The Art of Arguing Well

Mastering the Four Arguments:
The Classical Art of Persuasive Writing
by gregory roper
encounter books, 192 pages, $29.99

A major problem facing classical education is that there are too many books. Imagine yourself as the average classical teacher, working at a fledgling school dedicated to the classical liberal arts. You are probably teaching more classes and taking lower pay than you would at the richer, fancier private school down the road, or the monstrously large public school. Your time is precious; your zeal will carry you through, but there are some things that must give. You need resources that you can implement and that your students can use. The average student cannot learn how to write by reading Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Cicero’s De Inventione. You need something to bridge the gap. Unfortunately, the intermediate books are based on a limited or flawed grasp of human nature, or deal in educational balderdash like “critical thinking” (a term ubiquitous in some corners, usually invoked without a proper definition, which seems to be the opposite of whatever critical thinking is) or “a love of learning” (a love of learning about what?).

Luckily for us, Gregory Roper’s Mastering the Four Arguments: The Classical Art of Persuasive Writing succeeds in bridging the gap. It provides both the teacher and the student with actionable lessons that will improve their writing, lessons rooted in real teaching experience and informed by a sound anthropology, all while being eminently practical and blarney-free. The book centers around recovering a classical approach to argumentation called stasis theory, originally developed as a tool to help lawyers in antiquity find the core of a disagreement in order to argue productively. But this slim, navy-blue volume is not an exercise in “look at this cool old thing.” It offers a solution to a very pressing problem from a master teacher who knows the classics well. Roper has done a great service to the classical education movement by saving teachers time and money: time, by distilling the useful though behemoth composition and rhetoric textbooks; and money, by creating a single edition for both student and teacher. 

Roper carries on two conversations, one with the student and one with the teacher. Both get their own introduction. The footnotes feature asides for the student; the endnotes more sage guidance and wit for the teacher. As you read, it is refreshing to see that his authority comes from neither wonkiness nor displays of erudition, but from classroom experience. Through clear and accessible prose, you can sense he is bringing to bear a lifetime of conversations with students, as well as trials and triumphs in teaching writing.  

The book centers around a wager: To teach writing, show students how to break down any thesis into one of four argument types identified by stasis theory and organize a paper accordingly. All the types of argument flow naturally from an example that recurs throughout the book. There is a bar fight, and once the facts are known, you need to establish 1. What happened (Definition), 2. What caused it (Causal), 3. Whether it was good or bad (Evaluative), and 4. What should be done about it (Policy). 

It may seem simplistic, and Roper admits he was skeptical about the scope of stasis theory initially. He relates that it was not immediately clear to him how any of these types of arguments could help a student, say, organize an interpretive essay for a literature class. So, he wheels out some of the most daunting prompts from real literature classes and shows how stasis theory can act as a solvent breaking down complex writing assignments into clear and actionable outlines. 

And as he tells the students in the introduction, “You already know how to do this.” What Roper makes abundantly clear is that stasis theory is both highly refined and commonsensical. It is a simple distillation of clear thinking, the kind that is often passed over for confused and impassioned yelling in the public sphere. It seems we need deliberate practice at it to argue productively. 

Roper also includes a number of reflections that serve as subtle broadsides at the common yet awful practices in education under which both students and teachers labor. His evisceration of the five-paragraph essay is especially delightful. The foundational argument type, the definitional argument, really only needs two parts. Forcing your argument to fit the mold does violence to thinking, and so students sacrifice sound argumentation for formal correctness, a gruesome spectacle teachers feel somehow obliged to behold over and over again. 

Although no section is dedicated to AI, Roper weaves a compelling ethical argument throughout the book that exposes the harms of relying on AI without dabbling in doomerism. The deliberate practice of clear writing helps us to achieve our unique purpose as human beings, namely, to flourish by knowing, living, and sharing the truth. (Would your local college president agree?) To rely on AI is to pass up the chance to develop the “brain muscles” of clear thinking, as he admonishes students in the introduction. But because it weakens our capacity to think clearly, it also weakens our capacity for “full human flourishing.” In other words, we ought not trade in our happiness for convenience. We ought not outsource our humanity to a machine. 

Roper also attacks an important vacuum in much educational discourse: the lack of a sound anthropology. “What is the end goal of a human being? Ask a superintendent of a wealthy suburban school district, and I doubt you could get much of an answer.” Education, as Roper returns to again and again, is for the sake of human flourishing through the study of the truth. It is not a solipsistic training in self-expression, or a mere means to college or career. The point of studying the liberal arts is to help us know the truth, so that we can live by it, and lead others to it. In other words, the liberal arts lead to happiness and help us lead others there too. And with this lean volume, Roper has helped us to do just that.