Countering

Harris, in his book Rewriting, discusses the concept of “countering”. He describes this concept as the adding of original ideas to a text. When “countering” something, according to Harris, you are looking at the text as a whole and commenting on what it lacks, “uncovering the values”. “Countering” is not necessarily an argument because you can agree with something but still believe that it is limited. However, “countering” can also be “arguing the other side”. The other part of “countering” that Harris discusses is “dissenting” where someone agrees with the ideas of the author but adds his/her own idea to the topic.

I was looking through some blog posts and found this example of “countering”. In this post, Tyler Cowen quotes someone who misread his own article and made an incorrect judgement. Cowen adds a part of his original post showing what the other person misunderstood. He then adds his own thoughts to the situation and also adds some ideas that he left out of his original post. This is an example of countering because he shows the argument, whether it is incorrect, of both sides and he then “uncovers the values” by adding some more ideas about the topic. Something that is lost through “countering” is the full story. Someone might add some ideas that were left out of the original argument but the likelihood that they describe all of the original ideas is unlikely. If we read just the article with the new idea we do not see the full argument.