Michelle Bolduc

Chaim Perelman's "First Philosophies and Regressive Philosophy": Commentary and Translation

31 p. The Translation has been removed due to copyright restrictions. The commentary is still available.

From Vita contemplativa to vitaactiva: Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca's Rhetorical Turn

Abstract Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tytecas Traité de Vargumentation: la nouvelle rhétorique marked a revolution in twentieth-century rhetorical theory. In this essay, we trace Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecas turn from logical positivism and the accepted belief that reasons domain was the vita contemplativa to rhetoric and its use as a reason designed for the vita activa. Our effort to tell the story of their rhetorical turn, which took place between 1944 and 1950, is informed by an account of the context in which they considered questions of reason, responsibility, and action in the wake of World War II.

Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca's "On Temporality as a Characteristic of Argumentation": Commentary and Translation

“Th e last third of the twentieth century,” Gerard Hauser writes, was marked by “a fl urry of intellectual work aimed at theorizing rhetoric in new terms” (2001, 1). Th e year 1958 was key in this fl urry, with fi ve major works appearing on a rhetorically infl ected philosophy and theory of argumentation: Hannah Arendt’s Th e Human Condition (on the relationship between the vita contemplativa and vita activa ); Michael Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge (on the role of tacit knowledge, emotion, and commitment in science); Stephen Toulmin’s Uses of Argument (on the use of argument in nonformal contexts); Walter Ong’s Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (on the history of the separation of rhetoric and logic); and Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca’s Traité de l ’argumentation: La nouvelle rhétorique [ Th e New Rhetoric ] (on a rapprochement of rhetoric and logic). Th ese books mark a “rhetorical turn” in twentieth-century thought. Of the fi ve, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s work had the greatest infl uence on rhetorical theory in the twentieth century. Indeed, we believe the post–World War II rhetorical turn is best codifi ed in Th e New Rhetoric , as