UCLA Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies

Disputation is formalized argument. In the Western tradition, the process of formalizing argument among educated people, having begun with rhetoric and philosophy in antiquity, culminated in the disputations of the medieval university, where disputation was the governing practice of teaching and learning. From their first year on, students were required to dispute weekly, and the masters of every faculty – arts, law, medicine and theology – were also expected to dispute regularly. What professors do now by testing students and publishing books and articles, their medieval ancestors did with disputations.

Two forms of disputation were the most common. In one form, called obligatio, a respondent defended a claim against an opponent, who sought to force the respondent into contradiction by advancing other statements. The respondent was obligated to accept any statement entailed by the claims which he had initially presented and to reject anything inconsistent with them, otherwise treating all claims on their merits. The other prominent medieval form of disputation was the quodlibet – literally, a disputation about anything. As the name suggests, a quodlibetal disputation required a master to settle difficult questions from the floor on any topic within his field. Quodlibets were often public confrontations in which a master, accompanied by advanced students, would face off against other masters and their students.

So effective and enduring were these practices that disputation not only ruled the faculties of the medieval university but also shaped countless conversations and textual forms after that period and outside the university – in art, science, medicine, literature, law, politics and other cultural domains. Moreover, the imprint of disputation on Western culture is still evident: even now, highly formalized debates between candidates, regulated by third parties, affect such momentous decisions as presidential elections. Disputation is certainly worth studying, especially from an interdisciplinary and comparative point of view and à la longue durée. If we consult the past and thereby come to understand better how and why our ancestors disputed, might we learn to use this powerful tool of human culture more wisely in contemporary affairs? This is the key question that motivates the Seminar’s study of disputation.