assertion (n.): from the verb assert "to declare, maintain, or defend by words or measures," from Latin assertus, past participle of asserere/adserere "to claim, lay claim to, appropriate," from ad "to" + serere "to join together, put in a row," from Proto-Indo-European root *ser- "to line up," plus -ion, a common suffix used to form abstract nouns from verbs.
opinion (n.): “how something seems; a tentative judgment or evaluation formed on evidence that does not yield knowledge or certainty," from Old French opinion "opinion, view, judgement founded upon probabilities," from Latin opinionem (nominative opinio) "conjecture, fancy, belief, what one thinks; appreciation, esteem," from stem of opinari "think, judge, suppose," from Proto-Indo-European *op- "to choose."
It is one thing to share an opinion. It is an altogether different thing to make an assertion.
Confusion of the two, assertions and opinions, typically serves the interests of coercive power, the power that forces. For that very reason, such power promulgates conflating them.
In contrast, clearly drawing the distinction between the two, and insisting on keeping the gap between them open and unobstructed, is in the interest of conducive power, the power that capacitates. For that reason, refusal to conflate them with one another serves resistance to coercion.
The conflation of the difference between assertion and opinion degrades our common language, robbing if of an important part of its power to say. Thus, for example, a common way of bringing a discussion to a halt — assuming that there really was any genuine discussion taking place to begin with — is to say something such as “Well, we just have different opinions on the matter.”
Such misusage amounts to making having such-and-such an “opinion” into no more and no less than being ready to assert such-and-such, once triggered to do so. By such degraded usage, to “have an opinion” about something is really not at all a matter of having any actual view or perspective upon whatever is involved. It has nothing at all to do with “holding or considering probable, regarding as likely,” It really has nothing to do, then, with having any belief or opinion at all, at least not in any sense that the term opinion has been used throughout the philosophical tradition from the ancient Greeks, including by Plato and Aristotle, down to the present — the sense in which that term is used as deriving from the Latin translation of the original Greek term doxa, which identifies how something “seems” or “presents itself” to the speaker at the time of speaking.
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Right-wing terrorists storming the United States Capital on January 6, 2021
Various so-called “opinion polls” show that some 70% of the voting population of the United States who self-identify as Republicans “believe” or are “of the opinion that” the 2020 Presidential election was fraudulent. Similarly, a few days after the recent right-wing terrorist storming of the United States Capitol on January 6 of this year (2021), a YouGov poll showed 43% of those polled who self-identified as Republicans supported the terrorists’ action.
Well, the truth in both polling cases is that those who so responded do not, in any reasonable sense, genuinely believe or think what they say they believe. The truth is simply that, being triggered to do so (by, for example, some pollster asking them what their “opinion” on the matter was), those at issue were quick to assert the proposition presented to them, to profess that they believed it — that is, say that they did.
Claiming to believe something, however, is very different from actually believing it. One could be lying about so believing when one in truth believes something else, for example. Or, far more pertinent to the polling results just cited, one could simply be giving a conditioned response by saying that one believes such and such, when that response is triggered by being asked about the matter.
When such conditioned verbal responses are triggered, the behavioral conditioning of those so triggered also conditions them to have certain accompanying affective responses. Exactly what affective response will be involved depends on the situation at issue. Sometimes such conditioned verbal assertions will be accompanied by some such feeling as would ordinarily accompany expressing an opinion. In other cases, it may be accompanied by much stronger feelings, such as the sense of victory, vindication, defiance, and powerfulness that typically rewards bullying behavior and was no doubt experienced by the right-wing terrorists who broke into the Capitol during the joint session of the United States Congress a few days ago..
Gallows erected by the terrorists at the Capitol on January 6, 2021
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Below is a book passage in which someone genuinely shares an opinion. The person at issue is Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo, and the passage is from his book Of Reality: The Purposes of Philosophy, as translated by Robert T. Valgenti (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016,):
The dialogue between the great religions up to now, which is spoken about often but occurs very rarely, is possible only if, within some of them, the faithful feel compelled to believe in a less exclusive and less superstitious way. If I say, as I believe one should say, that since I believe that God became human, I can also think that, in other cultures, he became a sacred cow, and elephant, or a cat, I don’t believe I am blaspheming; on the contrary, I believe that I am expressing a proper dimension of Christian truth.
By honestly sharing his opinion in those lines, Vattimo opens the door for further discussion of the matters at issue and invites readers themselves to think and reflect honestly about them.
After all, that’s what sharing one’s opinions is for.