Think As Historian: THINK AS A HISTORIAN: DESCRIBE AN ARGUMENT
The Enlightenment was a time of lively debate and argument centered on the human capacity to reason—a key aspect of argument itself. Arguments can use reason in a variety of ways. For example, deductive reasoning, sometimes called “top-down reasoning,” builds an argument from a general proposition (All men are mortal) to a more specific premise (Socrates is a man) and finally to a conclusion that must be true if the other premises are true (Therefore, Socrates is mortal). Inductive, or “bottom up” reasoning, in contrast, uses specific facts to form an uncertain generalization (Chicago has never received snow on any day in August, so it’s likely that no future August day will see snow). Arguments can also use reasoning by analogy, a form of inductive reasoning, to assert that two things known to be alike in some ways are likely similar in other unknown ways (Human mammals experience a wide range of emotions, so it is likely nonhuman mammals experience a similar range). Most arguments use several different kinds of reasoning to develop their ideas fully. Knowing how to describe the structure of an argument and the types of reasoning can help you evaluate the strength of its conclusions.
Read the following excerpt from a report on public education by French government official and former bishop M. Talleyrand-Péri- gord presented in 1791 to the National Assembly of France. Then read the excerpt from the dedicatory letter for Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women that responds to Talleyrand’s position. Describe the argument and types of reasoning in each excerpt, and give reasons for your description.
“Let us bring up women, not to aspire to advantages which the Constitution denies them, but to know and appreciate those which it guarantees them . . . Men are destined to live on the stage of the world. A public education suits them. . . . The paternal home is better for the education of women; they have less need to learn to deal with the interests of others, than to accustom themselves to a calm and secluded life.”—Talleyrand
“Contending for the rights of women, my main argument is built on this simple principle, that if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge . . . . If children are to be educated to understand the true principle of patriotism, their mother must be a patriot; and the love of mankind, from which an orderly train of virtues spring, can only be produced by considering the moral and civil interest of mankind; but the education and situation of woman, at present, shuts her out from such investigations. . . .[I] earnestly wish to see woman placed in a station in which she would advance, instead of retarding, the progress of those glorious principles that give a substance to morality. My opinion, indeed, respecting the rights and duties of woman, seems to flow so naturally from these simple principles, that I think it scarcely possible, but that some of the enlarged minds who formed your admirable constitution, will coincide
with me.”—Mary Wollstonecraft (1792)