In Defense of Ad Hominem Arguments

An ad hominem attack against an intellectual, not against an idea, is highly flattering. It indicates that the person does not have anything intelligent to say about your message. -Nassim Taleb

Arguments ad hominem are arguments directed at a person, usually an opponent, in a debate or dispute. There is widespread, though not perfect, agreement that ad hominems are rhetorical rather than logical and that they should be avoided. This view goes back to Aristotle (1955), who counted them among the rhetorical tricks and fallacies in his Sophistical Refutations. These arguments are not in good taste, and they can be downright mean. Ideally, arguments should be strictly limited to what is logical and empirical. Good arguments are coherent and compelling, and if they have empirical contents, they are based on facts and findings that can be checked by an audience and by skeptics in particular (see Hansen, 2023, for a comprehensive and accessible treatment).

In his Art of Rhetoric, Aristotle (1992) acknowledged that persuasive speech is more complex than a set of good arguments. Good arguments pertain to the requirement of logos, but a speaker must also establish their credibility. They have to convince the audience that they are knowledgeable and trustworthy. This is the criterion of ethos, and the establishment of ethos itself requires persuasive speech. This is a bit of a logical problem. How does an audience know that a speaker is trustworthy when claiming to be trustworthy? An unappetizing infinite regress is lurking here, and in order to get back to the story, we will ignore it. We should note, however, that when a speaker speaks of their own expertise and goodwill, they are making arguments ad hominem where the homo is the self. They make arguments ad sui. Lastly, Aristotle recognized the important fact of nature that humans are emotional beings; they have pathos. The word refers to having any affect at all, but it also implies suffering. Greek pathos translates to Latin passion. Ad hominems play on an audience’s pathos in that they seek to instill ridicule, disgust, or contempt, inter alii.

Hansen’s (2023) review shows that over the course of intellectual history, some thinkers, and especially the British empiricists Locke and Mill, wished to make some room for an acceptable usage of the ad hominem. Schopenhauer (2004; published first in 1831) also saw a place for ad hominem arguments, listing them among 38 stratagems recommended to those speakers who are facing defeat in a debate (Krueger, 2016; see also Taleb’s epigraph).

Recently, Hasan (2023) dedicated a book chapter to the question of how and why such arguments might work. Hasan notes that since speakers have to establish their own ethos, then why not challenge that? “It’s all about their ethos,” he (p. 61) writes, “If an opponent is not a good or honest person, if they have been unreliable or fallacious in the past, that should affect how an audience considers their present argument. So, say that!” (italics in the original). Of course, such an ad hominem should be backed up with evidence, which makes it, at least in part, a matter of logos, lest it be frivolous.

An interesting variant of an ad hominem argument is called tu quoque, which means “you also.” It zeroes “in on any of their past words or actions that contradict or cast doubt on their current claims” (Hasan, 2023, p. 62). A pastor caught with a prostitute is more likely to be called a hypocrite than is a regular parishioner.

In another chapter, Hasan reviews ways in which to entrap an opposing debater. These are cunning tactics designed to booby trap, as Hasan puts it, the opponent. The goal here is to show that they don’t know what they are talking about. As such, this tactic is a variant of ad hominem argumentation. Hasan recounts how the brilliant Christopher Hitchens got the intellectually more modestly endowed Charlton Heston to reveal that he did not know which countries have a common border with Iraq. After Heston made several mistakes, Hitchens coolly concluded that “if you are in favor of bombing a country, you might pay the compliment of knowing where it is” (Hasan, p. 156). This goes to the witness’s credibility, Your Honor, and is thus admissible in the court of persuasion.

Perhaps the most famous, subtle, and cunning use of an ad hominem argument never really happened, but it was invented by Shakespeare. In Act III, scene II of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony gives a funerary speech to his friends, Romans, and countrymen. Antony invokes pathos:

“When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept;
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.”

And then presents a challenge:

“Yet Brutus says he was ambitious,
And Brutus is an honorable man.”

There it is, an antiphrastic attack on Brutus’s character. The audience is made to wonder how a presumably honorable man can call someone ambitious who weeps over the plight of the poor. Antony creates dissonance and sees to it that the Romans reduce it by concluding that Brutus is not honorable at all. The brilliance of this [invented] move is that the ad hominem attack comes in reverse, as an antiphrasis (opposite words), which Antony knows an intelligible but suggestible audience will understand.

It should be clear now that ad hominem arguments come in different forms and shapes. They should be handled with care. Unprepared minds may find that once they have opened the door to this tactic, they can come back to haunt them. Ad hominem you, ad hominem me [Note 1].

Note 1. "I is thou and thou is I." - from the Vishnu Purāna, as rendered by Rudolf Otto (1932). A vulgar version of this mystical piece of wisdom is "Stop arguing and start living."

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Note 2: The title I had chosen for this post was "Ad hominem arguments are not all bad." The title you see above was inserted by the PT editors and I cannot change it. I, for one, did not intend to defend ad hominem attacks in toto. I hope this becomes clear from the text.