Chaïm Perelman (1912â1984), a Belgian Jew, achieved global recognition as a scholar in the humanities. He was also celebrated for his leadership of the Jewish underground in Belgium during World War II, an experience central to the purpose of his scholarship, which was to redeem reason and civil society in the wake of war and genocide. After the war, Perelman alone, and in collaboration with Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca (1926â1994), wrote more than 350 books, book chapters, and essays outlining a vision of rhetoric as an answer to the post-war âcrisis of reasonâ.1
Perelman, alone and with Olbrechts-Tyteca who joined him in 1946, sought to answer the question: How can humans reason about values and cultivate a moral civil society in the aftermath of the Holocaust, World War II, and the absence of absolutes? Their answer was to develop a new rhetoric, or what we term the New Rhetoric Project [NRP]. The NRP was initiated by Perelman in his 1933 article âDe lâarbitraire dans la connaissanceâ [On the Arbitrary in Knowledge], crystallized by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca in their 1958 magnum opus, Le Traité de lâargumentation: La nouvelle rhétorique [The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation], and brought to a finale in their 1983 contribution to a special issue of a Swiss journal dedicated to reviewing the influence of Vilfredo Pareto in the study of argumentation and their work sixty years after his death.2
Sir Brian Vickers, in his historical survey of rhetoric and philosophy for the Oxford Encyclopedia of Rhetoric, states that the NRP is âone of the most influential modern formulations of rhetorical theory;â it is the only twentieth-century rhetoric mentioned in the entry.3 The University of Chicagoâs Wayne Booth, in his Rhetoric of Rhetoric, writes that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, with the publication of the Traité (and its translation a decade later into English as The New Rhetoric), launched a âmajor revolutionâ with âan amazingly deep, rich, all-inclusive exploration of rhetorical resources, both from classical giants, especially Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, and from Renaissance anti-Cartesians on to 1969â.4 Relative to the other twentieth-century rhetorics of I. A. Richards, Kenneth Burke, and others, Booth found Perelmanâs work (and that with Olbrechts-Tyteca) to be the âmost complex effort to explore all the rhetorical resources for combating âabsolutismâ and âCartesianâ and âviews of truthââ.5 James Crosswhite suggests that the New Rhetoric project is âthe single most important event in contemporary rhetorical theoryâ.6 Many European philosophers, including Hans-Georg Gadamer,7 Paul Ricoeur,8 and Jacques Lacan,9 engaged with the NRP.
In our study of the NRP, we build on the insights that Christian Delacampagne made in his A History of Philosophy in the Twentieth Century.10 Delacampagne insists that the major philosophical movements in the twentieth century are products of history and culture. The material and cultural devastation left in the aftermath of World War I an intellectual crisis: reason had failed to prevent war, genocide, and the death of over 100 million people. European and Belgian intellectuals responded to this crisis with a host of philosophical balms, including logical positivism, existentialism, phenomenology, and Marxism.
Central to this crisis was Perelmanâs status as a Jew and that of the Jewish people in Europe. Reason did not prevent the rise of eliminationist antisemitism and the Holocaust, leading Delacampagne to argue that it is â[p]recisely because it constitutes the ultimate scandal of reason, the Nazi genocide forces us today to consider the Jewish question as the âturning point in historyââ.11 Toward the end of creating a civil society anchored in reason, accepting of the value diversity representing pluralism, and the lived experience of European Jews, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca established reason and justice as the polar stars of the NRP, a justice achieved through informal reason expressed through argumentation and rhetoric. The time period considered in this volume was dominated by the questions raised in philosophy by logical positivism and the threat to life posed by totalitarianism.
Those who founded logical positivism and empiricism held that they were âintegral to the struggle against fascismâ as they ârepresented Enlightenment values of reason and progress, sense against nonsense, truth against fictionâ.12 Perelmanâs agenda, from the beginning, was to extend reason beyond the spheres of sense and truth to include values, a topic that logical positivism and empiricism of this period defined as the realm of the irrational, without meaning. As Edmonds writes,
Logical positivists held that in the end, there is nothing we can do to reconcile our disagreement, and there is nothing to be gained by my claiming that my values are true and yours false. We may simply have to live with our difference of opinion. ⦠It is perfectly legitimate for me to posit ethical judgments, so long as I acknowledge that they do not belong in the same category as empirical statements.13
We see Perelman struggling with these constraints. He agrees with and is committed to Enlightenment values of reason, but he resists the boundaries placed on reason by logical positivism. Values must be seen as reflections of reason, Perelman would later maintain, if fascism and totalitarianism are to be contained and defeated. Rhetoric and argumentation would, for Perelman, become the logic of ethical judgments.
Perelman, the budding philosopher, made an audacious debut at age 21 in 1933 when he confronts the problem of modality in his initial two scholarly articles.14 Modality in logic hosts claims of necessity and possibility, which can suggest that there are different modes and expressions of reason.15 In the tradition of logical positivism, modalism is either rejected completely, with reason limited to deduction and a logic of necessity, or severely restricted in its scope.16 In his earliest scholarship, Perelman embraces the coherence of logic, but he seeks its freedom from necessity and the arbitrary. However, during the decade of the 1930s, he nevertheless studies logic and reason within the worldview of those who subscribed to a version of positivism that embraces necessity and the arbitrary.
Over the course of Perelmanâs scholarly career, he would develop the modal logic of possibility and probability, which led him back to Aristotle, the father of Western logic. Aristotle had distinguished two forms of reason, analytic and dialectic, the former characterized by necessity and deduction, the latter by probability and rhetoric. The trajectory of Perelmanâs scholarship alone and with Olbrechts-Tyteca climaxes in the Traité with its goal of âbreakingâ with the Enlightenmentâs restrictive definition of reason, which limited it to the necessary, and effected a ârapprochementâ between analytical and dialogical reasoning. As we will see, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca also broke from their understanding of Aristotleâs view of reason and rhetoric.
The NRPâs take on justice, reason, and rhetoric remains an important influence on studies of law, ontology, epistemology, axiology, and argumentation, as well as in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. John Rawls, in his Theory of Justice, cites Perelmanâs 1945 De la justice, which Perelman wrote while in hiding from the Nazis and leading the Belgian Jewish underground (Le Comité de défense des Juifs, or CDJ).17 Oxfordâs H. L. A. Hart celebrated Perelmanâs scholarship.18 More recently, the NRP is seen as influential in contemporary Arab, Korean, Spanish, and Israeli scholarship.19 Judges in Poland continue to cite the NRP in their legal rulings.20 Scholars in the English-speaking world make use of the NRP to study law, political communication, math, and a host of topics across the spectrums of humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.21
Between 1931 and 1947, Perelman set forth the questions at the center of the project, writing 50 articles and one book before Olbrechts-Tyteca joined him in 1947.22 In the period between 1947 and 1958, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca wrote 15 articles and two books to develop the NRP.23 Olbrechts-Tyteca would, after 1958, write two articles and one book, making use of the theories outlined in the NRP. Perelman would write over 200 articles and four books on his own between 1958 and his death in 1984 that defend, extend, and refine the themes of the NRP.
A vast number of the articles belonging to the NRP, which offer important and original insights on NRPâs rhetorical theory, remain in French. Scholars and readers lacking access to the NRPâs original French must rely on only four volumes containing essays of English translations: The Idea of Justice and the Problem of Argument (1963), The New Rhetoric and the Humanities: Essays on Rhetoric and its Applications (1979), Justice, Law and Argument (1980), and The Realm of Rhetoric (1982).24 These volumes are foundational for scholars from wide-ranging disciplines, including rhetorical history, communication, philosophy, legal studies, religious studies, literary criticism, the history of ideas, mathematics, the history of science, womenâs studies, and history. However, these volumes contain only translations of articles written after 1958 and do not offer an account of the origins or beginnings of the NRP; furthermore, these volumes lack both commentaries and translator notes to explain difficult concepts and to clarify the specific sociohistorical and cultural context in which Perelman (and Olbrechts-Tyteca) were working, which would enrich the reading experience.
Some of the existing English translations of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs oeuvre are flawed, leading to misreadings and misleading interpretations of the NRP. Our translations and commentaries intend to fill a historical vacuum in the study of the NRP, making them accessible and readily available to the English-speaking reader. Even scholars with a command of French have not read the totality of the texts that make up the NRP, which prevents an appreciation of the diachronic development of its approach.
Our work answers criticisms of the NRP made by some modern critics who have not plumbed the intellectual and cultural depths of the NRP. Alan Gross and Ray Dearin note that âwhile there has been some useful exegesis in English, most of it merely perpetuates misunderstandings that stem from superficial acquaintance beyond recovery in dusty and largely unread periodical volumesâ.25 Gross and Dearin are right; far too many commentaries by English-speaking readers of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca betray and distort their analysis. Gross and Dearin are also right when they point to the articles Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca wrote offering explanations and embellishments of their central ideas that were not included in the Traité and that can be found in âunread periodical volumesâ.
Gross and Dearin are mistaken, however, when they write that there are but a âfew articlesâ that could help illuminate the NRP.26 Perelman and Olbrechts- Tytecaâs Traité was the result of a ten-year collaboration, one that sought to set forth a system of argumentation designed to persuade embodied audiences. According to Perelmanâs daughter, Noemi Perelman Mattis, the ï¬nal product was over 2,000 pages; the press required the collaborators to condense it to 734 pages.27 The rather underdeveloped, elliptical writing in Traité may thus be due to space limitations. Concurrent with the 1958 publication of Traité, Perelman alone and with Olbrechts-Tyteca published articles on the relationship between thought and action (Perelman, âRapports théoriques de la pensée et de lâactionâ), classical and romantic topoi in argument (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, âClassicisme et romantismeâ), pragmatic argument (Perelman, âLâargument pragmatiqueâ), and the role of time in argumentation (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, âDe la temporalité comme caractère de lâargumentationâ).
We have identified many articles that precede, appear alongside, and postdate the Traité that shed expository light on the NRPâs central concepts. We have dusted off Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs unread articles, translated them into English (several of them here for the first time), and have provided commentaries specially written for this volume that situate these articles in their historical contexts. Our studies of the NRP, which include its history and cultural context, should provide the English-speaking reader with a better understanding of the historical origins and intentions of the key terms and arguments in the NRP, which have, far too often, been misunderstood by those who have not had access to adequate English translations and to the rich, multilingual cultural and political environment of the NRP.
We have studied the Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca collaboration in depth, conducted exhaustive research in the Perelman archives at the Université Libre de Bruxelles [ULB], the United States Holocaust Museum, and engaged in extensive interviews with Perelmanâs daughter, Noemi Perelman Mattis, and other contemporaries. We have also read the exchanges between Perelman and Hans Georg Gadamer, Richard McKeon, Norberto Bobbio, and many other prominent intellectuals contained in letters and philosophical society reports held in the archives, which have provided us with insight on the development of his thought.
Our archival research has allowed us to read first drafts of the articles that we have translated into English for the first time, lecture notes, and unpublished manuscripts. We have consulted the notebooks that Perelman kept between 1934 and 1948, which record the philosophical and rhetorical texts with which Perelman was engaged while at the early stages of his research on logic and rhetoric. These materials reveal the cultural and philosophical context in which the NRP was developed and provide the foundation for our translations and commentaries. We dedicate our commentaries and translations of the NRP to English-reading scholars and societies seeking to cultivate reason-based decision-making.
1 The Contribution of Translations and Commentaries on the NRP
Scholars from many disciplines and countries continue to turn to the NRP for insight on rhetorical theory and behavior. Our translations and commentaries of two of the NRPâs keystone articles have been recently cited by two important scholars: James Crosswhite, Deep Rhetoric: Philosophy, Reason, Violence, Justice, Wisdom (Chicago, 2013) and Christopher Tindale, The Philosophy of Argument and Audience Reception (Cambridge, 2015).28 Crosswhite draws heavily on our translation of and commentary on Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs 1958 article on time in argumentation to develop the theme of his book.29 Tindale makes use of our translation of Perelmanâs 1949 article on âregressive philosophyâ in order to anchor his appropriation of Perelmanâs thought.30 Our work in translating and commenting upon these early articles has also led to Bolducâs recent major work, Translation and the Rediscovery of Rhetoric.
We anticipate that scholars will welcome and draw from The Intellectual and Cultural Origins of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs New Rhetoric Project. We translate the most significant pieces of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs work that remain in French, providing them with necessary contextualizations; we also aim to correct misunderstandings that derive from mistranslations. In 2014, we received a major National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Grant that has allowed us to complete a contextually sensitive series of translations and commentaries on the work of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca. The present volume, one product of the NEH, entitled âThe Intellectual and Cultural Origins of Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tytecaâs New Rhetoric Project: Commentaries on and Translations of Seven Foundational Articles, 1933â1958â [âOriginsâ] presents the initial phase of our project, featuring seven translations of and commentaries on articles published by Perelman alone and with Olbrechts-Tyteca between 1933 (Perelmanâs first article) and 1958 (the publication of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs Traité).
Readers of âOriginsâ will encounter here seven carefully selected translations and accompanying commentaries. They are intended to illuminate six touchstones in the NRP, offering readers insight into the development of the NRP and what these early writings offer to problems faced by contemporaries. These include:
1) The Intellectual Origins of the NRP: Toward a Logic of Values
Perelman, Chaïm âDe lâarbitraire dans la connaissanceâ. Archives de la Société Belge de Philosophie 5:3 (1933) 5â44.
This is the first substantive article Perelman wrote in 1933, at age 21, displaying many of the key concepts that would come to populate the NRP. Perelmanâs agenda, from the beginning, was to find a logic of values, a logic that acknowledged the sociology of knowledge and the need for reason-based judgments.
2) The Cultural Origins of the NRP: The Jewish Question and Double Fidélité
Perelman, Chaïm. âRéflexions sur lâassimilationâ. La Tribune juive. 31 July 1935. Perelman, Chaïm. âLa Question juiveâ. Synthèse 3 (1946) 47â63.
These two articles highlight the Jewish question and Perelmanâs response to it. Jews could be Belgian and Jewish, subscribing to double fidélité, Perelman argues, which thereby inverts the antisemitic slur of dual loyalty. This is an enactment of his philosophy of pluralism, one informing the NRP.
3) The Ontology and Philosophy of the New Rhetoric: Regression Toward Truth
Perelman, Chaïm. âPhilosophies premières et philosophie régressiveâ. Dialectica 3:11 (1949) 175â191.
Written in the aftermath of World War II and as a full professor, this article outlines a mature version of Perelmanâs views of axiology, epistemology, and ontology. The target of Perelmanâs system is âregressiveâ knowledge, which is served by rhetoric, which he mentions briefly.
4) The Debut of the NRP: A Rapprochement between Logic and Rhetoric
Perelman, Chaïm, and Olbrechts-Tyteca. âLogique et rhétoriqueâ. Revue philosophique de la France et de lâétranger 140:1â3 (1950) 1â35.
This article, which is the first Perelman/Olbrechts-Tyteca collaboration, is the blueprint for the Traité-New Rhetoric. The article outlines a realignment and rapprochement of rhetoric and logic, placing them in equal relationship.
5) The Role of Reason in the NRP: Eternal or Temporal
Perelman, Chaïm. âRaison éternelle, raison historiqueâ. Lâhomme et lâhistoire. Actes du 6e Congrès des Sociétés de philosophie de langue française. Paris, 1952: 346â354.
Perelman, in search of a logic of values, sought to extend reason into the realm of the temporal, which philosophers had limited to the eternal. This contribution, which is the first citation in the Traité-New Rhetoric, explains this new vision of reason.
6) Time in Argument: Dissociating Values
Perelman, Chaïm and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. âDe la temporalité comme caractère de lâargumentationâ. Archivio di Filosofia 2 (1958) 115â133.
In this article, included in an Italian journal that had dedicated a special issue to the topic of time, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca develop the difference between formal and informal logic. The difference is the role that time plays in both logics and the need to dissociate and reorganize values with argumentation based on this exigence.
These six touchstones will help historians of rhetoric gain a better understanding of the NRPâs birth and intellectual trajectories (touchstone one). Scholars of rhetoric, philosophy, and Jewish studies will hear the Jewish voice in the NRP and how it affects the interpretation of the NRPâs stance on pluralism and reason (touchstone two). Scholars of rhetorical theory, the history of ideas, and philosophy will find Perelmanâs essay on first and regressive philosophies to be an enlightening reframing of the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy. Perelmanâs study precedes and complements the work of European scholars newly available to English-speaking audiences on ancient rhetoric, particularly the epideictic (touchstone three).31
Scholars who have drawn from the NRP in their research should leave the translation of and commentary on Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs debut essay on their New Rhetoric with a much better understanding of the history and intent of their project to bring logic and rhetoric back into alignment (touchstone four). These same scholars should find Perelmanâs essay on reason and rhetoric illuminating, helping them to avoid misinterpretations of the NRPâs take on logic (touchstone five). In addition, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs essay on temporality in argument offers scholars, irrespective of discipline, a surprisingly relevant and philosophical analysis of time, one that both explains the underlying philosophical intent of the NRP and a framework scholars can use to critique rhetorical behavior (touchstone six).
2 Translation in/and the New Rhetoric Project
English and North American scholars with a command of French understood the striking breakthroughs made by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca and the importance of translating their work into English. Richard McKeon, who served as dean of the humanities division at the University of Chicago, recommended the translation and publication of what would become Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs first article to appear in English in 1951.32 A. J. Ayer, one of the most important analytical philosophers of the twentieth century, translated Perelmanâs critique of pragmaticism in 1959.33 The University of Notre Dameâs Otto Bird was one of the translators of Perelmanâs âThe New Rhetoric: A Theory of Practical Reasoningâ, published in the Great Ideas Today series by Encyclopedia Britannica.34 John Wilkinson, who had finished a translation of Jacques Ellulâs La technique: Lâenjeu du siècle (The Technological Society) in 1964, turned to the task of translating the Traité into English.35 A professor of philosophy at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and a fellow in the UCSBâs Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, Wilkinson collaborated with Purcell Weaver, known for his translations of Edmond Bordeauxâs Cosmos, Man and Society: A Paneubiotic Synthesis, to move the Traité into English.36
Michael Leff called the Wilkinson and Weaverâs 1969 English translation of the Traité a âbombshellâ, a work that affected the trajectory of the humanities in North America.37 Scholarly audiences have found Wilkinson and Weaverâs English translation of the Traité complex and challenging. As Gross and Dearin have observed, âThe New Rhetoric [the English translation of the Traité] is difficult to read, a task made even more difficult for North American audiences because virtually all its examples and illustrations are from a literature in a foreign languageâ.38 Wilkinson and Weaver do not provide commentary to elucidate these numerous references.
Further, as Richard Graff and Wendy Winn have pointed out, âeven today many aspects of Perelmanâs work remain enigmaticâ.39 Near the end of his life, Perelman himself lamented in a 1984 article that much of his work remained inaccessible and misunderstood by non-Francophone, and specifically American, rhetoricians; nearly 40 years later, this situation has scarcely changed.40
His daughter, Noemi Perelman Mattis, has told us that the 734-page Traité is a âsuccinctâ version of the NRP.41 The pages culled from the original 2,000-page manuscript seem to be the basis for two of the articles that appear in this volume. Indeed, several key ideas in the Traité-New Rhetoric that appear enigmatic or provoke misunderstanding are more fully developed in the articles we have translated. Wilkinson and Weaverâs 1969 English translation of the Traité lacks an annotated commentary making reference to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs writings between 1931 and 1983. This left readers without competency in French with a weak grasp on many of the NRPâs key ideas.
One idea that is as critical to the NRP as it is frequently misunderstood is that of the universal audience. In an article published the year of his death, Perelman pointed out how such scholars as James W. Ray and Laura S. Ede misunderstood the conception of the universal audience in the Traité, which is due, as we have discovered, to a mistranslation in Wilkinson and Weaverâs translation of a key passage concerning the universal audience.42 Readers with knowledge of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs 1950 article, âLogique et rhétoriqueâ, which discusses the universal audience, would immediately understand that something was amiss in Wilkinson and Weaverâs translation.43 Translating these pre-1958 articles will provide scholars in English with a better development and embellishment of the key concepts of the NRP, leading to a more refined understanding of the projectâs presuppositions.
One might argue that scholars of rhetoric and the humanities should not have to read in translation. However, the reality of language learning for graduate degrees in rhetoric and the humanities generally demonstrates the opposite: Foreign language competency is not considered critical to the study of rhetoric, and the products of our doctoral programs in rhetoric are frequently at a beginning level of foreign-language competency. Making the assumption that doctoral studentsâthe future professors of rhetoric and other humanities disciplinesâwill be able to read these articles in the French original, whose subject matter and stylistics are complex, is idealistic at best. This volume is destined for those scholars who are not well versed in French; moreover, it is also intended for undergraduate students and their teachers in many different fields. The demand for English translations of the NRP is not only felt in rhetoric and communication, for the NRP is finding its way into the citations of social and natural scientists, as these and other scholars transcend disciplinary boundaries.
Salazar has noted that âmost of current French writing in rhetoric and philosophy, or philosophy and rhetoric, is unavailable in Englishâ.44 In the case of the NRP, this need for English translations of articles associated with the project was felt as early as 1963, when the first of four collections of NRP articles appeared in English. Despite the publication of these collections in English, misunderstandings of the key ideas of the NRP were common enough for Perelman himself to point them out. The translation of key articles that witness the origins and development of the NRP in this volume may respond to a particularly Anglo-American scholarly demand; furthermore, it is also a thematic well established in Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs methodology. That is, as one of us has argued elsewhere, translation is an important feature of the New Rhetoric Project and was of specific interest to its authors.45
Few scholars of rhetoric at the time, or today, would imagine that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca were active as translators: Perelman was a logician and philosopher, and Olbrechts-Tyteca had a background in statistics and sociology.46 Translation was nevertheless an important facet of their scholarly work. It may be that Perelmanâs and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs sensitivity to issues of translation was a natural outcome of their multilingual background and their Europeanâspecifically, Belgianâcontext. Perelman, who was born in Poland and emigrated to Belgium as a teenager, spoke numerous languages, including Polish, Yiddish, French, Flemish, German, Italian, and English.47 We know that Olbrechts-Tyteca read widely in French, German, Italian, and Spanish, and unlike in the Traité, she chose to quote directly from foreign sources in the original in her Comique du discours.48
In any case, both Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca were very involved in the translation of the works of the NRP. Perelmanâs correspondence shows him actively seeking to have translations made of his work into numerous languages, including German, Italian, English, Flemish, Japanese, Romanian, and Hebrew. Even one of the very last letters Perelman wrote, some five days before his death, was to Masashi Miwa, in hope that his âLogique juridiqueâ would appear in Japanese.49 Perelman not only corresponded directly with his translators, offering to be a resource for their practice of translating his work, but he also actively assessed the quality of their translations (see Perelman, letters to Schick; Mayer [October]; Richtscheid; Krawietz).50 He even corrected the translations of his works, particularly those in German, Italian, and English; in a letter to Norberto Bobbio, for example, we find Perelman suggesting how to translate into Italian a particularly difficult French term.51 Olbrechts-Tytecaâs role in translation was much more hands-on: on at least one occasion, she served as a translator from Italian for Perelman.52 She also ensured the quality of the Italian translation of their Traité, of which Perelman describes her as the primary reader and editor (Perelman, letter to Mayer [December]).53 Translation was thus at the forefront of their efforts to disseminate their new rhetoric.
While translation is an integral, if unacknowledged, facet of philosophical activity in general, it was for Perelman a matter of the utmost importance, and he publicly raised the issue of the importance of the translation of philosophy for the discipline at the report on the Commission of Translators, given at the General Assembly of the International Institute of Philosophy held in LâAquila, Italy in September 1964.54 Translation was even a feature of Perelmanâs pedagogy at the ULB: in 1965 Perelman proposed replacing courses focusing on the translation of Greek and Latin authors with courses exploring the translation of Greek and Latin philosophical terms.55
Translation also served to foster intellectual bonds with other scholars, as is witnessed by A. J. Ayerâs personal investment in the translation and publication of Perelmanâs The Idea of Justice and the Problem of Arguments. Perelmanâs intellectual alliesâA. J. Ayer, Norberto Bobbio, and Richard McKeon, among othersâplayed a very active role in the translation of his works. Even Henry Johnstone, who eventually repudiated Perelman, translated Perelmanâs âRhétorique et philosophieâ, which appeared in English before its publication in French.56
The topos of translatio also figures prominently in the NRP. The Latin etymological source for the word âtranslationâ in English, translatio, describes a transfer, especially of learning, in space and time. It is key to understanding the origins of the NRP in Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs rhetorical âturn.â Translatio is particularly effective for describing how Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca come to envisage rhetoric as a means of providing a logic of value judgments.57 That is, in retrospective accounts of their turn to rhetoric, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca alike name Jean Paulhanâs translation of Brunetto Latiniâs translation/adaptation of Ciceroâs De inventione as instrumental in their rhetorical turn.58
As Bolduc has written elsewhere, both Olbrechts-Tyteca and Perelman tell the story of how their reading led them to trace in reverse order the transfer of knowledge from classical philosophers (Cicero and Aristotle), to a medieval notary and author (Brunetto Latini), to a contemporary literary critic (Jean Paulhan). In their retrospective accounts of how they discovered rhetoric, they establish a modern version of the medieval trope of translatio studii et imperii, the complex notion referring to the transfer of the classical learning and power of Athens and Rome to Paris. In other words, Olbrechts-Tyteca and Perelman describe Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs stories of the origins of their work emphasize how translationâboth in theory and in practical applicationâallowed them, through Latiniâs and Paulhanâs studies and translations of rhetoric, to rediscover rhetoric.59
3 Guiding Principles of Translation
We would like to set out here some of the principles guiding our edition and translation.
First, we observe the notions of accuracy, adequacy, appropriateness, consistency, and explicitness that underlie the overarching principle of reliability espoused by the MLA Guidelines for Editors of Scholars Editions. Second, we adhere to the best practices of translation as detailed not only in ISO 17100:2015 but also in the Code of Ethics of the American Translatorâs Association [ATA], the Code of Professional Conduct of the Chartered Institute of Linguists [CIOL], and the Charter of the International Federation of Translators [FIT].
Translation, the aim of which is frequently supposed to be a clear, unambiguous rendering of ideas from one language to another, is confronted here, as in philosophy generally, with the enigmatic nature of its philosophical subject matter.60
Further complicating our translation activity is the fact that the articles we include here span a nearly 30-year period in which Perelman develops not only his ideas but also his scholarly ethos, which is manifest in his style of writing. The earliest article here, âDe lâarbitraire dans la connaissanceâ, shows Perelman as a young 21-year-old scholar, his style indirect and his ideas at times oblique, a reflection of how a youthful Perelman is still working out a way to chart a new path that diverges from that of his mentors. From the elliptical prose of âDe lâarbitraireâ, Perelman quickly establishes his scholarly voice. In his later writings, then, his style follows that of a standard academic model, in which he systematically develops his ideas and relies upon the convention of an abstract, neutral voice.
Perelmanâs style of writing changes not only over time, but also in response to a particular articleâs subject matter and the context in which it was composed. When writing about philosophical questions, Perelman adopts a decidedly analytical methodology (and this, even as he refashions the very principles of analytical philosophy). He uses the language and processes of formal logical analysis (and especially deduction), his sentences often marked by a plethora of secondary clauses and the use of the impersonal, passive voice. On the other hand, when he writes in collaboration with Olbrechts-Tyteca, we find a disciplinary expansion beyond philosophy: in addition to references to philosophers such as Aristotle and Kant, references to literary authors and quotations in the original language are common.
For topics that hold personal resonanceâassimilation and the Jewish questionâPerelmanâs style of writing is particularly striking, revealing a literary and poetic style filled with undisguised emotion. Our translations here aim to retain the linguistic and affective valences of Perelmanâs style of writing. We have also chosen to retain the original French titles of the articles translated here in our references to them in the commentaries, so as to remind the reader not only of our translational practice, but also of the linguistic and cultural alterity of the originals. For this same reason, in our notes to the translations, we endeavor to provide the most likely French sources of Perelmanâs and Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs references, even when his citations are incomplete. Even if this means that we must speculate based on our knowledge of the most significant editions available in the years immediately preceding the publication of the article in question, we aim to remind the reader that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca were not reading in English (or at least, only at times). By not smoothing over this alterity, or the gaps, of the originals, our translation takes to heart the notion that the principal work of philosophers and translators alike is the search for meaning.61
We also recognize that any translation is fundamentally interpretive: George Steiner has cautioned translators not to forget that Aristotleâs hermenia, or a discourse that signifies because it interprets, is inherent to translation.62 As translators, we aim not to do away entirely with the ambiguity of the NRP, but rather to provide readers with a scholarly apparatus for making better sense of the ideas proposed in these articles. As a result, we provide explanatory interpretive material both in brackets (especially terms in the original French) and in translatorsâ notes, which appear in italics as a part of the footnotes to distinguish them from the original footnotes. We add translatorsâ notes even to translations of articles previously published without notes (âPhilosophies premières et philosophie régressiveâ; âDe la temporalité comme caractère de lâargumentationâ), although to a lesser extent than to the initial translation presented here, âDe lâarbitraireâ. These notes intend to elucidate the meaning of Perelmanâs ideas and the intellectual context in which they should be read, serving as a gloss to Perelmanâs writing. They effect Kwame Anthony Appiahâs practice of âthick translationâ, which prescribes providing readers of the target text with the cultural (and here, philosophical and intellectual) information necessary for âa thick and situated understandingâ of the NRP.63 Please be aware that we have chosen to fill out Perelmanâs own footnotes, which are often abbreviated in form, and have made any necessary corrections to them.
The commentaries and translations we offer here are meant to excavate the intellectual origins and chart the trajectories of the NRP. Our goal is to nest the translations in commentaries that help explain the problems Perelman alone and then in collaboration with Olbrechts-Tyteca faced and addressed. We seek to give cultural texture to the ideas they set forth as they are responses to the twentieth-century crisis of reason and the Jewish question.
We hope that our translation of these key articles on the origin and development of the NRP will lead to the reader engaging more fully with the deeply philosophical questions they set forth.
The authors gratefully acknowledge both the National Endowment of the Humanities Scholarly Editions and Translations program, which supported us in our research on and translation of several of these articles, and the libraries of the Université libre de BruxellesâBibliothèques, which has placed scanned versions of some of the original articles in the public domain.
James Crosswhite, The Rhetoric of Reason: Writing and the Attractions of Argument. (Madison, 1996), 35.
We have, both in collaboration and individually, studied the origins, trajectories, translations, and contributions of the NRP. For recent publications, see M. Bolduc, Translation and the Rediscovery of Rhetoric, Toronto Studies in Mediaeval and Early Modern Rhetoric 1 (Toronto, 2020); M. Bolduc, âFrom Association to Dissociation: The NRPâs Translatio of Gourmontâ, Philosophy & Rhetoric 53.4 (2020) 400â416; D. A. Frank, âThe Origins of and Possible Futures for Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tytecaâs Dissociation of Conceptsâ, Philosophy & Rhetoric 53.4 (2020) 385â399; M. Bolduc and D. A. Frank, âAn Introduction to and Translation of Chaïm Perelmanâs 1933 âDe lâarbitraire dans la connaissanceâ [On the Arbitrary in Knowledge]â, Advances in the History of Rhetoric 22.3 (2019) 232â275.
See our translation and commentary: BolducâFrank, âAn Introduction to and Translation of Chaïm Perelmanâs 1933 âDe lâarbitraire dans la connaissanceâ [On the Arbitrary in Knowledge]â; C. Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, La nouvelle rhétorique: Traité de lâargumentation, 2 vols. (Paris, 1958); C. Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, trans. J. Wilkinson and P. Weaver (Notre Dame, IN, 1969); C. Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, âPareto et lâargumentationâ, Uni-Laisanne 37 (1983) 32â33. We will designate the 1958 French original as Traité and the 1969 English translation as New Rhetoric to capture the unrecognized importance of translation in rhetorical studies, an argument emphasized in Bolduc, Translation and the Rediscovery of Rhetoric 338â355.
B. Vickers, âPhilosophy: Rhetoric and Philosophyâ, in T. Sloan (ed.), Oxford Encyclopedia of Rhetoric (Oxford, 2001), 491.
W. C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Rhetoric: The Quest for Effective Communication, Blackwell manifestos (Oxford, 2004), 73.
Booth, The Rhetoric of Rhetoric 73.
J. Crosswhite, The Rhetoric of Reason, 35.
H.-G. Gadamer and R. E. Palmer, The Gadamer Reader: A Bouquet of the Later Writings, Topics in historical philosophy (Evanston, IL, 2007), 64, 246.
P. Ricoeur, âRhetoricâPoeticsâHermeneuticsâ, in M. Meyer (ed.), From Metaphysics to Rhetoric (Dordrecht, Netherlands, 1989), 137â149.
J. Lacan, Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. B. Fink, H. Fink, and R. Grigg (New York, 2006), 889â893.
C. Delacampagne, A History of Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (Baltimore, MD, 1999).
Delacampagne, A History of Philosophy 173.
D. Edmonds, The Murder of Professor Schlick: The Rise and Fall of The Vienna Circle (Princeton, 2020), 30.
Edmonds, The Murder of Professor Schlick 335, 336.
S. Shieh, Necessity Lost (Oxford, 2019).
Shieh, Necessity Lost, 1.
Shieh, Necessity Lost.
J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA, 2005), 58. C. Perelman, De la justice (Brussels, 1945). On Perelmanâs role as a leader in the underground, see Jean-Philippe Schreiber, Chaïm Perelman et double fidélité. Undated manuscript (Brussels).
H. L. A. Hart, âIntroductionâ, in The Idea of Justice and the Problem of Argument (New York, 1963), viâxi.
B. Derdar, âArab Reception of the Theory of the New Rhetoric of C. Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tytecaâ, Journal of Arts and Social Sciences [JASS] 10.1 (2019) 69â84; W. Park, âThe New Rhetoric: Korean Transplantation and Its Problemsâ, ìì¬í 15 (2011) 65â87; M. D. Narváez, âLa nueva retorica de Chaïm Perelman como teoria de la racionalidad practicaâ, Eidos 30 (2019) 104â130; R. Amossy, âà la croisée de lâanalyse du discours et de lâargumentation rhétorique: Le cas dâIsraëlâ, Essais Francophones 6 (2019) 125â183.
G. MaroÅ, âReferences to Philosophers in the Polish Case Lawâ, Krytyka Prawa 4 (2019) 281â298.
F. J. Mootz, âRhetorical Knowledge in Legal Practice and Theoryâ, Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal 6 (1998) 491â610; S. E. Cohen and D. A. Frank, âJerusalem and the Riparian Simileâ, Political Geography 21.6 (2002); Manfred Kienpointner, âRhetoric and Argumentationâ, in J. E. RichardsonâJ. Flowerdew (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies, (New York, 2017).
For a complete account of the NRP, see D. A. Frank and W. Driscoll, âA Bibliography of the New Rhetoric Projectâ, Philosophy and Rhetoric 43.4 (2010) 449â466.
In his Logique juridique: Nouvelle rhétorique, Méthodes du droit (Paris: Dalloz, 1976), Perelman asserts that he and Olbrechts-Tyteca began working together in 1947, and that it was after two years that they realized that while there was not a logic of value judgments, what they were looking for was to be found in rhetoric (101). For an early bibliography of the NRP see, L. Olbrechts-Tyteca and E. Griffin-Collart, âBibliographie de Chaïm Perelmanâ, Revue internationale de philosophie 33. 127â128 (1979) 325â342; R. Grácio, âBibliografia de Chaïm Perelman (cronológica)â, Caderno de filosofias 5 (1992) 87â106; and more recently, D. A. Frank and W. Driscoll, âA Bibliography of the New Rhetoric Projectâ, Philosophy & Rhetoric 43 (2010) 449â466.
C. Perelman, The Idea of Justice and the Problem Of Argument, International Library of Philosophy and Scientific Method (New York, 1963); C. Perelman, The New Rhetoric and the Humanities: Essays On Rhetoric and its Applications, Synthese library, (Dordrecht, 1979); C. Perelman, The Realm of Rhetoric (Notre Dame: University Press of Notre Dame, 1982); C. Perelman, Justice, Law, and Argument: Essays on Moral and Legal Reasoning, Synthèse Library v. 142, (Boston, Hingham, MA, 1980).
A. G. Gross and R. D. Dearin, Chaïm Perelman (Albany, NY, 2003), ix.
Gross and Dearin, Chaïm Perelman, ix.
N. Mattis-Perelman, âPersonal Interviewâ, interview by D. Frank, 4 April, 1994.
J. Crosswhite, Deep Rhetoric: Philosophy, Reason, Violence, Justice, Wisdom (Chicago, 2013); C. W. Tindale, The Philosophy of Argument and Audience Reception (Cambridge, 2015).
Crosswhite, Deep Rhetoric 273â274.
Tindale, The Philosophy of Argument and Audience Reception 64â65.
See L. Pernot, Epideictic Rhetoric: Questioning the Stakes of Ancient Praise, Ashley and Peter Larkin Series in Greek and Roman Culture (Austin, TX, 2015).
C. Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, âAct and Person in Argumentâ, Ethics 61.4 (1951) 251â269.
C. Perelman, âPragmatic Argumentsâ, Philosophy 34:128 (1959) 18â27.
C. Perelman, âThe New Rhetoric: A Theory of Practical Reasoningâ, in R. M. Hutchinsâ M. J. Adler (eds.), Great Ideas Today (Chicago, 1970).
J. Ellul, The Technological Society (New York, 1964).
E. B. Székely, Cosmos, Man and Society (San Diego, CA, 1973).
M. Leff, âRecherches américaines sur les lieuxâ, in C. PlantinâD. Alexandre (eds.), Lieux communs, topoi, steréotypes, clichés (Paris, 1994), 510.
Gross and Dearin, Chaïm Perelman, ix.
W. Winn and R. Graff, ââPresencing Communionâ in Chaïm Perelmanâs New Rhetoricâ, Philosophy and Rhetoric 39.1 (2006) 45.
C. Perelman, âThe New Rhetoric and the Rhetoricians: Remembrances and Commentsâ, Quarterly Journal of Speech 70 (1984) 188â96.
N. Mattis-Perelman, âPersonal Interviewâ, interview by D. Frank, 4 April, 1994.
J. W. Ray, âPerelmanâs Universal Audienceâ, Quarterly Journal of Speech 64 (1978) 361â375; L. S. Ede, âRhetoric vs. Philosophy: The Role of the Universal Audience in Chaïm Perelmanâs The New Rhetoricâ, Central States Speech Journal 32 (1981) 118â125. Perelman, âThe New Rhetoric and Rhetoricians, Remembrances and Commentsâ, Quarterly Journal of Speech 70 (1984) 190â193.
C. Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, âLogique et rhétoriqueâ, Revue philosophique de la France et de lâétranger 140 (1950) 1â35.
Philippe-Joseph Salazar, âPostfaceâ, Philosophy and Rhetoric 42 (2010) 426.
Bolduc, Translation and the Rediscovery of Rhetoric 267â269.
See Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, âRencontre avec la rhétoriqueâ, Logique et analyse 3 (1963) 3; Perelman, letter to Ray Dearin 28 November 1969, Brussels, Université libre de Bruxelles, Perelman Archives BE.ULB-ARCH/89PP 21.4.
Noemi Perelman Mattis, âChaïm Perelman: A Life Well Livedâ, in The Promise of Reason: Studies in The New Rhetoric, ed. John T. Gage (Carbondale, IL, 2011), 9â10.
Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, Le comique du discours, Sociologie générale et philosophie sociale, (Brussels, 1974).
Perelman, letter to Masashi Miwa, 17 January 1984 Brussels, Université libre de Bruxelles, Perelman Archives BE.ULB-ARCH/89PP 24.6.
See Perelmanâs letters to Carla Schick, 12 April 1961, Brussels, Université libre de Bruxelles, Perelman Archives BE.ULB-ARCH/89PP 14.5; to Maria Mayer, 23 October 1963. Brussels, Université libre de Bruxelles, Perelman Archives BE.ULB-ARCH/89PP 14.5; to Werner Krawietz, 27 January 1982, Brussels, Université libre de Bruxelles, Perelman Archives BE.ULB-ARCH/89PP 23.9; to Hans Richtscheid. 1966. 28 April. Brussels, Université libre de Bruxelles, Perelman Archives BE.ULB-ARCH/89PP 14.3.
Perelman letter to Norberto Bobbio, 10 December 1958. Brussels, Université libre de Bruxelles, Perelman Archives BE.ULB-ARCH/89PP 14.5.
Perelman letter to Paolo Facchi. 19 October 1960. Brussels, Université libre de Bruxelles, Perelman Archives BE.ULB-ARCH/89PP 34.1.
Perelman letter to Maria Mayer, 20 December 1963, Brussels, Université libre de Bruxelles, Perelman Archives BE.ULB-ARCH/89PP 14.5.
Report on the Commission of Translators. 1964 (September). General Assembly of the Institut international de philosophie. LâAquila, Italy. Brussels, Université libre de Bruxelles, Perelman Archives BE.ULB-ARCH/89PP 8.3.
Perelman, letter to Charles Delvoye, 2 February 1965, Brussels, Université libre de Bruxelles, Perelman Archives BE.ULB-ARCH/89PP 35.1.
Chaïm Perelman, âRhetoric and Philosophyâ, Philosophy & Rhetoric 1 (1968): 15â24; Charles Perelman, âRhétorique et philosophieâ, Les Ãtudes philosophiques 1 (1969) 19â27.
See Bolduc, Translation and the Rediscovery of Rhetoric 1â4.
L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, âRencontre avec la rhétoriqueâ, Logique et analyse 3 (1963) 5â6; C. Perelman, The New Rhetoric and the Humanities, 9.
Bolduc, Translation and the Rediscovery of Rhetoric 3â4.
J. Rée, âThe Translation of Philosophyâ, New Literary History 32. 2 (2001) 227.
L. Foran, âIntroduction. What is the Relation between Translation and Philosophy?â, in L. Foran (ed.), Translation and Philosophy (Oxford, 2012), 2.
G. Steiner, âThe Hermeneutic Motionâ, in L. Venuti (ed.), The Translation Studies Reader (London, 2000), 197.
K. A. Appiah, âThick Translationâ, in L. Venuti (ed.), The Translation Studies Reader (New York, 2004), 400.