Been thinking a lot about thinking for a few years now.  It’s something built into some of my curriculum, and it’s something that I see happening (and not happening) all the time.  A key part of thinking well is communicating well.  It seems more and more we’ve become a culture that communicates without connecting, that speaks at one another instead of speaking to.  Over the last 24 hours I’ve seen it in print and in person.  And so some thoughts from James K. A. Smith on “the lost art of persuasion.”

Persuasion is not necessarily the same as proving or merely demonstrating. Persuasion is as much art as science, as much a matter of aesthetics as logic. You can win an argument without necessarily persuading your interlocutor. It’s not justwhat we say; it’s also how we say it. In a little known tract called The Art of Persuasion, Blaise Pascal notes that, while demonstration is important, in fact most of us are persuaded in regions of consciousness that operate below the intellect. “For every man,” he observes, “is almost always led to believe not through proof, but through that which is attractive.” This is why “the art of persuasion consists as much in pleasing as it does in convincing.”

This is not a brief for telling people what they want to hear, as if one would be “persuasive” by just being a mushy flatterer. To the contrary: to engage in the art of persuasion is to have a persuasion in the second sense of the term: a conviction, a settled assurance, a commitment to a particular vision. Only if you have a persuasion can you then take up the task of persuading others. Persuasion will be characterized by what Richard Mouw describes as “convicted civility.” So when Pascal talks about persuasion being “pleasing,” he means that successful persuasion will be logical and beautiful, coherent and convicting, well-thought andwinsome. The art of persuasion appeals as much to the gut as it does to the head. To be persuaded is to not only be convinced; it is to be moved. See how beautiful are the feet of those who bring such good news.

I’m sure there’s a lot more that goes into working together and communicating well than simple persuasion.  But it’s “guts and heads” for everyone.  We ought to be careful of winning the head and losing the heart.

You can read the rest of Smith’s editorial from Comment Magazine here.