Beyond Reasonableness: Argumentative Virtues in Pragma-Dialectics

The pragma-dialectical research program begins with a philosophical estate, in which a conception of reasonableness is offered that must serve as ground for the theoretical estate. Pragma-dialectics has produced many important insights in the theoretical estate, including the ideal model and the rules for critical discussions. However, here I will argue that the conception of reasonableness that the pragma-dialecticians adopt in the philosophical estate, based on anti-dogmatism, assumption of fallibilism and willingness to engage in critical discussion, is too narrow to support the whole system of pragma-dialectical rules. What the philosophical estate requires is a broad and rich conception of excellent performance in argumentative practice, which then the rules of the critical discussion are intended to capture systematically in the theoretical estate. In my view, a virtue approach to argumentation is the ideal framework for such a philosophical ground. Virtues such as intellectual empathy, intellectual honesty, faith in reason, or recognition of reliable authority, point towards aspects of a philosophical conception of excellent arguing that are absent in the pragma-dialectical view of reasonableness. Finally, I will argue that what pragma-dialecticians call “second-order conditions” for a critical discussion are better understood as minimal argumentative virtue, a basic degree of virtue that arguers are required to possess in order to be prepared to participate in a fruitful critical discussion. The possession of such a basic degree of argumentative virtue is, I believe, what we mean when we characterise someone as reasonable.