What is debate?

It seems to be a concept easily defined, for which all you need is a colloquial understanding or a dictionary. But just as drama is not defined simply by dramatists, debate has no simple definition in the thinking of thinkers.

From the view of teachers, debate is a synthesis of academic skills that unifies many disciplines and tests most thoroughly their students' faculties; at different points in time, the average student will be required to research, summarize, write, think critically, and speak. But only in debate will all of those skills be in use at once, and only through their simultaneous use does each skill become uniquely powerful.

From the view of politicans, it's the performance component of the art of argument; it is the manipulation of ideas, such that the right position will prevail. It is knowing how to always have the right answer. It is winning through words, as is the democratic way.

Perhaps most importantly, though, debate is’Äîin the view of the philosopher and the wise man, the thinker, the intellectual, the critic’Äîthe means to achieve a higher truth. To debate is to challenge assumptions, to discard broken and antiquitous modes of thought, to keep the wheels of knowledge rolling. It is a means to make people understand, more than any rule or advice, the importance of treating ideas with fairness and respect. It is, at once, how the greatest thinkers are made and, equally, how the greatest thinkers are made humble.