Civil law recognizes a legal theory that argues that a plaintiff cannot receive relief if he is guilty of acting unlawfully, dishonestly or in bad faith. That is, regarding the subject of the lawsuit. If, for instance, I’m suing for breach of contract the defendant can escape by demonstrating I breached the same contract. It’s a sound principle, rightly understood. Sadly, it is often misunderstood.
A few weeks ago I posted on my blog a series of questions directed either at Latter Day Saints or those who were adept at LDS theology. Though the questions were asked in good faith and in measured tones, one gentleman suggested that I should not be making public comments on such matters because I’ve had scandals in my life. “You have done X. Therefore you should not say anything about y” is how he seemed to argue. He, I suspect, thought he was applying the unclean hands theory. What he was doing instead was committing the ad hominem fallacy.
Ad hominem is just one of many informal fallacies in the world of logic. It is a Latin phrase translated as “to the man.” One commits this fallacy when one, instead of answering an actual argument, attacks the one making the argument. If I say “All men are mortal. Socrates was a man. Therefore Socrates was mortal” and you want to affirm that all men are mortal and Socrates was a man, who was in fact not mortal, you haven’t a leg to stand on. So you respond, “Well, you’re wrong because your haircut looks funny and people don’t like you.” That’s ad hominem.
It’s a pretty stupid blunder, isn’t it? Yet we have all not only been victimized by it, we have all victimized others with it. All of which ought to tell us a thing or two about ourselves. First, we are sinners. Part of our sin is that we want to believe things that just aren’t true. One of those things is that we are careful in our reasoning and are smarter than those with whom we disagree. When our reasoning is shown to be flawed we are both angry and in denial. So we verbally attack the one responsible.
Second, we are not too terribly bright. The weird thing about ad hominem arguments is that we are so often persuaded by them. Because we are prone to deciding which side we fall on by virtue of the perceived virtue of the proponent. If Joe Biden says “X” and President Trump says “Non-X” we are inclined to believe the president, even if X is “The sky is blue.” Ad hominem does nothing to discover the truth. But it all too often determines what we believe.
Soundbites and snippets, memes and tweets are breeding grounds for ad hominem “arguments.” We all need to be on our guard, against using ad hominem, and against being persuaded by it. Here we all have unclean hands, and unclean lips.