Why do I always need to be right?
An argument begins over a minor detail. Ten minutes later, you realize the other person has a valid point. You continue anyway, perhaps speaking louder. When it ends, the original facts often matter less than the act of defending them. Arthur Schopenhauer wrote about this in The Art of Controversy, a short and bitter treatise published after his death.
A vain little book
While much of the text lists deceptive tactics for winning debates, the introduction examines why people argue dishonestly. Schopenhauer notes that if people cared only for the truth, it would not matter who held the correct opinion.
"Our innate vanity, which is particularly sensitive in reference to our intellectual powers, will not suffer us to allow that our first position was wrong and our adversary's right."
— Arthur Schopenhauer, The Art of Controversy, "Preliminary: Logic and Dialectic", tr. T. Bailey Saunders
Schopenhauer focuses on the phrase "our first position" and does not attribute this behavior to stupidity or stubbornness. Instead, he suggests the arguer simply spoke before they thought.
Defending what was said
The solution, Schopenhauer says, is to think before speaking, but few people do. Most speak first and only later realize their statement might be incorrect. The subject of the argument shifts. The discussion is no longer about the original question; it is about a sentence already spoken in front of another person.
Vanity then dictates that the truth must be treated as false and the false as true. Schopenhauer admits we occasionally find a missing argument by holding our ground. Usually, however, we are merely guarding a position.
The feeling of "needing to be right" is often a need to avoid taking back a word.
What the treatise leaves open
Schopenhauer does not provide a cure. The remainder of his book teaches how to win an argument rather than how to stop one. The habit of pretending to understand is a separate theme with its own page. The focus is on the first word.
Which first word am I still defending, even though I have started to doubt it?
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