"Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled. The greatest part of men cannot judge of reasoning and are impressed by character; so that, if you allow your adversary a respectable character, they will think, that though you differ from him, you may be wrong. Sir, treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in a battle” - Samuel Johnson

 "Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled. The greatest part of men cannot judge of reasoning and are impressed by character; so that, if you allow your adversary a respectable character, they will think, that though you differ from him, you may be wrong. Sir, treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in a battle” - Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). 15 August  1773. In James Boswell, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, L.L.D., 1786

The idea in this quote runs counter to much of what I read about the art of rhetoric, which is often regarded as a sort of cooperative endeavor, in its ideal state. This is rhetoric as dialectic, as an attempt to find out the truth. There is another type of rhetoric however, which is designed around the idea of victory and defeat - that you win or lose, based on how other people perceive the argument. In the case of speech between two people, the cooperative effort is often the one we will try to seek out, because the point of an argument is not to convince the other person, but to figure out what the answer is. If the answer is the truth, and is reached by the arts of rhetoric and logic, then you do not need to convince your opponent, because he will convince himself. On the other hand, when the argument is between two groups with a third listening in, as in a courtroom or a congress, then what you are trying to do is to convince the silent majority that your way is best, that your vision will be most certain to lead to victory, and that your opponent is confused, ridiculous, ignorant, and wrong. If you enter the area convinced that your opponent is already half-correct, then if he feels the same about you, it is perhaps still possible to come to a realization of the truth. However, if your opponent is following this quote and you are not, then it is likely that any effort you make to establish the correctness of your side of the argument is doomed to failure.. If you follow the advice, then either your opponent follows it or does not, and in either case, you increase your likelihood of winning the argument. If you do not follow the quote, then either your opponent does and you lose, or your opponent does not, and you are back on an even keel. Thus, in three out of four possibilities, it is better to take the advice to heart. It is the logical choice to abandon logic and fairness, in order to win. 

This presumes that you are arguing against somebody else - but what if you are arguing with yourself? When should you give credence to your own opinions over some other sort of your own opinions? If you are arguing with yourself over something you do not know the answer to, then since you do not know which side is right and which side is wrong, any application of this quote will only be happenstance. If you are arguing with yourself over something that you know the answer to, then you know which side of the argument to believe, and in this case the meaning of the quote becomes clear in a different fashion - that the point of the quote, the point of disrespecting your opponent, is not to find truth - indeed, it only has relevance if you already believe that you know the truth. The point of the quote is to overcome the force of your opponent. We know it is reasonable for your opponent, the part of you that has a bad idea, to follow this quote, and so try to make what is sensible appear ridiculous or flawed. If you accept this viewpoint, then you are already halfway to losing your sense of right and wrong, or any ability to corral your worse self and follow your better self. 

There is one final way to understand the quote - that it is actually in the service of truth-finding. This is counter to the way it has been used so far, but imagine to see my point, imagine that you are putting forth an argument. Now, if you are given the benefit of the doubt, then your argument wins. If you are not given the benefit of the doubt, then your argument loses. Thus, the power of your argument depends not on you, or on the argument, but on the disposition of your opponent, which is not a characteristic of a good argument. On the other hand, if your argument is so strong that it wins even when you are not given the benefit of the doubt, then that is a good and strong argument to have. Thus, disrespecting your opponent, be it either you or another, is actually a way of respecting the argument, of upholding the search for truth, because even though you may call your opponent a liar, you are sure that the truth will out. 

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