Ah, The Personal Quarrel

One context of dialogue is the personal quarrel, characterized by aggressive personal attack, heighten appeal to emotions, and the desire to win the argument at all costs. The quarrel is characterized by bitter recriminations, a loss of balanced perspective, and afterwards, most often regret for excessive personal attacks that were not meant or deserved. The quarrel is no friend of logic, and frequently represents argument at its worst. The goal of the quarrel is for each arguer to attack or "hit" one's opponent at all costs, using any means, whether reasonable, fair, or not. Thus the quarrel is characterized by the fallacious ad hominem attack (attack against the person, rather than the agrument), and by emotional arguments that would not be judged relevant by more reasonable standards of argument. The quarrel is classified as an eristic type of dialogue (from the Greek word eris, meaning a fight or adversarial confrontation), in which each party tries to attack and defeat the other.

The quarrel represents the lowest level of argument. Reasonable standards of good argument should be designed to prevent argument from deteriorating into the personal quarrel.