Wolterstorff on the Virtue of Disagreement

Nicholas Wolterstorff's wonderful autobiography that I have been reading on and off, is filled, as expected, with nuggets of deep insights. As when he reminds us that

the ability to separate person from argument is essential to my profession of philosophy. Philosophy lives on disagreement; consensus would kill it off. When I taught an introduction to philosophy course, it always almost turned out that there were a few students in the class have who have not acquired the ability to separate the person from the argument. Someone would say something in class discussion, another member of the class would disagree with what he or she had said, whereupon a look of dejection would cross the face of the first student, sometimes tears.

He goes on to tell how he took it as his mission to teach students to separate person from argument. As good an educational goal as any other!

PS: I remember early in my teaching career telling a student during a class that she was wrong, as in having "wrongly reasoned." I might have as well insulted her by derogatory namecalling, that's how my quite innocent retort was perceived.