Alexandra Reiner

2/26/18

Blog Post 3

According to Harris, “countering” is not solely disagreeing nor telling someone they are wrong. Harris describes the goal of countering as “…not to refute what has been said before, to bring the discussion to an end, but to respond to prior views in ways that move the conversation in new directions”(57). In other words, one author can counter another by disagreeing in a manner which propels the entire discussion into new territory. Although simply saying no to someone’s argument is a form of disagreement, as established in the Monty Python anecdote on page 55, it is not countering. However, this logic does not mean that “…writers disagree with each other in especially muted or polite ways”(57). Writers are in fact often not civil in their disagreement. Harris calls it “an unavoidable adversarial edge” (58). Although writers often disagree in uncivil manners, they do “dissent”, or “identify a shared line of thought on an issue in order to note its limits”(58). This method seems to be effective because countering produces an intellectual alternative to simply agreeing to disagree. From countering stems an intellectual argument which furthers the ideas and produces alternative ways to study the topic at hand.