Herein of Intellect/Will, Reason/Prejudice, Provocations, and Civility

Sometimes, when provoked, I say things I later regret saying—typically things I don’t even mean.  (I envy you if you don’t often have that experience.)  I like myself least when I realize that, once again, I have succumbed in that way--whether in response to my wife, my children, my friends, or others with whom I have a much less intimate relationship.

Thanks to a gentle, constructive message from an MOJ-reader--with whom I often disagree, but whose important work I greatly admire, and whose good friendship I greatly prize--I realize that I have recently succumbed here at MOJ.  (Actually, the painful realization began to dawn even before this friend’s message arrived.)  Let me explain.

Here is the content of one of my recent posts:

In the immediately preceding post, my fellow Georgetown alum Robert Araujo criticizes the Iowa gay marriage decision--which was unanimous, and in which the court's opinion was written by the Republican-appointed chief justice--by deploying the distinction between "intellect" (good) and "will" (bad). I applaud the decision, and I do so in terms of a different distinction:  between "reason" (good) and "prejudice" (bad).

Now, here is what I should have said:

In the immediately preceding post, my fellow Georgetown alum Robert Araujo criticizes the Iowa gay marriage decision--which was unanimous, and in which the court's opinion was written by the Republican-appointed chief justice--by deploying the distinction between "intellect" (good) and "will" (bad).  That distinction, in the context of Robert’s post, seems to me altogether question-begging and self-serving.  One could just as easily—but no less question-beggingly and self-servingly—deploy a different distinction in praise of the decision:  between "reason" (good) and "prejudice" (bad).  Neither distinction helpfully advances the conversation.  Indeed, both distinctions subvert the conversation.

I am sorry I said what I had to say the first way rather than the second.  In being frank with my interlocutors here at MOJ and elsewhere, I need to do all that I can—of course, we all do—to nourish the conversation, not subvert it.