Values and Practices in Asian Argumentation

This essay seeks to deepen and broaden our understanding of argumentation by presenting a glimpse of some Asian rhetorical heritages, and in so doing stimulate incorporation of whatever is valuable into our own argumentation theory. The paper discusses five general underlying Asian values, surveys five dominant practices in Asian argumentation, and then sketches the role of debate in secular and monastic settings in Asia through the centuries. The differences that exist between East and West are seen to be differences in degree rather than in kind, and they are to be considered not antagonistic contrasts, but complementary phenomena.