Chaïm Perelman

The new rhetoric

I began working on what I now call the new rhetoric with only a vague idea of what it was about, with no intention to become a rhetorician.1 As a logician, I was interested in the study of reasoning, especially reasoning about values. I wanted to develop a logic of value judgments.

The New Rhetoric: A Theory of Practical Reasoning

The last two years of secondary education in Belgium used to be called traditionally ‘Poetry’ and ‘Rhetoric.’ I still remember that, over forty years ago, I had to study the ‘Elements of Rhetoric’ for a final high-school examination, and I learned more or less by heart the contents of a small manual, the first part of which concerned the syllogism and the second the figures of style. Later, at university, I took a course of logic which covered, among other things, the analysis of the syllogism. I then learned that logic is a formal discipline that studies the structure of hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Since then I have often wondered what link a professor of rhetoric could possibly discover between the syllogism and the figures of style with their exotic names that are so difficult to remember.

The new rhetoric and the rhetoricians: Remembrances and comments

In this essay, Professor Perelman explains “certain errors” in The New Rhetoric and critically responds to several writers who have used his ideas in this country. Trans. by Professor Ray D. Dearin.

The Rational and The Reasonable

The existence of two adjectives, ‘rational’ and ‘reasonable’, both derived from the same noun, and designating a conformity with reason, would pose no problem if the two terms were interchangeable. But, most often, it is not so. We understand the expression rational deduction as conformity to the rules of logic, but we cannot speak of a reasonable deduction. On the contrary, we can speak of a reasonable compromise and not of a rational compromise. At times the two terms are applicable but in a different sense: a rational decision can be unreasonable and vice versa. In certain cases the rational and the reasonable are in precise opposition. Parmenides’ theses on being, by seeking to eliminate all incoherence from opinions which common sense entertains in relation to this subject, ends in conclusions which can be presented as rational but which certainly are not reasonable. If Wittgenstein is right in affirming (On Certainty, 261) that there are things that a reasonable man cannot doubt (e.g., that for a time the earth existed), that a reasonable doubt cannot be arbitrary because it must have a foundation (Ibid., 323), then Descartes’ methodical and above all hyperbolical doubt, given as rational, is certainly unreasonable because it would demand an abstention, a refusal to accept, every time we are not compelled by the self-evidence of a proposition. Professor Raleigh rebels against the attitude of William Godwin — the anarchist disciple of Jeremy Bentham — who tries to control all the most human sentiments by the mechanism of the intellect and who seriously maintains that he is wrong to love his father more than other men, unless he is able to prove that his father is better than these other men.1

Rhetoric and philosophy

Classical rhetoric, the art of speaking well — that is, the art of speaking (or writing) persuasively — was concerned to study the discursive ways of acting upon an audience, with a view to winning or increasing its adherence to the theses that were presented to it for its endorsement.

Justice, Law, and Argument: Essays on Moral and Legal Reasoning

1. Concerning Justice.- Five Lectures on Justice.- 2. Justice and Its Problems.- 3. Equity and the Rule of Justice.- 4. On the Justice of Rules.- 5. Justice and Justification.- 6. Justice and Reason.- 7. Justice and Reasoning.- 8. Equality and Justice.- 9. Justice Re-examined.- 10. The Use and Abuse of Confused Notions.- 11. The Justification of Norms.- 12. Law and Morality.- 13. Law and Rhetoric.- 14. Legal Reasoning.- 15. Law, Logic and Epistemology.- 16. Law, Philosophy and Argumentation.- 17. What the Philosopher May Learn from the Study of Law.- Index of Names.- Index of Subjects.

Formal Logic and Informal Logic

While the concept of formal logic has been known since the time of Aristotle, the idea that logic and formal logic are synonymous by virtue of an elimination of any conception of informal logic becomes generalized in the midnineteenth century under the influence of mathematician-logicians. Father Bochenski, who is one of the representatives of this tendency, expressed as much once again in a recent colloquium held in Rome in 1976 on the theme of modern logic. In a communication entitled “The General Sense and Character of Modern Logic”,1 he identifies modern logic (ML) with formal logic. He characterizes ML by three methodological principles: the use of an artificial language, formalism, and objectivism.

AUTHORITY, IDEOLOGY AND VIOLENCE

Political demonstrations, campaigns of civil disobedience and university strife which have spread throughout the world in the last years are considered everywhere to be a rebellion against authority. The latter is identified with power, the use of public force and thus constitutes a continual menace to individual liberties.

The safeguarding and foundation of human rights

Human rights, as legally understood, must be safeguarded. This presupposes a state of law. The safeguarding of human rights further presupposes an independent judiciary applying the law in a community with common values and aspirations. The foundation of human rights is an individualistic philosophy dependent on the respect for truth and the possibility for the individual to attain it. The respect for the dignity of the human person is the result of a long historical development from this starting point.

Philosophy, Rhetoric, Commonplaces

In the present paper I defend the thesis that philosophical proof is of a rhetorical nature and that to the degree to which philosophical reasoning is based upon premises which are essential to it, it is attached to theses commonly admitted, that is, to general principles, common notions and commonplaces.