nasty mood, you might dismiss them based on their belonging to one or another gender or ethnicity. Just remark, "Oh, that? Well, you're obviously misguided because you are x-y-z. Actually, you probably shouldn't even be talking about this."

In certain moments ad hominem can seem right or even righteous. By putting down our opponents we make ourselves feel superior. When others do so on our behalf it can be tempting to applaud, particularly if the victim is an unpleasant individual. But that's exactly why you should be suspicious of this sanctimonious impulse. It emerges from the darkness of our baser instincts. It comes from our fears of exclusion and ostracization, from overidentifying with our worldviews and overprotecting them from harm.

Yet the ad hominem fallacy hurts you as much as the people around you. By dealing only with irrelevant, superficial topics, you prevent yourself from fully engaging with ideas that might have serious merit.

Of course, you don't have to engage with any idea that upsets you, whether it's true or not. You can always politely decline a discussion. But remember, a subject being taboo--that mere fact that you can feel or claim offense--is not an argument.

If you doubt this, just think about something as objective as possible. Take math, for example. Two plus two equals four even if it were a sensitive topic. Pi is the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter, even if it's Stalin writing the equation. A mathematician might be many bad things as a person, but the satellites relying on their discoveries would continue orbiting the earth. Likability is irrelevant to calculus.

This applies to any domain of knowledge insofar as it's making objective claims about reality. That politician from the other party (you know the one) might be despicable to you, but that doesn't make them automatically wrong.

Socrates said, "When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser."

Human beings are not their ideas. You may wish to disagree with the disagreeable, but you should do your best to listen, though it may require effort.

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