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{{Short description|Contentious rhetoric}}
{{About|the word|the magazine|Polemic (magazine){{!}}''Polemic'' (magazine)}}
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{{Rhetoric}}

'''Polemic''' ({{IPAc-en|p|ə|ˈ|l|ɛ|m|ɪ|k}} {{respell|pə|LEHM|ick}}, {{IPAc-en|USalso|-|ˈ|l|i|m|ɪ|k}} {{respell|-LEEM|ick}}) is contentious [[rhetoric]] intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The practice of such argumentation is called '''polemics''', which are seen in arguments on controversial topics. A person who writes polemics, or speaks polemically, is called a '''polemicist'''.<ref name="auto">{{cite web|website=Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary|publisher=Merriam-Webster|location=[[Springfield, MA]]|date=2005|format=s.v.|url=http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/polemic|title=polemic}}</ref>  The word derives {{ety|grc|πολεμικός ({{Transliteration|grc|polemikos}})|warlike, hostile}},<ref name="auto"/><ref>{{cite book|title=American College Dictionary|publisher=Random House|location=New York}}</ref> {{ety||πόλεμος ({{Transliteration|grc|polemos}})|war}}.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dpo%2Flemos|title=πόλεμος|author1=Henry George Liddell|author-link=Henry George Liddell|author2=Robert Scott|author2-link=Robert Scott (philologist)|website=[[A Greek-English Lexicon]]|publisher=on Perseus}}</ref>

Polemics often concern questions in religion or politics. A polemical style of writing was common in [[Ancient Greece]], as in the writings of the historian [[Polybius]]. Polemic again became common in [[medieval]] and [[early modern]] times. Since then, famous polemicists have included satirist [[Jonathan Swift]], Italian physicist and mathematician [[Galileo]], French theologian [[Jean Calvin]], French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher [[Voltaire]], Russian author [[Leo Tolstoy]], socialist philosophers [[Karl Marx]] and [[Friedrich Engels]], novelist [[George Orwell]], playwright [[George Bernard Shaw]], communist revolutionary [[Vladimir Lenin]], [[linguist]] [[Noam Chomsky]], social critics [[H. L. Mencken]], [[Christopher Hitchens]] and [[Peter Hitchens]], and existential philosophers [[Søren Kierkegaard]] and [[Friedrich Nietzsche]].

Polemical journalism was common in [[continental Europe]] when [[libel]] laws were not as stringent as they are now.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic-467241/polemic |title=polemic, or polemical literature, or polemics (rhetoric) |publisher=britannica.com |access-date=21 February 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080411123116/http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic-467241/polemic |archive-date=11 April 2008 }}</ref> To support study of 17th to 19th century controversies, a British research project has placed online thousands of polemical pamphlets from that period.<ref>{{cite web| url=https://libguides.st-andrews.ac.uk/specialcollections/rarebooks/hayfleming | title=Rare books collections: Hay Fleming Collection |publisher= St Andrews University Library| access-date=16 March 2022}}</ref> Discussions of atheism, humanism, and Christianity have remained open to polemic into the 21st century.

==History==
In [[Ancient Greece]], writing was characterised by what Geoffrey Lloyd and [[Nathan Sivin]] called "strident adversariality" and "rationalistic aggressiveness", summed up by McClinton as polemic.<ref name=McClinton/><ref>{{cite book |last1=Lloyd |first1= Geoffrey |last2=Sivin |first2=Nathan |title= The Way and the Word: Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece |date= 2002 |publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-10160-7}}</ref> For example, the ancient historian [[Polybius]] practiced "quite bitter self-righteous polemic" against some twenty philosophers, orators, and historians.<ref name=Walbank>{{cite journal |last1= Walbank |first1=F. W. |title=Polemic in Polybius |journal=The Journal of Roman Studies |date=1962 |volume=52 |issue= Parts 1 and 2 |pages=1–12 |doi= 10.2307/297872 |jstor=297872|s2cid= 153936734 }}</ref>

Polemical writings were common in [[medieval]] and [[early modern]] times.<ref name=Suerbaum>{{cite book |last1=Suerbaum |first1=Almut |last2= Southcombe |first2=George |title=Polemic: Language as Violence in Medieval and Early Modern Discourse |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fFWrCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT39 |year=2016 |publisher= Taylor & Francis|isbn= 978-1-317-07929-3}}</ref> During the Middle Ages, polemic had a religious dimension, as in [[Jewish polemics and apologetics in the Middle Ages|Jewish texts written to protect and dissuade Jewish communities from converting to other religions]].<ref>{{cite book |author=Chazan, Robert |title=Fashioning Jewish identity in medieval western Christendom |page=7 |publisher= Cambridge University Press |date=2004}}</ref> [[Christian polemics and apologetics in the Middle Ages|Medieval Christian writings]] were also often polemical; for example in their disagreements on Islam<ref>{{cite book |author=Tolan, John Victor |title=Medieval Christian perceptions of Islam |page=420 |publisher=Routledge |date=2000}}</ref> or in the vast corpus aimed at converting the Jews.<ref>{{cite journal | first = Philippe | last= Bobichon| url= https://www.academia.edu/35266876 | title= Littérature de controverse entre judaïsme et christianisme: Description du corpus et réflexions méthodologiques (IIe-XVIe siècle ») (textes grecs, latins et hébreux)]| journal= Revue d'Histoire ecclésiastique| volume = 107| number= 1 | year= 2012| pages= 5–48| doi= 10.1484/J.RHE.1.102664}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | first = Philippe | last= Bobichon| url= https://www.academia.edu/37551705 | title= Is Violence intrinsic to religious confrontation? The case of Judeo-Christian controversy, second to seventeenth century| editor= S. Chandra | journal= Violence and Non-violence Across Times. History, Religion and Culture| publisher = Routledge| year= 2018| pages= 33–52| doi= 10.4324/9780429466205-3}}</ref> [[Martin Luther]]'s ''[[Ninety-five Theses|95 Theses]]'' was a polemic launched against the Catholic Church.<ref name=McClinton/>{{refn|group=note|The story of Luther nailing his Theses to the church door has been doubted. See references in [[Martin Luther#Start of the Reformation]] – "the story of the posting on the door ... has little foundation in truth."}} [[Robert Carliell]]'s 1619 defence of the new [[Church of England]] and diatribe against the [[Roman Catholic Church]] – {{lang|enm|Britaine's glorie, or An allegoricall dreame with the exposition thereof: containing The Heathens infidelitie in religion ...}} – took the form of a 250-line poem.<ref>{{cite ODNB | first = Sidney | last= Lee| title= Carleill, Robert (fl. 1619)|editor= Reavley Gair | place= Oxford| year= 2004| doi= 10.1093/ref:odnb/4680| url= http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4680| accessdate = 27 May 2017| url-access= subscription}}</ref>

Major political polemicists of the 18th century include [[Jonathan Swift]], with pamphlets such as his ''[[A Modest Proposal]]'', [[Alexander Hamilton]], with pieces such as ''[[A Full Vindication of the Measures of Congress]]'' and ''[[The Farmer Refuted|A Farmer Refuted]]'', and [[Edmund Burke]], with his attack on the [[John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford|Duke of Bedford]].<ref name=Indie>{{cite news|last1=Paulin|first1=Tom|title=The Art of Criticism: 12 Polemic|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/the-art-of-criticism-12-polemic-1612930.html|work=The Independent|access-date=6 November 2016|date=26 March 1995}}</ref>

In the 19th century, [[Karl Marx]] and [[Friedrich Engels]]'s 1848 ''[[Communist Manifesto]]'' was extremely polemical.<ref name=McClinton/> Both Marx and Engels would publish further polemical works, with Engels's work ''[[Anti-Dühring]]'' serving as a polemic against [[Eugen Dühring]], and Marx's ''[[Critique of the Gotha Programme]]'' against [[Ferdinand Lassalle|Ferdinand Lasalle]].

[[Vladimir Lenin]] published polemics against political opponents. ''[[The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky]]'' was notably directed against [[Karl Kautsky]], and other works such as ''[[The State and Revolution]]'' attacked figures including [[Eduard Bernstein]].

In the 20th century, [[George Orwell]]'s ''[[Animal Farm]]'' was a polemic against [[totalitarianism]], in particular of [[Stalinism]] in the [[Soviet Union]].  According to McClinton, other prominent polemicists of the same century include such diverse figures as [[Herbert Marcuse]], [[Noam Chomsky]], [[John Pilger]], and [[Michael Moore]].<ref name= McClinton/>

Conservative Jewish Austrian writer and journalist Karl Kraus (1890-1935) considers the topic of moral collapse in his polemic writings. Karl Kraus produced and published 922 issues of the fifteen-daily magazine called Die Fackel (The Torch) until his death. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sigmund Freud, Ernest Mach write in a similar manner and style to Kraus.

In 2007 Brian McClinton argued in ''[[Humani (organisation)|Humani]]'' that anti-religious books such as [[Richard Dawkins]]'s ''[[The God Delusion]]'' are part of the polemic tradition.<ref name= McClinton>{{cite journal|last1=McClinton|first1=Brian|title=A Defence of Polemics|journal=Humani|date=July 2007|issue= 105|pages=12–13|url=http://humanistni.org/filestore/image/polemics.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160322225304/http://humanistni.org/filestore/image/polemics.pdf |archive-date=22 March 2016}}</ref> In 2008 the humanist philosopher [[A. C. Grayling]] published a book, ''Against All Gods: Six Polemics on Religion and an Essay on Kindness''.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Grayling|first1=A. C.|title=Against All Gods: Six Polemics on Religion and an Essay on Kindness|date=2008|publisher=Oberon Books|isbn=978-1-840-02728-0}}</ref>

==See also==
{{div col|colwidth=30em}}
* [[Critic]]
* [[Devil's advocate]]
* [[Dialectic]]
* [[Disputation]]
* [[Internet troll]]
* [[Irenicism]]
* [[Philippic]]
* [[Rhetoric]]
* [[Social gadfly]]
* [[Trash-talk]]
{{div col end}}

==Notes==
{{Reflist|group="note"}}

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

==Bibliography==
* {{Cite book| edition = 1| publisher = Routledge| isbn = 0-415-97228-0| last = Gallop| first = Jane| title = Polemic: Critical or Uncritical| location = New York| year = 2004}}
* {{Cite book| publisher = Hodder Arnold| isbn = 0-7131-6497-2| last = Hawthorn| first = Jeremy| title = Propaganda, Persuasion and Polemic| year = 1987}}
* {{Cite book| publisher = Cambridge University Press| isbn = 0-521-83854-1| last = Lander| first = Jesse M.| title = Inventing Polemic: Religion, Print, and Literary Culture in Early Modern England| year = 2006}}
* {{Cite book| publisher = Lisans yayıncılık| isbn = 975-6597-28-5| last = Öztürk| first = Nurettin| title = Türk Edebiyatında Polemik ve "Kavgalarım"| year = 2005}}

==External links==
{{Wiktionary}}
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{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Polemic]]