Ong's Harvard doctoral dissertation is also relevant to Kloppenberg's fascination with the term "conversation." In 1958, Harvard University Press published Ong's dissertation, slightly revised, in two volumes: (1) RAMUS, METHOD, AND THE DECAY OF DIALOGUE: FROM THE ART OF DISCOURSE TO THE ART OF REASON and (2) RAMUS AND TALON INVENTORY, in which Ong lists more than 750 volumes that he tracked down by Ramus and his followers as the result of working in more than 100 libraries in the British Isles and Continental Europe (he received financial assistance from two Guggenheim Fellowships, and as a Jesuit he was entitled to stay in Jesuit residences).
The people who founded Harvard College in 1636 were followers of the French logician and educational reformer Peter Ramus (1515-1572). As Ong intimates in his title and in his book, Ramus and his followers contributed to the decay of the spirit of dialogue in Kloppenberg's terminology, the decay of the spirit of conversation in favor of a monologic setting forth of their own line of argument without reference to real or imagined adversarial positions. But in earlier centuries, formal education in Western culture centered on the verbal arts known as dialectic (or logic) and rhetoric, both of which inculcated the spirit of pro-and-con debate, as distinct from simply setting forth one's own line of argument without reference to real or imagined adversarial positions.
In his short book FIGHTING FOR LIFE: CONTEST, SEXUALITY, AND CONSCIOUSNESS (Cornell University Press, 1981), the published version of his 1979 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University, Ong explains why he has come to favor the term "agonistic" ("contest" in the subtitle). The verbal arts of dialectic and rhetoric were training in the agonistic spirit (or spirit of contesting).
Even though Kloppenberg betrays no evidence of being familiar with Ong's thought, he nevertheless uses the term "agonistic" in a key sentence. Kloppenberg tells us that Americans "grudgingly agreed to put their faith in the possibility that provisional agreements might emerge through the unpredictable agonistic experience of democratic contestation and compromise" (page 176).
About the same time that Kloppenberg's book was published, Pauline Maier's new 600-page book RATIFICATION: THE PEOPLE DEBATE THE CONSTITUTION, 1787-1788 was published. In a blurb on the back cover, Joseph J. Ellis says, "The ratification of the Constitution was the most comprehensive and consequential political debate in American history." Perhaps it was.
But the debate over slavery in the nineteenth century resulted in the Civil War, the war in which the largest percentage of Americans lost their lives out of all the wars that Americans have fought in, when we consider the loss of Americans lives in any given war as a percentage of the American population at the time. Thus when civic debate does not produce an acceptable way to resolve certain disagreements, civil war can follow, and the loss of life in civil wars is usually enormous. As the example of the Civil War shows "the possibility that provisional agreements might emerge through the unpredictable agonistic experience of democratic contestation and compromise" does not always work out. Civic debate, or civil war.
In any event, Kloppenberg tells us that Obama himself firmly believes in democratic contestation and compromise. For the sake of discussion, let's say Obama does believe this.
In the spirit of democratic contestation and compromise, the ability to persuade people with reasons, or at least attempting to persuade them with reasons, becomes paramount, as Kloppenberg understands. But what happens when the debate centers on such intractable issues as slavery was in the nineteenth century before the Civil War and as abortion is today? Are we going to have another civil war because we do not seem to be making much headway in the abortion debate?
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