This article is about the word. For the magazine, see Polemic (magazine).
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Polemic (/pəˈlɛmɪk/) 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.[1] The word derives from Ancient Greek πολεμικός (polemikos) 'warlike, hostile',[1][2] from πόλεμος (polemos) 'war'.[3]
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 Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher Voltaire, Christian anarchist Leo Tolstoy, socialist philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, novelist George Orwell, playwright George Bernard Shaw, communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, psycholinguist Noam Chomsky, social critics 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.[4] To support study of 17th to 19th century controversies, a British research project has placed online thousands of polemical pamphlets from that period.[5] Discussions of atheism, humanism, and Christianity have remained open to polemic into the 21st century.
Polemic (/pəˈlɛmɪk/) is contentious rhetoric intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The...
from the Greek philosopher Celsus, who wrote The True Word (c. 175 CE), a polemic criticizing Christians as being unprofitable members of society. In response...
avant-garde theatricalism. Wagner became the object of Modernism's most polemic anti-theatrical attackers. Martin Puchner states that Wagner, 'almost like...
A Crown for Zion (German: Eine Krone für Zion) is an 1898 anti-Zionist polemic written by the Austrian-Jewish writer Karl Kraus. As with many Viennese...
Dennis Philip Edward Lingwood (26 August 1925 – 30 October 2018), known more commonly as Sangharakshita, was a British spiritual teacher and writer. In...
A Year of Grace is a 1950 anthology compiled by Victor Gollancz, consisting of passages (and some pieces of music) concerning religious and spiritual life...
Nicolaism (also called Nicholaism, Nicolaitism, Nicolationism or Nicolaitanism) was an early Christian sect mentioned twice in the Book of Revelation of...
classical philologic method in favour of a more speculative approach. In his polemic Philology of the Future, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff damped the...
The Royal Gate of the Palace of Versailles separates the Cour d'Honneur from the Royal Court of the Palace of Versailles. It is also located between the...
science. From that point on, use of "occult science(s)" implied a conscious polemic against mainstream science. Nevertheless, the philosopher and card game...
to have been first recorded in Q: John the Baptist's "Brood of Vipers" polemic Some portions of the Temptation of Christ Healing the mother of Peter's...
natura [On the Nature of Things] 4, 833 The chief instance, and the largest polemic morass, of teleological viewpoint in modern cosmology and ontology is the...
Manichaeism (/ˌmænɪˈkiːɪzəm/; in New Persian آیینِ مانی Āyīn-e Mānī; Chinese: 摩尼教; pinyin: Móníjiào) is a former major world religion, founded in the 3rd...
1819, to February 15, 1886, in Romney, West Virginia. Established as the Polemic Society of Romney, it became the first organization of its kind in the...
Laurentina is the first beer brand and former brewery from Mozambique. It was founded in 1932 and since 2002 has been a brand of the Mozambican brewing...
literature, although he makes an appearance in some variants of the medieval polemic Toledot Yeshu (as a particularly effective spy for the rabbis). The Karaite...
Isaac (Fernando) Cardoso was a Jewish physician, philosopher, and polemic writer. He was born of Marrano parents at Trancoso, near Celorico, in the province...
Christianity came from the Greek philosopher Celsus, who wrote The True Word, a polemic criticizing Christians as being unprofitable members of society. In response...
the Story of Miriai on Two Levels: Evidence from Mandaean Anti-Jewish Polemic about the Origins and Setting of Early Mandaeism".ARAM Periodical / (2010):...
17161/str.1808.12434. ISSN 1094-5830. Chute, Rebecca. 2016. "The" Pornographic Polemic": The Objectification and Inferiority of Female Comic Book Characters."...
court's attempts to frame Dreyfus began to spread, chiefly owing to the polemic J'accuse, a vehement open letter published on the liberal newspaper L'Aurore...
Fernando Jurado Noboa (born 12 October 1949, Quito) is an Ecuadorian psychiatrist, historian and genealogist. Jurado was born in Quito on 12 October 1949...
in G. R. Hawting, The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History, pp. 131–132 Ahmed, Shahab (2017). Before Orthodoxy: The satanic...