Marcelo Dascal’s Theory of Controversies: Reconsideration, adaption, and political implications

Abstract

In his Theory of Controversies, Marcelo Dascal proposed three types of polemic exchange, in which Controversy was added to the classic types of Discussion and Dispute . For example, in Dascal’s lights, logic is associated with polemic discussions, power manipulations with disputes, and ‘soft logic’ with controversies. The theory was remarkably successful in providing a realist framework for polemic exchanges. In this paper, I provide a conceptually independent substantiation and expansion of the theory, by associating it with meta-ethical analysis of thick and thin concepts, indebted to Michael Walzer, Menachem Fisch and Yitzhak Benbaji.