ADAB IN DIALOGUE: DEVELOPING ARGUMENTATIVE VIRTUES IN A DIVIDED WORLD (ADAB)
ADAB is a project undertaken by members of the ArguMunazara Centre at Ibn Haldun University and funded by the John Templeton Foundation.
ADAB’s general outlook encompasses all people and institutions involved in debate and argumentation today. Our direct intervention will focus on university debate practices, with institutions engaged in argumentation and debate in the Muslim world. We conceive the work developed in this project as a seed for the transformation of debate culture and public communication in the Muslim world and beyond, to a multidimensional, multi-perspective practice of argumentative manners and virtues.
ADAB’s planned activities are intended to amend pitfalls in contemporary argumentative practices and to enhance public argumentation as means of enabling collective decision-making and problem-solving. Accordingly, the project focuses on the Ādāb al-Baḥth wa al-Munāẓara tradition so as to extract resources capable of mitigating some of the main communicative problems of contemporary societies. Specifically, ADAB addresses the competitive, applause-driven, and victory-focused framework, not to mention the mindset, that govern the dominant debate culture. In response, ADAB reframes the inclusive and fair components of competitive debate in virtuous and cooperative terms, which underlie Munāẓara’s norms and procedures.
