Intellectual War

How can we be truly cooperative in intellectual matters, without asserting ourselves to the detriment of another?

I find within myself a drive toward competitiveness, a need for a foil, which rather frustrates me. After all, to declaim someone as clearly wrong is to declare oneself as dead certain about something. But, I have yet to come across anyone whose certainty on an issue I can truly respect and emulate. On the contrary, the extent to which someone is certain (with the possible exception of certain moral issues), I generally see them as culpably and reprehensibly close-minded and ignorant of basic truths which are plainly obvious to me (and see, I have already inserted my despised foil!).

Part of this seems to come out of a desire to be above the rest of humanity. People everywhere, at all times, seem to fall into this one pit, and I must be the one who does not. How realistic is this, though? Is it even possible in theory to avoid making the same mistake which those better than I have made? But, how can I purposefully run and jump into a pit I see gaping before me?

Is the answer to simply accept that perspectives can only meet in battle? To acknowledge from the start that I will clash, I will wrong and be shown wrong no matter what I do, and that I must overlook my foibles in order to progress?

It seems that cooperation needs to assume the sort of firm foundation which I cannot accept. One must know enough to have stability, to have an unshakable faith in something (despite any evidence to the contrary), in order to meet the Other calmly and in peace. Is this because most cooperation is really an assimilation of the Other?

And skepticism is similarly resting on the firm foundation that what one doesn't know either doesn't matter, or is so certainly unknowable that it doesn't matter whether it matters.

One has to take these matters seriously, and not merely play at them. One must pour oneself out; I must pour myself out, into some scheme which I choose, even though it will fail. I must grow my thought as if it were a new hand, in order to chop it off.

I am finite, and in my finitude I am ignorant, noxiously so. But dash it all, stopping isn't really an option either.