We translated an article by H. W. Johnstone (1920-2000), an American researcher, who influenced the development of the theory of argumentation in Russia. According to Johnstone, the purpose of argumentation is to maintain tension and risk as necessary conditions for a dispute where people go beyond the limits of their immediate experience and assert themselves as rational individuals, consciously exposing themselves to the risks of failing to defend their views. The relevance of Johnstone's ideas is connected with the contemporary development of argumentation logic with its key relation of the attack of one argument by another instead of the support of the thesis by arguments, interpreted in argumentation logic as a rejection of the attack.