âThe last third of the twentieth centuryâ, Gerard Hauser writes, was marked by âa ï¬urry of intellectual work aimed at theorizing rhetoric in new termsâ.1 The year 1958 was key in this ï¬urry, with ï¬ve major works appearing on a rhetorically inï¬ected philosophy and theory of argumentation: Hannah Arendtâs The Human Condition (on the relationship between the vita contemplativa and vita activa); Michael Polanyiâs Personal Knowledge (on the role of tacit knowledge, emotion, and commitment in science); Stephen Toulminâs Uses of Argument (on the use of argument in nonformal contexts); Walter Ongâs 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-Tytecaâs Traité de lâargumentation: La nouvelle rhétorique [The New Rhetoric] (on a rapprochement of rhetoric and logic). These books mark a ârhetorical turnâ in twentieth-century thought.
Of the ï¬ve, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs work had the greatest inï¬uence on rhetorical theory in the twentieth century. Indeed, we believe the post-World War II rhetorical turn is best codiï¬ed in the Traité as it responds to the postwar crisis of reason with a rhetorical system designed to extend reason into the vita activa, grant the role of tacit knowledge and commitment in knowledge, display the importance of argumentation as a counterpart to formal logic, and bridge the separation Ramus made between rhetoric and logic.2 Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca were among a host of thinkers who sought to redress the failure of reason to address questions of ethics and the world of the living.
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs first collaborative publication, âLogique et rhétoriqueâ published in 1950, presents the blueprint for their 1958 Traité, and, in its introductory pages, outlines many of its key ideas. It treats conviction and persuasion, different kinds of audiences, including the universal audience, the relationship between the rhetor and the audience based on a meeting of minds, logic versus rhetoric, and the dissociation between act and person. This article provides a more in-depth treatment of these subjects, especially as concerns logic and rhetoric, than what appears in the Traité.
In 1970, Perelman directed an Italian reader wondering about logic and rhetoric to this article rather than to the Traité.3 âLogique et rhétoriqueâ aims at a rapprochement between reason and rhetoric, distilling the distinction they later make in the Traité between the uses of argument in propaganda and in education, and thus highlighting, as in the Traité, the importance of the audienceâs freedom to adhere.4 In this article, they also acknowledge rhetorical argumentationâs proximity to social psychology. This article provides the first step in Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs revolutionary turn to rhetoric, the ârevelationâ which both describe, albeit retrospectively, as triggered by their reading of Jean Paulhanâs Les Fleurs de Tarbes, ou la Terreur dans les lettres [The Flowers of Tarbes, or Terror in Literature], in which they found, in an appendix, Paulhanâs modern French translation of the thirteenth-century French translation by Brunetto Latini of Ciceroâs De inventione.5 Throughout the article, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca characterize their work as original and ground-breaking. For example, although they point to the influence of Aristotleâs Rhetoric, they highlight exactly how their conception of rhetoric differs, particularly in its idea of the epideictic.
The difference between Aristotleâs rhetoric and the New Rhetoric Project [NRP] has been lost on modern readers. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca would not agree with contemporary critics who would declare their rhetoric neo- Aristotelian. They do, of course, enlist Aristotle and his Rhetoric as a witness to give their primarily Western audience a foothold or precedent in lifting rhetoric up as a notion with philosophical importance. Aristotle did value rhetoric in his philosophical constellation. Perelman and others did, correctly, detect some equivocating in Aristotleâs take on the ancient art, which they use to set their new rhetoric apart from classical rhetoric. But Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca did not see their rhetoric as Aristotelian or neo-Aristotelian.
Nor would they agree with Peter Goodrich that
the term âNew Rhetoricâ is something of a misnomer, its now conventional referent being the work of Chaim Perelman, the theory of argumentation and of practical philosophy, the theory of the old rhetoric partially revived, partially rewritten. Certainly there is little to be gleaned from it by way of positive theoretical novelty; its contribution in this respect is no greater than that of reiterating, with certain reformulations, the familiar problematic and categories of classical Aristotelian rhetoric.6
âLogique et rhétoriqueâ outlines Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs blueprint for the new rhetoric, and anticipates Goodrichâs objection by indirectly criticizing Aristotle and the classical traditions understanding of rhetoric.7
Looking back, Perelmanâs 1949 article on regressive philosophy had explicitly rejected the classical traditionâs âfirst philosophyâ and its reliance on deductive reasoning, which, Perelman held, was the essential characteristic of classical thought.8 In âLogique et rhétoriqueâ, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs canvas of informal and nonformal examples of reason helped them expand the definition of reason beyond those of Aristotle and Plato.9 They not only provided a critique of the ancient treatment of the epideictic, which they saw as being limited to the mere ceremonial in this tradition, but more importantly linked the epideictic to action in the world. Further, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca suggested that while Aristotle did see the value of rhetoric, he saw it as a vehicle for the less intelligent.10
âLogique et rhétoriqueâ is also an important marker of Olbrechts-Tytecaâs influence on the NRP. Olbrechts-Tyteca had joined Perelman in his search for reason in the vita activa sometime in 1947; they published together seven articles and two books, chiefly between the years 1950â1958, with a final co-authored article appearing in 1983. We have described the NRP as a collaboration, demonstrating that Perelmanâs contribution focused on human reasoning; Olbrechts-Tyteca had a strong command of European literature and would, in her own work, feature the human laughing.11 Our account of their collaboration offers what we believe is the best answer to those who seek to know who did what in the NRP. We are fortunate that Michel Meyer, who witnessed the Perelman-Olbrechts-Tytecaâs collaboration, endorses our account.12
In a May 27, 1969 letter to Ray Dearin, Perelman described their collaboration in this manner: âMrs. Olbrechts-Tyteca, who is no philosopher but who studied sociology and literature, [wrote] the Treatise together with me, most of the sections having been re-written by both of usâ.13 Yet, in a letter written in 1973 to Letizia Gianformaggio on 2 August 1973, Perelman declares that the Traité was his composition, based on an earlier composition made by Olbrechts-Tyteca.14 Warnick considers Olbrechts-Tytecaâs contributions as those of âanalyst and conceptualizer;â she may have thus been instrumental for the analysis of argumentative structure.15 She also was key for gathering examples of argumentation on notecards, as Perelmanâs daughter has pointed out, drawing from literary sources; these examples were critical for the development of the new rhetoricâs focus on nonformal reasoning.16 We believe that Olbrechts-Tytecaâs most significant contribution was in the development of the notion of philosophical pairs, critical to the concept of dissociation, and in elaborating the idea of the comic as inherently rhetorical.
As a blueprint for the Traité, âLogique et rhétoriqueâ situates their project in the 1950s European and American constellation of domains of knowledge. They position their analysis within and between logic and psychology. Perelman, beginning with his inaugural article in 1933, had sought to align the social with logic and reasonâhe and Olbrechts-Tyteca set forth this aspiration in the first pages of âLogique et rhétoriqueâ. The intent of the project is to expand the range of reason and logic to include social psychology.
We pause to note that in âLogique et rhétoriqueâ, Perelman and Olbrechts- Tyteca make clear the goal of the project by placing it in italics that they seek to âstudy of the means of argumentation, other than those that arise from formal logic, which allow theses to obtain, or increase, the support of other people to whom they are submittedâ.17 While their project did include an encyclopedia of the various means of argumentation, their intent was to display a neglected form of reason. In so doing, in the Traité they would situate their collaboration in time. Again writing in italics, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca argued that their treatise âconstitutes a break with a concept of reason and reasoning due to Descartes which has set its mark on Western philosophy in the last three centuriesâ.18 Descartes serves as the foil of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs new rhetoric because they believed he sponsored a solipsistic view of reason, that it is only when the individual, in solitary confinement, protected from the polluting influences of the social, deliberates that true knowledge can result.
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca make clear their concern with the relationship between reason and social knowledge, or in our translation, the âsocial realâ. Social experience, as opposed to that of the individual, is mediated and refracted through a community. Facts, as interpreted by the individual, may seem immaculate. Once the notion of âfactâ enters the social realm it will invite interpretations that will differ. These differences, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca maintain, will lead to social disagreement, producing argument.
The process and products of argumentation between and among humans, they maintain, reveal an expression of reason and a form of knowledge. Francis Mootz III, who has carefully studied the works of Perelman and Olbrechts- Tyteca, as well as those of Gadamer and other prominent twentieth-century philosophers and rhetoricians, has crystallized this line of thinking with his research on ârhetorical knowledgeâ.19 Rhetorical knowledge results from the use of nonformal reason and takes the form of proofs that have gained acceptance by an audience. The key point Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca make, which ran counter to the tenets of analytic philosophy of their time, is that rhetorical knowledge is based on a species of logic and proof that shares key characteristics of formal logic but that also has its own signature. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca introduce the vocabulary of the NRP here in âLogique et rhétoriqueâ, including the following six key terms that we will briefly define in order to prepare the reader for reading our translation.
1 Adherence
The term âadherenceâ is foundational to their project. Adherence constitutes their effort to join logic to social psychology. The term is rich with ethical and philosophical importance because it suggests that rhetorical knowledge is a function of persuasion. Persuasion offers a choice to the audience targeted for persuasion. Adherence inspires images of an object attached to a surface with glue. As an analogy, it serves to explain reasoning as a process of association rather than command. An audienceâs commitment to a fact or value is as strong as the associational glue yoking the commitment to the fact or value. That glue can be strengthened or weakened with the reasons offered by the speaker.
2 ConvictionâPersuasion
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca aspired to move reason into human time and action. They translated this aspiration into a reformulation of the conviction- persuasion relationship. Conviction, in the tradition, reflected a commitment of the mind after working through the steps of logic. Persuasion, which in Western culture smacked of artifice, insincerity, and shallow reasoning, was suspect. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca embraced a view of the human being that included the capacities of reason, emotion, and things that might not be captured by the syllogism or the deduction. Reason, broadened to include informal and nonformal proofs, they argued, should justify action, which conviction may not inspire. Rhetoricâs intervention in the human time and culture is expressed through reasoned persuasion designed to inspire action. This was not Aristotle or Kantâs vison of persuasion.
3 An Encyclopedia of Argument Specimens
The bulk of the Traité is devoted to a survey of various species and expressions of argument. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca justify this survey in âLogique et rhétoriqueâ and link it directly to the goal of the NRP: to put on display the vast and deep number of arguments in use by humans. Some readers miss this intent and see their catalog of arguments as unrelated to an underlying philosophy. That philosophy is explained in more depth in âLogique et rhétoriqueâ than in the Traitéâthe many expressions of argument they capture demonstrate that reason is essentially pluralistic, that it canât be reduced to deduction or any one mode of reasoning.
4 A New Rhetoric
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca explain why they returned to the rhetorical tradition, both rescuing rhetoric from its demotion to logic and lodging it in contemporary philosophy. Rhetoric, as Perelman would later explain, had been exiled by philosophy to the realm of expression and tropes, as instigated by Peter Ramus in the sixteenth century. Logic was viewed as the opposite of rhetoric. Once reason was broadened to include arguments made in human time and expressions of logic quite different than the syllogism and deduction, then rhetoric, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca suggested, should be placed on par with logic.
5 The Epideictic
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca reject Aristotleâs and the classical tradition of rhetoricâs restriction of the epideictic to things ceremonial. In the wake of their experience with the collapse of Europe and the rise of Hitler, they sought in the epideictic the values necessary to ward off the temptations of fascism. Here, as we explained in the section on Judaism in the new rhetoric, Perelman had faith in the Western values produced by the Enlightenment. Toward these ends, Perelman viewed the rhetoric and actions of Hitler as a betrayal of these values. The epideictic should serve, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca argue, to secure these values against the onslaught of totalitarianism and irrationalism.
6 Universal Audience
Unlike many of the ancients, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca did not privilege the universal, nor did they dismiss it, as have many postmodern philosophers. In the realm of the NRP, the universal is an ideal that is open to debate and argument, and it must be justified. However, the universal has a rightful, if not a ruling, place in the house of reason and rationality. The authors are clear that the âuniversal audience is never real; it never exists in reality. ... It is, rather, an ideal, a product of the authorâs imaginationâ.20 Those who argue can, and often should, aspire to persuade an audience that demands the best reasoning possible. This audience and all audiences are, as they explain in the Traité-New Rhetoric, social constructions of those who seek to persuade. The values held by the universal audience vary in time and place, but it does, as Perelman explains in our translation that follows âLogique et rhétoriqueâ on eternal reason, serve as rhetoricâs answer to Kantâs categorical imperative. Perelman did see a role played by universal reason in human affairs, although one justified by argumentative reason, not by the power of fiat assumed by formal logic.
7 Dissociation and Incompatibilities
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca sought to redefine the meaning of reason and logic that had held sway in the Western culture. They targeted the so-called laws of logic that philosophers had obeyed for centuries. They nested the law of noncontradiction in a philosophy of pluralism and held it was possible for opposites to coexist. Rather than demanding that tension defining antimonies should be resolved with one of the two beliefs or values in contraction yielding to the other, the system of reason and logic in the new rhetoric system can host conflicting values, allowing them to coexist. Rather than framing the conflict between two values that both might have worth as an immutable âcontradictionâ they define the conflict as an âincompatibilityâ, one that can be worked out over time. The other approach, which calls for creativity, is dissociation in which the two values in conflict are reframed and even recreated in service to a philosophy of pluralism and pragmaticism.
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca of course introduce other terms in âLogique et rhétoriqueâ that take up residence in the Traité, which we have not defined here; however, the terms we have considered here are foundational and constitute the keywords of the NRP. This essay, their first collaboration, maps the trajectories of their thinking midway through the construction of the Traité and gives readers insights into the origins of their thinking. The commentary on âRaison éternelleâ that follows, on the role of time in reason, will extend and refine the analysis found in âLogique et rhétoriqueâ.
Translation and Commentary
Chaïm Perelman, and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. âLogique et rhétoriqueâ. Revue philosophique de la France et de lâétranger 140: 1â3 (1950) 1â35
The observations that we present here are, we hope, but the introduction to a work that seems to us important enough to warrant our entire attention. These observations are not developed within the framework of an already existing and markedly distinct discipline whose problems and methods are traditionally defined. In this regard, there is nothing scholastic [scolaire] about them.1 We may situate them within logic and psychology. Their object would be the study of the means of argumentation, other than those that arise from formal logic, which allow theses to obtain, or increase, the support of other people to whom they are submitted.
We say: to obtain and increase adherence. Actually, adherence is more or less intense; it has degrees. Even an accepted thesis may not prevail against other theses that are in conflict with it, if the force of adherence is insufficient. To every change in this intensity will correspond a new hierarchization of value judgments in the individualâs conscience.
It is immediately obvious that our study could include as a particular case the person who deliberates alone. This could even be considered fundamental. From the point of view from which we consider our work, however, this case seems to present even greater difficulties than the case of an argumentation with others. Our work should thus benefit more from analyses that deal with the latter, which it may in turn clarify.
The object of our investigation did not appear to us initially with the clarityâwhich is, in any case, relativeâthat we will try to give it here. We were convinced of the existence of a very large and not very well explored domain that deserved patient and systematic study. We were simultaneously concerned with delimiting and defining it and, from this, beginning our investigations. It seemed to us that pursuing concurrently this tripartite approach corresponded best to our aims.
Our driving concern had been that of the logician grappling with the social real. In addition, our research was, and remains, focused on the adherence obtained by means of argumentation. This is why we will deliberately exclude an entire group of processes that allow adherence to be obtained, but which do not use argumentation in the proper sense of the term.
First, we will exclude the call to experienceâexternal or internal. There is probably nothing more effective than being able to say to another person: âLook, and you will seeâ or âobserve your own reactions, and you will knowâ [observe-toi et tu ressentiras2]. We do not consider this to be argumentation at all. But simple experience will oftentimes be judged as insufficient as a means of proof: an interlocutor will reject it, and from then on, it will be a question of whether the perception in question should be accepted or not as fact. An argumentation that concerns how experience is interpreted will come into play; the methods used to convince an adversary clearly fall within our field of study. This will be the case whenever the merchant claims that a diamond is white when the buyer sees a yellowish hue reflects, whenever the psychiatrist offers objections to his patientâs hallucinations, whenever the philosopher explains his reasons for refusing the notion that appearance may be objective.
The criterion for what constitutes fact will not be established, then, once and for all. We will not adopt a rigid separation between what is for understanding [lâentendement]3 a given, and that which derives from understanding, as did Kant. We will consider the subjectâs contribution as variable, as potentially being the object of an ongoing, in-depth examination as the philosophical critique becomes more refined or as the results of scientific research require a particular domain or a whole set of knowledge to be revised. For us, the distinction between fact and interpretation will result, then, from observation: its criterion will be the inadequate agreement between the interlocutors and the discussion that will follow.
There are other methods for gaining adherence that will also be excluded from our study: those that, as we say, are from direct actionâa caress or a slap, for example. But as soon as we reason about the slap or the caress, as soon as they are promised or called again to mind, we find ourselves in the presence of argumentative processes arising from our investigations.
The system [lâensemble] that we would like to study could in all probability be the object of psychological research, since these argumentations aim to cultivate a particular state of awareness, a certain intensity of adherence. But we are concerned chiefly with comprehending its logical aspect, broadly defined: which means are used as means of proof in order to obtain this state of awareness. In this, our goal differs from the goal that a psychology attached to the same phenomena would try to reach.
A classical distinction would set the means used to convince against the means used to persuade: whereas the first, considered rational, addresses [the faculty of] understanding, the second, considered irrational, addresses the will.
For those who are chiefly concerned with results, to persuade is more than to convince: persuasion would add to conviction the necessary force that alone will lead to action. If we open the Spanish encyclopedia, it tells us that to convince is only the first step; the essential is to persuade, that is, to stir the soul so that the listener will act in accordance with the conviction that has been communicated to him.4 Think especially of American authors who have endeavored to give advice, often judicious, on the art of influencing the public or of how to win over buyers.
Dill Scott will tell us that adherence should not be compelled by a syllogism that acts like the threat of a gun. âAny man will sign a note for a thousand dollars if a revolver is held against his head, and he is threatened with death unless he signs. The law, however, will not hold him for the payment of the note, on the ground that it was signed under duress. A man convinced by the sheer force of logic is likely to avoid the very action which would seem to be the only natural result of the conviction thus securedâ.5 For these authors, contemporary psychology has shown that man, contrary to the traditional view, is not a logical being, but rather one of suggestion.6
On the other hand, for anyone raised in a tradition that prefers the rational to the irrational, that prefers the call to reason to the call to will, the distinction between convincing and persuading will also be essential, but it will be the means, not the results, that will be valued, and conviction will take precedence.
Listen to Pascal:
No one is ignorant that there are two avenues by which opinions are received into the soul, which are its two principal powers: the understanding and the will. The more natural is that of the understanding, for we should never consent to any but demonstrated truths; but the more common, though the one contrary to nature, is that of the will. ⦠This way is base, ignoble, and irrelevant: every one therefore disavows it. Each one professes to believe and even to love nothing but what he knows to be worthy of belief and love.7
Listen also to Kant:
Taking something to be true is an occurrence in our understanding that may rest on objective grounds, but that also demands subjective causes in the mind of him who judges. If it is valid for everyone merely as long as he has reason, then its ground is objectively sufficient, and in that case taking something to be true is called conviction. If it has its ground only in the particular constitution of the subject, then it is called persuasion.
Persuasion is a mere semblance, since the ground of the judgment, which lies solely in the subject, is held to be objective. Hence such a judgment also has only private validity, and this taking something to be true cannot be communicated.8
I cannot assert anything, i.e., pronounce it to be a judgment necessarily valid for everyone, except that which produces conviction. I can preserve persuasion for myself if I please to do so, but cannot and should not want to make it valid beyond myself.9
Kant opposes conviction, objectivity, science, and reason to persuasion, subjectivity, opinion, suggestion, and appearance. For him, conviction is unquestionably superior to persuasion; it alone can be communicated. Nevertheless, if we consider the individual in isolation, persuasion adds something to conviction in the sense that it has a more complete hold on him.
For rationalists, conviction is thus superior; from this point of view, Pascal can be considered as a rationalist. But, for Pascal, as for Kant for that matter, there was a difficulty: the place that should be given to religious knowledge, which they did not believe could fall within the domain of understanding. Pascal had to somewhat modify his disdain of persuasion:
I do not speak here of divine truths, which I shall take care not to comprise under the art of persuasion, because they are infinitely superior to nature: God alone can place them in the soul and in such a way as it pleases him. I know that he has desired that they should enter from the heart into the mind, and not from the mind into the heart, to humiliate that proud power of reasoning.10
We say that Pascal softens his disdain for persuasion.
It could be argued that he does nothing of the sort, and, on the contrary, that he emphasizes persuasion by explicitly excluding from it divine truths. The intervention of grace is nothing less than a serious breach of the hierarchy of conviction-persuasion, which we also find in Kant, for the same reason.11
Both the rationalist believer and the unbelieving rationalist are confronted by an analogous difficulty: value judgments and norms in the domain of education, where it appears impossible to make an appeal only to purely rational means of proof. Other means of proof than these must as a result be accepted.
The fact remains, however, that for all rationalists, certain processes of action are unworthy of a man who respects his peers, and they should not be used, although they frequently are. Of these, the most effective may be automated action [action sur âlâautomateâ], which, as Pascal says12, leads [entraîne] the mind of a man without him being aware of it.13
Common sense (as the philosophical tradition) thus imposes some distinction between conviction and persuasion that is equivalent to the difference between reasoning and suggestion. But can we be satisfied with this distinction? To clarify the opposition between conviction and persuasion would require us to determine the means of proof that we consider to be convincing; we would qualify the others as means of persuasion, regardless of the logical apparatus attributed to them.
Consequently, if we are very rigorous as to the nature of the proof, we will enlarge the field of suggestion to unexpected proportions. This is what happens to the Dutch author Stokvis who, in a recent and well-documented study dedicated to the psychology of suggestion and of autosuggestion,14 is led to tie all nonscientific argumentation to suggestion. This is what also happens in a lot of works on propaganda in which the emotional, suggestive aspect of the phenomenon is thought of as essential, and is alone taken into consideration.
Every deliberation in an assemblyâevery plea in a court of law, every political or religious discourse, and most philosophical lecturesâwould be in the end only a matter of suggestion, the realm of which would extend to anything that cannot be based on either experience or formal reasoning.
On the other hand, if we are not very demanding as to the nature of the proof, we will end up characterizing as âlogicalâ a series of arguments that do not at all respond to the conditions that logicians today consider as governing their discipline. This is what supporters of other disciplines often do. The American legal expert Cardozo,15 for exampleâcapable of perceiving the unstable side of law and the role that ambiguity plays in its conceptsâwould say that âdeductive logicâ applies to certain categories of legal reasoning.16 It would seem for him that legal innovations alone bring about extralogical arguments, whereas reasoning based on traditional interpretation would be logical. Many legal scholars use the term âlogicalâ, then, in a broad and imprecise sense. However, this extension of the domain of logic is no longer compatible with the concepts of modern logic. Rather than making the part played by suggestion too large, it makes of logic something that present-day logicians are no longer inclined to accept.
This examination prompts us to conclude that the opposition conviction/ persuasion cannot suffice when we go beyond the framework of a narrow rationalism, and that what we are investigating are the diverse means of obtaining adherence. We find, then, that this adherence is obtained by various methods of proof, which cannot be reduced either to the means used in formal logic or to simple suggestion.
In fact, the development of modern logic occurred when logicians began to analyze mathematiciansâ way of reasoning in order to study the processes of reasoning.17 The current conception of logic results from an analysis of the reasoning used in the formal and mathematical sciences, which implies that all argumentation that is not used in mathematical sciences does not appear in formal logic either.
If this analysis of formal sciences has been so productive, couldnât a similar analysis in the domains of philosophy, law, politics, and all the social sciences be undertaken? Wouldnât this as a result prevent the argumentation used in these sciences from being assimilated to the phenomena of suggestion, which generally implies some mistrust, or from being assimilated to logic, which in its current form must necessarily repudiate this type of reasoning?
Couldnât we take texts traditionally considered to be models of argumentation in the disciplines of social sciences, and through experiment extricate from them the methods of reasoning that we consider to be convincing? The conclusions at which these accounts arrive admittedly do not have the same restrictive force as mathematical conclusions; however, must we say for this reason that they have no restrictive force or that there is no way to distinguish the value of the arguments used in a good or a bad discourse, in a first-rate philosophical treatise or a beginnerâs essay? And couldnât we systemize such observations?
Having undertaken this analysis of argumentation in a certain number of works, especially philosophical, and in certain discourses of our contemporaries, we realized, over the course of our work, that the processes that we had found were in large part those of Aristotleâs Rhetoric. In any case, his concerns, strangely enough, came close to ours.
This was for us both a surprise and a revelation.18 In effect, the word ârhetoricâ has completely disappeared from philosophical vocabulary. It is not to be found in Lalandeâs Vocabulaire philosophique,19 although many terms that are only indirectly related to philosophy or are nearly out of use are duly presented. In all domains, the term ârhetoricâ evokes suspicion and is generally met with some contempt.20 In essays full of witty eloquence, PÃo Baroja finds no other more adequate antithesis to describe the Humorism that he so appreciates than Rhetoric, ornamental and fixed.21
There has been no lack of treatises on Rhetoric in the last one hundred years, but their authors believe that they must apologize in their preface for having dedicated their efforts to such an unworthy subject; they do not always hide that there is no reason to treat Rhetoric other than as a subject matter in the classroom. Rhetoric seems to survive because it has been protected by university rules.22 For that matter, most often these authors do not truly understand the object of their work; many of them combine without rhyme or reason the study of syllogism with the study of figures of style. This is not to say that these authors are all lacking in taste, culture, or intelligence; however, the object of their analyses seems to elude their grasp.
One of the last authors who may have brought something constructive to rhetoric, the English Archbishop Whately, writing in 1828, felt equally obliged to present apologies to his audience. But we should reflect on his words, for as we shall see, they provide encouragement for us to persevere in our undertaking. This is how Whately expresses himself in the Introduction to his Elements of Rhetoric:
The title of âRhetoricâ I have thought it best on the whole to retain, as being that which the article in the Encyclopaedia23 is designed; though it is in some respects open to objection. Besides that, it is rather the more commonly employed in reference to public speaking alone, it is also apt to suggest to many minds an associated idea of empty declamation, or of dishonest artifice.
The subject indeed stands but perhaps but a few degrees above logic in popular estimation; the one being generally regarded by the vulgar as the art of bewildering the learned by frivolous subtleties; the other, that of deluding the multitude by spurious falsehood.24
And yet we know how logic has developed in the last one hundred years by ceasing to be a repetition of old formulas, and how it has become one of the liveliest fields of philosophical thought.
Donât we have the right to hope that we may also succeed in reconstructing rhetoric and in making it interesting by using the same method for the study of rhetoric that has succeeded in logicâthe experimental method?25 We explain below why we are justified in believing that the present state of philosophical research, and the new notions that they have allowed to develop, are particularly conducive for this work.
Let us return for an instant to Aristotle, whose Rhetoric, as we have said, comes very close to our questions [problèmes].
Although Aristotle is concerned with reasoning of the true, and especially the necessary in the Analytics, he tells us that the function [ergon] of rhetoric âis concerned with the sort of things we debate and for which we do not have [other] arts and among such listeners as are not able to see many things all together or to reason from a distant starting pointâ.26
According to Aristotle, then, rhetoric would have a raison dâêtre, either because of our lack of knowledge of the technique of treating a subject, or because of listenersâ incapacity to follow a complicated reasoning. In fact, it aims to allow us to maintain our opinions and to have them be accepted by others. Rhetoric does not, then, have as its objective the true, but that on which one can have an opinion [opinable], which Aristotle confuses with the plausible.27
We notice immediately that this conception, which grounds rhetoric in ignorance and in the probable for want of the true and the certainâand which makes no place for value judgmentâplaces it prima facie in a state of inferiority that explains its later decline.28 Instead of being concerned with rhetoric and misleading opinions, wouldnât it be better, with the help of philosophy, to seek to know the true? The conflict between logic and rhetoric is the transposition on another level of the opposition, characteristic of the fifth century BCE, of the
Introducing the notion of value judgment changes the shape of the problem, which is one of the reasons why the study of rhetoric can today be taken up again on a fresh basis.29 We believe, moreover, that this study could clarify the very notion of value judgment, whose rightful place in philosophy seems to be definitively attained, but for which it is difficult to provide precise characteristics on which sufficient agreement is likely.
In any event, this notion [i.e., value judgment] modifies the data [données] of the relation âlogic-rhetoricâ, and no longer allows the second to be subordinated to the first.30 For that matter, we will see that other consequences result from introducing the notion of value judgment into the discussion. It is this notion that will allow us from the outset to clarify and to justify the difficulties experienced by the ancients in the understanding of types of oratory.
In fact, for the Ancients, there were three types of oratory: the deliberative, the judicial, and the epideictic. The deliberative focuses on the useful, and concerns the means of obtaining adherence in political gatherings; the judicial deals with the just, and concerns argumentation before judges; the epideictic, as is represented in the panegyric of the Greeks and the laudatio funebris of the Romans, deals with praise or blame, the beautiful or the ugly, but what is its aim? It is here that the Ancients find themselves in a quandary.31 We find traces of this difficulty in Quintilian who, contrary to Aristotle, believes that the epideictic is not limited to the listenersâ pleasure alone; however, the arguments he gives for this are weak and uneasy [embarrassés32]. Quintilian sees in particular that the existence of this type of rhetoric âmakes it clear that those who held that an orator would never speak except on matters which were in doubt were quite wrongâ.33
In fact, if we exclude the tradition of great sophists, nothing was more indisputable in Antiquity than moral judgment [appréciation]. Deliberative and judicial types of rhetoric presupposed an adversary and thus a conflict [combat] in which the aim was to obtain a decision on a disputed question; the use of rhetoric here was justified by uncertainty and ignorance. But how do we understand the epideictic, which deals with things that are certain and incontrovertible, and which no adversary disputes? The Ancients could see only that this type of rhetoric dealt not with the true, but with value judgments to which adherence varied in intensity. It is, as a result, always important to confirm this support in order to recreate an agreement [communion] on the accepted value.34 If this agreement does not determine an immediate choice, it does nevertheless determine potential choices. The battle that the epideictic orator wages is a battle against future objections; it is an effort to maintain the ranking of certain value judgments in the hierarchy or, potentially, to confer on them a superior status.35 In this regard, the panegyric is of the same nature as the educational exhortation of the most modest parents. The epideictic type is thus central in rhetoric.36
The Ancients, not seeing a clear goal in epideictic discourse, were inclined to consider it solely as a sort of spectacle aiming at the spectatorsâ pleasure and at the oratorâs glory by valorizing the subtleties of his technique, which becomes, then, a goal in itself. Aristotle himself seems to grasp only the aspects of charm and pomp of epideictic discourse.37 He does not perceive that the premises on which the deliberative and judicial types are based, whose purpose [objet] was so important for him, are value judgments. And yet, it is necessary that epideictic discourse supports and confirms these premises. The panegyric plays the same role, just as do more familiar discourses whose purpose is the education of children. At every level their purpose is identical.
We find this same awkwardness in Whately when he is faced with the epideictic, which is hardly surprising. He criticizes Aristotle for having attributed too much importance to this type, which has no other goal than to provoke admiration for the orator.38 Needless to say, we have no intention of drawing eulogy nearer to sacred exhortation.
Epideictic discourse can certainly have the effect of the glorifying the person who pronounces it; this is frequently the result. But wanting to make this the very goal of the discourse runs the risk of ridicule.39 This is what La Bruyère incisively says: âevery person in the congregation thinks himself a judge of the preacher, censures or applauds him, and is no more converted by the sermon he approves of than by the one he condemnsâ;40 âthey are moved and so deeply touched that they confess from their very souls the sermon they have just heard Theodorus preach excels even the one they heard beforeâ.41
The orator is in all probability the focal point, and a certain glory can be imparted to him. But in looking more closely, we will see that in order to deliver the epideictic discourse that can give him this glory, the orator must already have prestige due to his person or to his office. Not just anyone can deliver a panegyric without ridicule or shame. We would not ask for justification from someone trying to defend himself or an innocent person, but we would want to know the worth of the person who wants to pronounce a funeral eulogy. It may be enough that his qualities exist in the eyes of the audience, but for us to find them objective, they need to be present in some minimum amount. The child who wants to teach his older brothers a lesson will thus be met by jeers.
If, then, the epideictic discourse can (and often does) result in the glorification of the orator, it is only because it has another aim, just as heroism can have an effect on reputation only because it has another end. We are touching here on the general problem of the distinction between end [fin] and consequence, which is essential in the domain of rhetorical argumentation, and which is a subject to which we will return.
This incomprehension of the role and of the nature of the epideictic discourseâwhich we must not forget really did exist, and thus called our attention to itâencouraged the development of literary considerations in rhetoric and caused (in part) rhetoric to be torn between two tendencies: one philosophical, aiming to incorporate the discussions of subjects that are controversialâbecause they are uncertainâwithin logic, and where each of the adversaries seeks to show that his opinion has truth or plausibility on its side; the other literary, aiming to develop the artistic aspect of discourse and concerned especially with problems of expression.42
The first tendency derives from Protagoras and Aristotle, who says that âfor it belongs to the same capacity both to see the true and what resembles the trueâ,43 and leads to Whately. The second will derive from Isocrates and other masters of style to culminate in Jean Paulhan44 and I. A. Richards.45
In this division of rhetoric, we rediscover an aspect of how logic and suggestion encroach on the domain of argumentation, which is what interests us.
Having thus traced the tie between the rhetoric that concerns us and the rhetoric such that Aristotle had (we think) wished it to beâeven though he may have turned it toward a logic of the plausibleâwe will employ henceforth the term ârhetoricâ to designate that which could also be called the logic of the preferable. As we have said earlier, we will make it clear that we do not believe it useful at present to be interested in all the factors that influence agreement. In this respect, our goal will be more limited than that of Aristotleâs Rhetoric. Let us not forget that certain chapters of his Rhetoric would clearly belong today to the domain of psychology. We repeat: we would like to study the arguments by which we are urged to support one opinion more than another. We need only read contemporary studies to see that scholars who are concerned with argumentation in ethical or aesthetic domains cannot limit argumentation to those proofs accepted in deductive or experimental sciences. They are obliged to broaden the term âproofâ so as to encompass that which we would call rhetorical proofs. We cite here only two works characteristic in this respect, and we choose them because they have come very close to our own problem. First, the work of Mme. Ossowska, which subtly analyzes the question of proofs in the case of moral norms (however, as she is unable to resolve this question definitively; so as not to ground these norms in the absolute, she comes up against what she considers to be âfalse proofsâ and âpseudo-proofsâ,46) and the work of Stevenson, who sees the necessity of accepting âsubstitutes of proofâ47 and whose schemas of discussion in ethical matters present a direct interest for our research.
Compelled, then, to broaden the sense of the word âproofâ when we are dealing with the social sciences, we are led to incorporate within proof all that is not pure and simple suggestion. The argument that we have used arises either from logic or rhetoric.
However, we will be able to characterize best the means [moyens] of particular proofs that we call rhetorical by opposing them to logic. We will try, then, to point out a few of these oppositions.
Rhetoric, according to our understanding of the word, differs from logic in the sense that it is not concerned with an abstract, categorical or hypothetical truth, but rather with adherence.48 Its goal is to produce or to increase the adherence of a defined audience to certain theses, and its point de départ will be the adherence of this audience to other theses. (Note that if our terminology uses the terms âoratorâ and âaudienceâ here and throughout, it is for simple reasons of convenience, and that we include within this vocabulary all modes of verbal expression, as much the spoken word as the written.)
In order for rhetorical argumentation to develop, the orator must value the adherence of others, and he who speaks must have the ear of those whom he addresses. The person who develops a thesis and the person whom he wants to convince must already form a community, one which already exists by the very fact of their shared interest [engagement des esprits] in the same problem. Propaganda, for example, implies that we value convincing, but this interest can be unilateral; he for whom the propaganda is intended does not necessarily have the desire to listen to it. In addition, at this first step, before argumentation truly begins, we will have recourse to the means necessary to compel attention; we will then be at the threshold of rhetoric.
The very fact of trying to interest someone else in a certain question may already require great efforts of argumentation: think, for example, of the famous fragment of the Pensées in which Pascal seeks to convince the reader of the importance of the problem of the soulâs immortality.49
Is it better to be listened to, or not? Such a debate could itself call for an argument in order to justify its being introduced; and in this way, moving from preliminary condition to preliminary condition, the debate would seem to have to keep backtracking [remonter] indefinitely. This is the reason for which every well-organized society possesses a series of processes, the goal of which is to allow discussion to begin. Political, judicial, and educational institutions provide for these preliminary conditions of objection, which also have, moreover, the benefit of engaging participants. Diplomatic institutions, for example, allow for exchanges of points of view, which would be riskier for people who are not there by virtue of their office.
Since rhetorical argumentation aims at adherence, it depends essentially on the audience to whom it is addressed, because what will be accepted by one audience will not be accepted by another. This concerns not only the premises of reasoning but also each link in the chain of this reasoning, and finally even the judgment itself, which will bear upon the argumentation in its entirety. We touch here on certain essential questions. Often, what certain authors describe as âpseudo-argumentâ50 are arguments that produce maximum effect, although, according to the person who studies them, they shouldnât have produced this effect; but he is not a part of the audience to whom they are addressed.
It may even be that the orator himself is not a part of this audience. It is possible, in fact, that he seeks to obtain adherence based on premises whose validity even he does not accept. This in no way implies hypocrisy, because he may be convinced by arguments other than those that may convince the people whom he addresses. Quintilian, a lawyer by profession, could not help but be aware of this; however, as a pedagogue careful to make of his institution of oratory a school of virtue, he felt that he had to strive to reconcile these three imperatives, which he feared were, after all, contradictory: the oratorâs virtue; sincerity; and adapting to diverse audiences.51
In reality, a free thinker [libre penseur] could perfectly well exalt the dignity of the human person before Catholic listeners with arguments that stress the spiritual tradition of the Church, even if these were not the arguments that had made an impression on him. For that matter, he may also have been convinced by self-evident truth. And yet, if rhetoric does not need to be used when fact seems to be imposed on everyone, it must intervene when there is a single interlocutor who accepts this self-evident truth and has based his conviction upon it. Here there is no hypocrisy either.
An important subject [chapitre] for rhetoric, which is based entirely on the notion of agreement and combined with that of particular audiences, are the proofs explicitly accepted by the adversary before the discussion begins. In demanding such proofs, the interlocutor shows his agreement with their probative character and bestows on them a pre-eminent value. Here the orator can prevail. This is what an astute American industrialist does: before opening an important discussion, he makes his adversaries put their objections on a blackboard.52 To call for pre-determined arguments means creating conditions for adherence. We are here within a domain characteristic of rhetorical argumentation.
Two audiences merit special attention because of their philosophical interest: the audience constituted by a single person, and the audience constituted by all humanity.
When it is a matter of obtaining one personâs agreement, by force of circumstance we cannot use the same technique of argumentation as before a large audience. At every step we must ensure the interlocutorâs agreement by asking him questions and by responding to his objections; the discourse is thus transformed into a dialogue. This is the Socratic rather than Protagorean technique; this is also the technique we use when we deliberate alone and consider the advantages and disadvantages of possible solutions in a thorny situation.
This method produces an illusion: because the interlocutor has accepted each stage of the argument, we believe that we are no longer within the domain of opinion but rather of truth; we are convinced that the propositions that we put forward are much more solidly founded than in a rhetorical argumentation where each argument cannot be tested. Platoâs art promoted the development of this illusion and, in the centuries that followed, the identification of dialectic with logicâa technique that is concerned with the true rather than with the apparent, as is rhetoric.53
The universal audience is never real; it never exists in actuality.54 As a result, it is not subject to the social or psychological conditions of its surrounding environment.55 It is, rather, an ideal, a product of the authorâs imagination.56 In order to obtain the adherence of such an audience, we can employ only premises that are accepted by everyone, or at least premises accepted by this hypercritical assemblyâindependent of contingencies of time and placeâthat we imagine that we are addressing. For that matter, included in this audience is the author [of the universal audience] himself, who will only be convinced by an argument that claims to be objective, that is based on âfactsâ, on what is considered as true, on universally accepted values.
Such an argument will give its presentation a scientific or philosophical character, which is not characteristic of arguments addressed to more specific audiences.
But, just as it happens that very often we may have, simultaneously, several interlocutorsâin debating with an adversary we also seek to convince those who are listening to the debateâinevitably it also happens that the universal audience that we imagine ourselves addressing in fact coincides with a particular audience which we know and which transcends the few oppositions of which we are presently aware. Indeed, we fashion for ourselves a model of the manâas the incarnation of reason, or of the particular science or philosophy that concerns usâwhom we seek to convince, and who differs from our knowledge of other men, of other civilizations, of other systems of thought, and from what we accept as indisputable facts or objective truths. This is why every period, every culture, every science, and even every individual has its own particular universal audience.
When we are supposed to address such an audience, we can always exclude from it certain individuals who do not accept our argumentation by describing them as abnormal or as monsters whom we must renounce convincing. We judge men according to the value judgments that they make; we also allow ourselves the possibility of judging them according to the value that they attribute to our argument. By expanding the demands we make, in reality we move from the universal audience to the elite audience. It is in this way that Pascal accepts that only the good can understand the prophecies as they should be understood: âthe wicked, taking the promised blessings for material blessings, have fallen into error, in spite of the clear prediction of the time, and the good have not fallen in error. For the understanding of the promised blessings depends on the heart, which calls âgoodâ that which it loves; but the understanding of the promised time does not depend on the heartâ.57
If the nature of the audience is essential in rhetorical argumentation, the opinion that this audience has of the orator plays a role that is just as important, whereas this does not intervene in logic. It is impossible for rhetorical argumentation to avoid the interaction between the opinion that the audience has of the oratorâs person and the opinion that it has of his judgments and arguments. Whether it is called competence, authority, or prestige, this quality of the orator will never act as a greatness that is constant; always, and at every moment in time, it will be influenced by the very assertions that it must shore up. In logic, as in science, we may believe that our ideas reproduce the real or that they express the true, and that our person does not intervene in our assertions; the proposition is not conceived of as an act of the person. But precisely what sets rhetoric apart is that the person has contributed to the value of a proposition by the fact of his very adherence to it. A shameful proposition throws disgrace on him who pronounced it; a proposition gains in gravity due to the respectability of him who pronounces it. Accusing whoever accuses us in turn, says Aristotle: âcounterattacking the accuser; for it will be strange if his words are believable when he himself is unbelievableâ.58 This interaction is not limited to moral or aesthetic judgments, but extends to the whole of the argument. In the same way that the personality of the orator guarantees the gravity of an argument, conversely, so too does a weak or clumsy argument diminish the authority of the orator. The prestige of the orator acts only insofar as he decides to enlist it. An increase in prestige can result from discourse, but, with every declaration, a part of this prestige is exposed to risk.
All the same, there are extreme cases where this interaction between the assertion and the person that makes it is not at play: on one hand, when the declaration concerns an objective fact; on the other hand, when the person who asserts it is considered to be perfect. âAn error in conduct makes a wise man ridiculousâ, La Bruyère tells us59; âa fact [fait] is more respectable than a lord-mayorâ recounts the proverb. As long as it is unanimously recognized as such, a fact is thus established without sustaining any backlash in return. It constitutes one of the points where the interaction between person and judgment does not play a part. It is also the point at which we take leave of rhetoric, because argumentation yields to experience. But there is another constraint to this interaction: all that God says or does can only be the best possible; the act or the judgment thus no longer reflects the person. At this point too we are outside of the field of rhetoric.
But what happens when what is described as fact is opposed to what is described as divine? Leibniz proposes such a hypothesis. Wanting to prove that memory does not necessarily survive man, he imagines that
one could invent the fiction, not much in accord with the truth but at least possible, that a man on the day of judgment believed himself to have been wicked and that also appeared to all the other created spirits who were in a position to offer a judgment on the matter, even though it was not the truth. Dare one say that the supreme and just Judge, who alone knew differently, could damn this person and judge contrary to his knowledge? Yet this seems to follow from the notion of âmoral personâ which you offer. It may be said that if God judges contrary to appearances, he will not be sufficiently glorified and will bring distress to others; but it can be replied that he is himself his own unique and supreme law, and that in this case the others should conclude that they were mistaken.60
We see, then, that for Leibniz, if God is opposed to what is considered as fact, the latter would be described as âappearanceâ; that is, here we are in the midst of rhetorical argumentation. Instead of adopting Leibnizâs solution, we could argue the opposite and maintain that this God is not God and that it is a matter of a mistaken attribution of a quality of the perfect Being.
Let us note here the interest that any reasoning that calls the perfect Being into question presents for our study. This is still a type of reasoning which at least allows us to discern the direction taken by more usual reasoning.
The interaction between the orator and his judgments sufficiently explain the effort that the orator makes to gain the audienceâs sympathies for his person. We also understand the importance of the exordium in rhetoric, especially when it is a matter of an argument before an audience that is not universal, whereas in logic the exordium is useless.
This interaction between the person who speaks and what he says is only a specific case of the interaction generally between act and person, which not only affects all the participants of the debate but which also constitutes the foundation of most of the arguments used. These arguments are, themselves, only a particular case of an even more general argument concerned with the interaction of act and essence. Here we encounter once again all traditional philosophies concerning these fundamental relations.
The techniques used to disassociate the act and the person (a disassociation that is always limited and precarious) and thus aiming to curb the interaction between them would thus be interesting objects of study.61 We have seen that there exist two points at which the interaction no longer plays a role: fact [fait] and the divine person. But between these two extremes are cases where the intensity of the interaction is diminished because of a series of social techniques. We could rank prejudice among these. In the most part, acts will be interpreted according to a favorable or unfavorable prejudice, and they will thus not respond (as they should) to the esteem granted to the person who accomplishes them. Recourse to a counter technique necessarily follows. For example, he who wants to condemn an act must show that his judgment is not pre-determined by an unfavorable prejudice. Nothing is more effective than lavishing a certain number of compliments on someone we want to criticize. We see straightaway that in rhetoric these compliments are not pure condescension or friendliness, as they would be if they were inserted into the framework of a purely formal argumentation.
In addition, what distinguishes logic from rhetoric is that in logic, one always reasons within a given system that is presumed to be accepted, whereas in a rhetorical argumentation everything can always be called into question; adherence can always be withdrawn; that which is granted is a fact, not a right [droit].
Whereas argumentation is restrictive in logic, there are no constraints in rhetoric. We cannot be obligated to adhere to a proposition or to renounce it because we have been cornered into a contradiction. Rhetorical argumentation is not restrictive because it does not take place within a system whose premises and rules of deduction are unequivocal and fixed in an unchanging manner.
Because of these characteristics of the rhetorical debate, the notion of contradiction must be replaced by that of incompatibility. This distinction between contradiction and incompatibility recalls in a sense the Leibnizian distinction between necessary logic, in which the opposite [lâopposé] implies contradiction and moral necessity. Leibnizâs necessary truths are those that no one, even God, can modify; it is a system that is given once and for all. This is not the case for moral necessity, where we come across only incompatibles and where an element can always be modified.
But this necessity is not opposed to contingency; it is not of the kind called logical, geometrical or metaphysical, whose opposite implies contradiction. M. Nicole has made use somewhere of a comparison which is not amiss. It is considered impossible that a wise and serious magistrate, who has not taken leave of his senses, should publicly commit some outrageous action, as it would be, to run about the streets naked in order to make people laugh.62
It goes without saying that the impossibility of which M. Nicole speaks is a purely moral impossibility, an incompatibility.
As characteristics of rhetorical argumentation, these incompatibilities are clearly dependent on what we consider as will [volonté]. Incompatibilities are raised and dismissed. When a prime minister affirms that if such a bill does not pass, the cabinet will resign, he establishes an incompatibility between the rejection of his project and remaining in power. This incompatibility is the result of his decision, and it is not inconceivable that it can be removed, whereas when faced with such a contradiction, it would have been necessary to yield. This distinction would obviously not exist for a philosophy (as perhaps Protagorasâs philosophy) where there would only be value judgments, to the point that what would characterize the Sophists would be not that they had given a place to rhetoric, but rather that they had wanted to reduce logic to rhetoric.
Just as we have seen that a series of techniques exist for removing the link between the act and the person, we will discover a series of techniques for removing incompatibilities and for refusing those that someone tries to impose on us or to present to us as necessary. These techniques are those that, in the individual, should help with resolving psychological conflicts.63 The classic dilemma of the general obliged either to lose his material [bagages] or to capitulate, and upon which the Ancients commented at length,64 comes down to an incompatibility posited and presented as necessary. In order to present an incompatibility as necessary, we generally affirm that it is presented by someone else; that is to say, we attribute to it the status of a fact to which the will [volonté] cannot be opposed.
If, then, the incompatibility can always be removed, if we can always hope to modify the terms of the problem, in rhetoric, we are never cornered into the absurd. Nevertheless, one notion plays the same role in rhetoric as does the absurd in logic: the ridiculous. In the above example of M. Nicole cited by Leibniz, it is not absurd that the wise and serious magistrate runs the streets of the city totally naked to get a laugh, but this hypothesis is ridiculous. If our adversary succeeds by means of his argument to convince us of its ridiculousness, he will have nearly won the match. He who asserts that for nothing in the world would he kill a living being, and who is shown that his rule would prevent him from using an antiseptic out of fear of killing germs, must, so as not to be pushed into the ridiculous, limit the scope of his assertion. And he will do it in such a way that cannot be made precise in advance. In this way, two adversaries seeking to convince each another in a debate may see their respective opinions modified as a result of the otherâs argument. They end up at a compromise that will be as different from oneâs thesis as it will be from the otherâs, something which cannot happen if they reason within an unequivocally fixed deductive system.
This delicate notion of compromise, which is not a contract but a reciprocal modification of value judgments accepted by the interlocutors, is nowhere better expressed than at the end of Robert Browningâs Bishop Blougramâs Apology. In a long monologue, which is in reality a dialogue and is a masterpiece of argument, the bishop without faith has tried to justify himself before his interlocutor, who disdains him. One and the other come out of this confrontation transformed, although both may seem to have triumphed. Following the poet, the bishop concludes:
Since argumentation is restrictive in logic, once a proposition is proven, all of the other proofs are superfluous. By contrast, because argumentation is not restrictive in rhetoric, a serious problem arises for each interlocutor: the argumentâs scope. In theory, there are no limits on the practical accumulation of arguments, and we cannot say in advance which proofs will be sufficient to determine adherence. We are thus justified in making use not only of arguments that would be useless if one of them were accepted, but also of arguments that rule each other out. This is what M. Churchill does, in judging the politics of Baldwinâs government, when he tells us:
It is much better for parties or politicians to be turned out of office rather than to imperil the life of the nation. Moreover, there is no record in our history of any Government asking Parliament and the people for the necessary measures of defence and being refused.66
However, the danger of using bad arguments is greater in rhetoric than in logic. In fact, in logic, the falsity of a premise does not at all modify the truth of a consequence, if the consequence is proven by other means. The truth of the latter proposition remains independent of false premises.
In rhetoric, on the other hand, using a bad argument can have a harmful result. To say (whether out of ignorance or clumsiness) to an audience that supports a revolution, that such and such a measure (with which the audience should, moreover, be inclined to agree) diminishes the probability of a revolution can have exactly the opposite effect than what one had hoped. Further, as we have seen, to advance an argument that an audience considers as doubtful can damage the oratorâs person [i.e., ethos] and, in the same way, can compromise the entirety of his argumentation.
If rhetorical argumentation is not restrictive, it is because its conditions are much less precise than those of logical argumentation. Every rhetorical argumentation, insofar as it is not formal, implies the ambiguity and the confusion of the terms on which it bears. This ambiguity can be reduced if we come closer to formal reasoning. But, unless we end up with an artificial language, such as that which can result from the agreement of a group of scholars specialized in a determined science, the ambiguity will always remain. The very condition of restrictive argumentation is univocity, whereas social, judicial, political, philosophical argumentation cannot eliminate all ambiguity.
It was long believed that the confusion of notions and the polysemy of terms were flaws. Such a sociologist as Pareto, as concerned with confusion as he is,67 cannot study the notion of confused terms without making their usage ridiculous, even if he defends himself on every page from any pejorative assessment. Whence the weak constructive power of his analyses, despite their undeniable critical value.
Currently, the vagueness of concepts is considered in different domains as indispensable for their use. The problem of interpretation in law is studied today in close connection with problems of language.68
Because of its philosophical significance, the analysis that E. Dupréel69 conducted of the confused notion is particularly productive for our goal. It is, with the analysis of value judgments, one of the indispensable instruments of the study of rhetoric. On the other hand, we think that the analysis of argumentation could bring some clarity to the genesis and the disassociation of certain confused notions. In fact, we do not want the assertion that the confused notion is indispensable or irreducible to be considered as encouragement to remove it from all investigation. Our endeavor aims to understand on the contrary how the confused notion is handled, and what its role and its significance are. We believe that this endeavor will result above all in showing that the notions generally considered as absolutely clear are clear only because of the elimination of certain defined doubts. Rather than wallowing in confusion, we must push the analysis of notions as far as possible, but with the conviction that this effort cannot reduce all thought to perfectly clear elements.
There are many fundamental problems of rhetoric with which formal logic, based on univocity, is not concerned: not only determining the meaning of notions, but also the speakerâs intention and the significance and the impact of what he says.
Let us take a very simple example, which is sufficiently clear. It concerns a passage from La Bruyère:
If some dead were to rise again and saw who bore their illustrious names, and that their ancient lands, their castles, and their venerable seats were owned by the very men whose fathers had perhaps been their tenants, what would they think of our age?70
In his preface to the La Pléiade edition, Benda interprets this passage as a clear declaration in favor of class immobility. Perhaps. But, as in every assertion of this type, which bears on an observation made by another, we can see here either an unfavorable judgment on the century in which the new rich triumph, or an unfavorable judgment on the dead who would judge our century unfavorably. For Bendaâs reader, yet another authorityâBenda himselfâis introduced: the reader can judge Benda by the categorical judgment that he makes on La Bruyère, who in turn judges the men who judge the century in which they live, and so forth and so on, because of the interaction between the person and his judgments.
The preceding considerations seem sufficient to affirm that the domain of rhetorical argumentation cannot be reduced by an effort, as exhaustive as it may be, to bring it either to logical argumentation or to pure and simple suggestion.
We could obviously first attempt to make rhetorical argumentation a logic of the probable. But no matter the progress that the calculation of probabilities may still make, its application is limited to a domain whose terms have been defined with adequate precision. Yet, as we have seen, it is necessary to exclude this definition [détermination] in rhetoric.
We could then try to study the evocative effects produced by certain verbal means of expression, and to restore to them all the effectiveness of nonlogical processes of argumentation. This effort may be productive, but it would overlook the precise aspect of argumentation that we want to bring to the fore.
It is true that among the processes of argumentation that we will encounter, a certain number of them resemble the methods [procédés71] of a logic of probability; these include, in particular, proof by example, and arguments based on the normal and on competence.
At the other extreme, we find a series of methods [procédés] that aim to increase the intensity of adherence by, as we would call it, the impression of presence or reality. It is within this group that we would place analogy in its different forms, and in particular, metaphor. Their role in rhetoric is paramount. We also find here most of the methods [procédés] that have been classified and reclassified for centuries under the title of âfiguresâ. Their literary effectiveness has not gone unrecognized. But their significance as elements of argumentation has been far from sufficiently analyzed.
This group of arguments, which we will call âarguments of presenceâ, is neglected most by all those who minimize the role of the irrational. The role of presence cannot be reduced to reasoning on the probable. The difference between these two domains could be thought of as akin to the difference that Bentham made between âpropinquityâ and âcertaintyâ. Lewis considers it strange, and fears that Bentham wants to say only that we should be reasonably less concerned with the future because of its degree of distance from us, independent of the greater doubt that is generally attached to that which is further away. Neglecting the factor of presence, Lewis is surprised, and qualifies this as an âanomalous conceptionâ.72
The methods [procédés] which we will consider as essentially rhetorical and which characterize rhetoric as the logic of value judgments lie between these two extremes. In fact, there exists a series of methods [procédés] of qualification and disqualification that constitute a genuine arsenal of rhetoric.
We will find within this group every philosophical argument based on the real and the apparent, on the ends and the means, on act and essence, on quantity and quality, and other pairs of oppositions which are considered as fundamental. Until now, these methods [procédés] could not be the object of analysis as means of argumentation because the prevailing conceptions of rhetoric could not make room for them. It is the study of these methods [procédés] that will probably constitute the newest contribution of a rhetoric such as we conceive of it.73
Not only do there exist methods that can be used to obtain a desired effect, but at times they function independently of the authorâs intention.
It is in this way that we can qualify or disqualify, by asserting that where one sees a difference of nature, it is in fact only a difference of degree, or vice versa. When General Marshall struggled recently against the 25% cut in funds to Europe that the American Congress wanted to pass, he asserted that it was no longer a matter of âreconstructionâ but of âassistanceâ; that is to say, that Americaâs gesture would change not in degree, but in nature.74 In this case, General Marshall desired disqualification. Conversely, an analysis of tolerance, which seems to show that tolerance is a question of degree, and that in every society there exist some norms to which conformity is demanded and others which are left to individual judgment, seems to diminish the differentiation between two realms, where one is considered tolerant, the other intolerant.75 This reduction of difference can occur even when the author of the analysis personally believes that this difference is considerable, because the mechanism can be put into action voluntarily or independently of the will of him who analyzes the notion.
A common procedure of disqualification consists of making a value [valeur] relative by saying that what has been considered up to that point as a value is only a means. Here too the mechanism can work independently of the authorâs will. This is the misfortune that happened to Lévy-Bruhl who, despite his sincerest denials, was accused of diminishing the value of morals when he showed in La morale et la science des moeurs that morals were only a means whose end was the social good.
The loss of value that results when something is considered as a method [procédé] is one of the primary forms of disqualification. It is from this that rhetoric itself has suffered the most.
In social matters, the awareness that something is a method [procédé] often suffices to eliminate its effectiveness entirely. The virtuous man is respected, but if we realize that his behavior is determined solely by the desire to be respectable, we will qualify him not as virtuous but as ostentatious. Proust tells us simultaneously what is necessary to do and the uselessness of doing it, if it is perceived as method [procédé]: âSimilarly, if a man were to regret not being that he was not sufficiently courted in society, I should not advise him to pay more calls, to keep an even finer carriage; I should tell him not to accept any invitation, to live shut up in his room, to admit nobody, and that then there would be a queue outside his door. Or rather I should not tell him so. For it is a sure way to become sought-after which succeeds only like the way to be loved, that is to say if you have not adopted it with that object in view, if, for instance, you confine yourself to your room because you are seriously ill, or think you are, or are keeping a mistress shut up with you whom you prefer to society, if, for example, one always stays in oneâs room because one is seriously ill, or one believes oneself to be, or that one keeps a mistress locked inside whom one prefers to the rest of the worldâ.76
All art is threatened by this disqualification. None other than Paulhan has felt the subtle back and forth of methodâs [procédé] necessary nature and of its danger, of the clichéâs justification and its rejection, of terrorism and its criticism.77 Renunciations in art may be in large part required by this ineffectiveness that strikes the method [procédé] once it is perceived as suchâalthough other profound reasons contribute as well.78
However, if understanding method [procédé] as such sometimes diminishes its effectiveness, this is not always the absolute rule: a ritual formula, which could be considered as a sort of cliché, draws its prestige and its dignity from its very repetition and from its being perceived as method.
In the same way, the patient undergoing psychiatric treatment can desire the suggestion that has been made to him. And the soldier who leaves for battle can voluntarily submit to a not very original patriotic discourse that is addressed to him, just as the tired walker will allow himself to be led by a marching song.
We could perhaps observe that the case in which rhetorical argumentation loses the least of its effectiveness, when it is perceived as a method [procédé], is that of epideictic discourse, or that which comes close to it; that is to say, there where there already exists a certain adherence to conclusions, and where this adherence needs only to be reinforced. This could be the place to conduct research: when, and under which conditions, rhetorical argumentation perceived as method [procédé] can retain its effectiveness.
In this respect, let us note that an act is perceived as a method [procédé] when other interpretations cannot be found, or when these interpretations are less plausible. By consequence, it will be necessary to employ rhetoric to combat the idea that it is rhetorical. A first method [procédé]âwell-known and well-used, but also very effectiveâis to insinuate from the beginning [exordium] that one is not an orator.79 Even if, here also, some prudence is necessary: Dale Carnegie has reason to criticize his young students who start off by clumsily announcing that they do not know how to express themselves.80 Our classification of the methods [procédés] of argumentationâranging from logic to suggestionâwould perhaps permit the justification of these differences of opinion. The closer the methods [procédés] come to those of logic, the less their being perceived as method would be dangerous; the closer they come to those of suggestion, the more their being perceived as method would be harmful.
The loss of effectiveness of the methods [procédés] of argumentation is particularly noticeable in literary activity. Alternating methods [procédés] is not at all contradictory or paradoxical. Among these we can obviously include a supposed absence of method [procédé], and the spontaneity that follows what is expected when this has lost its persuasive force, for spontaneity itself loses its effectiveness once it is perceived as method [procédé], and must be replaced by something else.
Every rhetoric that is tied to a particular form of thought or of style, and that does not try to generalize its conclusions as much as possible and to embrace the whole of argumentation on values, thus risks becoming rapidly out of date.
We will say that what correction is for grammar, and validity for logic, effectiveness is for rhetoric.
Do not believe, however, that our goal would be to indicate the means by which to trick oneâs adversary, to evade his attention, to deprive him of control by more or less ingenious sleights of hand.
But if effectiveness alone is taken into consideration, would we have a criterion that would allow us to distinguish between the success of a charlatan and that of an eminent philosopher?
This criterion cannot obviously provide an absolute norm, given that rhetorical argumentation, as we have said, is never indisputable.
What, then, will guarantee our reasoning? The discernment of the listeners to whom the argumentation is addressed. As a result, we see the benefit that carefully addressing arguments to a universal audience presents for the value of arguments. It is to this audience that the most elevated reasoning of philosophy is addressed. As we have seen, this universal audience is itself only its authorâs fiction, and its characteristics are borrowed from his ideas. However, for the most honest of minds, to address this audience constitutes the greatest effort of argumentation that can be expected of it. The arguments that we will analyze will thus be those that the most upright (and, we might add, often the most rationalist) minds must use when it concerns certain subject matters, such as philosophy and social sciences.
Unlike Plato, and even Aristotle and Quintilian, who endeavor to find in rhetoric a reasoning similar to that of logic, we do not believe that rhetoric is only a less certain expedient which is addressed to the naive and ignorant. There are domainsâthose of religious argumentation, moral or artistic education, philosophy, and lawâin which argumentation can only be rhetorical. The reasoning that is valid in formal logic can only apply in cases where it is a matter of purely formal judgments or of propositions whose content is such that experience alone may be enough to support them.81
Daily life, whether of family or politics, will provide us with an abundance of examples of rhetorical argumentation. The interest of these day-to-day examples will be in the rapprochements that they allow with examples taken from the most elevated argumentation of philosophers and lawyers.
Having thus attempted to demarcate the field of rhetorical argumentation and to observe how its goals and the characteristics differentiate it from logical argumentation, it seems that we are better positioned to understand the causes of the decline of rhetoric.
From the moment that one believes that reason, experience, or revelation can solve all problemsâat least in theory, if not in factârhetoric can only be considered as a set of processes used for deceiving the ignorant.
If rhetoric was the basis for the education of youth throughout classical Antiquity, it is because the Greeks saw in it something other than the exploiting of appearance.
Rhetoric was subjected to a terrible assault from Plato, but it survived. The struggle began not because Socrates and Plato were enemies of the elegance of language, as Cicero believed,82 but rather in the name of truth. The triumph of dogmatism, first Platonic and then Stoic and finally religious, dealt a new blow to rhetoric, and progressively reduced it to being only a means of exposition. In fact, there where a monism of values triumphs, rhetoric cannot develop. This monism transforms the problems of values into problems of truth. One will undoubtedly find as much rhetorical argumentation in the writings of dogmatic theologians as in those from any other century, but this argumentation can be envisioned only under the angle of truth.
Renaissance humanism may have been able to prepare for a renewal of rhetoric in the broadest sense of the term. But the criterion of the self-evident fact, whether this was the individual self-evident fact of Protestantism, the rational self-evident fact of Cartesianism, or the perceptible self-evident fact of the empiricists, could only disqualify rhetoric.
Leibniz believes that âthe art of discussion and debate needs to be totally organizedâ.83 But he sees in rhetoric a last resort for perfect intelligences.84 He does not neglect the plausible of Aristotle, but criticizes him for having restricted it to opinion, when there exists a probable derived from the nature of things.85 What Leibniz desires is a sort of calculation of probabilities, analogous to the estimation of presumptions in law.86 It is not at all a logic of values.
Rationalism thus reduced rhetoric to the study of figures of style, and there was nothing Whatelyâs indignation could do about it. Bound by his own dogmatism, he was himself too far from the trend of relativism to truly make a place for rhetoric. He joined to rhetoric, conceived of as expression, a study of arguments that leads back to the study of logic. Despite Whately, then, rhetoric was increasingly limited to the study of literary processes. And, as such, Romanticism succeeded in disqualifying it.
For a certain period of time, Schopenhauer was very much interested in methods [méthodes] of discussion. Although he sees herein especially artifices that he considers of poor quality, he begins a study that he initially considers original. But he renounces and abandons it without even publishing it,87 treating this subject with disdain. And in reality, it is badly integrated into his philosophical thought.
Today, now that the illusions of rationalism and of positivism have vanished, and we recognize the existence of confused notions and of the importance of value judgments, rhetoric must become again a living [vivante] study, a technique of argumentation in human affairs and a logic of value judgments.
In particular, this logic must allow us to make the very notion of value judgment clear. In fact, we increasingly believe that the problem of values is only understood in relation to an argumentation with other people.
It has been said that rhetoric is immoral, because it allows support for both the pros and the consâand how this criticism deeply embarrassed Quintilian!88
But it is not because there are pro and con arguments that these arguments have the same value.89 Even an author as classical as is J. Stuart Mill insists on the necessity of weighing arguments.
The most opposite opinions can make a plausible show of evidence while each has the statement of its own case; and it is only possible to ascertain which of them is in the right after hearing and comparing what each can say against the other, and what the other can urge in its defense.90
The enlightened judge is the one who decides after having heard both pros and cons. We could say that rhetoric, rather than shaping the litigant, should shape the judge. The idea of litigating is unpleasant in that it is unilateral and closed to the adversaryâs arguments; it is only to refute them. For the litigant, the conclusions are known, and it is only a matter of finding the arguments that support them. But this litigation cannot be separated from its context, from the litigation of the opposing party. In a relativist atmosphere, there are no longer independent pros and cons: there is an unceasing formation of new systems integrating these pros and cons. We find here the sense of responsibility and of liberty in human affairs. Where there is no possibility of choice or alternative, we do not exercise our liberty. It is deliberation that distinguishes man from the robot [lâautomate]. This deliberation concerns what is essentially the work [oeuvre] of man, the values and norms that he has created, whose evolution the discussion allows. The study of the methods of this discussion can develop the awareness of the intellectual techniques used by all those who craft their culture.
It is because it is a truly human work [oeuvre] that rhetoric, we believe, knew its greatest brilliance during the eras of humanism, in Greek antiquity as well as during the centuries of the Renaissance.
If our century must free itself definitively from positivism, it needs instruments that allow it to understand what constitutes the human real. As distant as they might seem, our concerns perhaps agree in part with Bachelardâs recent endeavors91 or the research of contemporary existentialists. We would find here the same concern for man and for what escapes the jurisdiction of experience and a purely formal logic. We believe that a theory of knowledge that corresponds to this climate in contemporary philosophy needs to integrate within its structure the processes of argumentation used in all domains of human culture. For this reason, a renewal of rhetoric would be in keeping with the humanist feature of our eraâs aspirations.
G. A. Hauser, âHenry W. Johnstone, Jr.: Reviving the Dialogue of Philosophy and Rhetoricâ, Review of Communication 1.1 (2001) 1. For an elaboration of this theme, see D. A. Frank, â1958 and the Rhetorical Turn in the Twentieth Century.â Review of Communication 11 (2011) 239â52.
D. A. Frank and M. Bolduc, âFrom vita contemplativa to vita activa: Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tytecaâs Rhetorical Turnâ, Advances in the History of Rhetoric 7 (2004) 65â86; D. A. Frank, âA Traumatic Reading of Twentieth-Century Rhetorical Theory: The Belgian Holocaust, Malines, Perelman, and de Manâ, Quarterly Journal of Speech 93.3 (2007) 308â343.
See Perelmanâs letter to M. G. de Sandrini Cristofaro, 14 April 1970, Brussels, Université libre de Bruxelles, Perelman Archives BE.ULB-ARCH/89PP 21.1. In this letter, Perelman leaves off mention of Olbrechts-Tyteca, presenting âLogique et rhétoriqueâ as his work alone.
C. Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, âLogique et rhétoriqueâ, Revue philosophique de la France et de lâétranger 140 (1950) 1â35.
See L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, âRencontre avec la rhétoriqueâ, Logique et analyse 3 (1963) 5â6; C. Perelman, Lâempire rhétorique: Rhétorique et argumentation (Paris, 2002), 9; Perelman, âOld and New Rhetoricâ, in J. L. Golden and J. J. Pilotta (eds.), Practical Reasoning in Human Affairs: Studies in Honor of Chaïm Perelman (Dordrecht, 1986), 2â3; Perelman, âLa naissance de la nouvelle rhétoriqueâ, in Ars rhetorica antica e nuova (Genova, 1983), 14. Bolduc provides an in-depth analysis of this turn in Translation and the Rediscovery of Rhetoric.
P. Goodrich, Legal Discourse: Studies in Linguistics, Rhetoric and Legal Analysis (London, 1987), 111.
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, âLogique et rhétoriqueâ.
See our commentary on and translation of âPhilosophies premières et philosophie régressiveâ, above.
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, âLogique et rhétoriqueâ.
C. Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, Traité de lâargumentation: La nouvelle rhétorique (Paris, 1958), 5; The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, trans. J. Wilkinson and P. Weaver (Notre Dame, IN, 1969), 11, FN 10.
D. A. Frank, and M. Bolduc, âLucie Olbrechts-Tytecaâs New Rhetoricâ, Quarterly Journal of Speech 96. 2 (2010) 141â163.
M. Meyer, What Is Rhetoric? (Oxford, 2017), 32, FN 39.
See Perelmanâs letter to Ray Dearin, 27 May 1969, Brussels, Université libre de Bruxelles, Perelman Archives BE.ULB-ARCH/89PP 21.4.
See Perelmanâs letter to Letizia Gianformaggio, 2 August 1973, Brussels, Université libre de Bruxelles, Perelman Archives BE.ULB-ARCH/89PP 22.5.
B. Warnick, âLucie Olbrechts-Tytecaâs Contribution to the New Rhetoric,â in M. M. Wertheimer (ed.), Listening to Their Voices: The Rhetorical Activities of Historical Women (Columbia, SC, 1997), 71, 82â83.
N. Perelman Mattis, interview with David Frank, Eugene, OR, May 15, 2008.
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, âLogique et rhétoriqueâ, 1.
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, Traité de lâargumentation; The New Rhetoric 1.
F. J. Mootz III, Rhetorical Knowledge in Legal Practice and Critical Legal Theory (Tuscaloosa, AL, 2006).
See our translation of this passage from âLogique et rhétoriqueâ, below.
TN: The translation of âscolaireâ here as âscholasticâ rather than âacademicâ reflects its status as a pejorative adjective for ideas lacking originality, and reveals its tie to their reference, below, to Dill Scottâs criticism of adherence being compelled by syllogisms. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs use of âscolaireâ thus unveils their departure from well-trodden paths of formal logic.
TN: The verb used here by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, âressentirâ, is tied to the perception of sensation, and is thus tied to an awareness of a subjective state of mind. In this, they reject Cartesian methods of knowing.
TN: âEntendement,â translated here as âunderstanding,â is meant to be understood as a faculty of the mind.
See S. A. Espasa-Calpe, âOratoriaâ, in Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo-americana. Suplemento anual (Madrid, 1934), 43â75.
W. D. Scott, Influencing Men in Business. The Psychology of Argument and Suggestion (New York, 1916), 31. TN: Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca included in this footnote the French translation of the quotation for this English text, revealing their active practice of translation.
Scott, Influencing Men in Business, 45â46.
Pascal, âDe lâart de persuaderâ, in J. Chevalier (ed.), Oeuvres complètes [1936], Bibliothèque de la Pléiade 34 (Paris, 1954), 592â602. TN: âDe lâart de persuaderâ is section two of De lâesprit géométrique. Note that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca are using the original 1936 edition. English translation from âThe Art of Persuasion,â trans. O. W. Wight, in C. W. Eliot (ed.) Blaise Pascal (1623â1662). Minor Works, The Harvard Classics, vol. 48 (New York: P. F., 1910), 406.
Kant, Critique de la raison pure, trad. A. Tremesaygues et B. Pacaud (Paris, 1927), 634. TN: English translation from I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. and ed. P. Guyer and A. W. Wood (Cambridge, 1998), 684â685.
Kant, Critique de la raison pure 635. TN: See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason 685.
Pascal, âDe lâart de persuaderâ, 592. TN: In English, see Pascal, âThe Art of Persuasionâ trans. O. W. Wight, p. 406.
TN: Although not explicit, we see here an initial evocation of a dissociation used on a philosophical pair, which we believe also points to the important influence of Olbrechts-Tyteca.
Pascal, Pensées 470 (195) in J. Chevalier (ed.), Oeuvres complètes [1936], Bibliothèque de la Pléiade 34 (Paris, 1954), 1219â1220. TN: In the edition by Léon Brunschvicg, to which Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca also refer, see Pensées 252, in L. Brunschvicg (ed.), Pensées et opuscules, (Paris, 1922), 449â450. Note that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca are using the original 1936 edition; the page numbers above have been corrected for the above editions. For the English, see The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal 252 (Garden City, NY, 1901), 92.
TN: This evocation of automatic, unthinking action recalls lâécriture automatique, used in psychology and psychoanalysis as well as literature as a means of self-induced dissociation. As Bolduc has written elsewhere, Pierre Janet used automatic writing experiments to deduce that psychological dissociation was a response to trauma [see âLes actes inconscients et le dédoublement de la personnalité pendant le somnambulisme provoquéâ, Revue philosophique 22 (1886) 586â588]; Freud also used automatic writing as a tool in his psychoanalytic treatments. Automatic writing was adopted later by French writers Hippolyte Taine [De lâintelligence 6th ed. [Paris, 1892] 1.16â17] and André Breton [Manifeste du surréalisme, in Oeuvres complètes, ed. Marguerite Bonnet, 4 vols (Paris, 1924/1999), 1. 331â333] as a means of free literary invention. See Michelle Bolduc, âFrom Association to Dissociation: The NRPâs Translatio of Gourmontâ, Philosophy & Rhetoric 53. 4 (2020) 400â416; Translation and the Rediscovery of Rhetoric 331, n. 168.
B. B. Stokvis, Psychologie der suggestie en autosuggestie; een signifisch-psychologische uiteenzetting voor psychologen en artsen (Lochem, 1947).
B. N. Cardozo, The Paradoxes of Legal Science (New York, 1928) 8, 67.
TN: This example gestures at what will become for Perelman, from the mid-1950s, a long- lasting interest in the kind of argumentation used in judicial contexts. With Henri Buch and Paul Foriers, Perelman will found the Centre of Philosophy in Law [Centre de Philosophie du Droit (CPD)] at the Université libre de Bruxelles in 1967.
TN: We may count Perelman, at the beginning of his career, as among these logicians investigating math to better understand reasoning, and in particular, how mathematical reason deals with logical paradoxes. Perelmanâs early articles on antimonies and paradox manifest his interest in mathematical reasoning. See, in particular, âLâantinomie de M. Gödelâ, Bulletin de lâacadémie royale de Belgique (Classe des sciences) 6 (1936) 730â736; âLes paradoxes de la logiqueâ, Mind 45.178 (1936) 204â208; and âUne solution des paradoxes de la logique et ses conséquences pour la conception de lâinfiniâ, in Congrès Descartes: IXe Congrès international de philosophie (Paris, 1937), 6. 206â10.
TN: Both Olbrechts-Tyteca and Perelman will remark on their discovery of rhetoric as a revelation in their retrospective accounts of their turn to rhetoric. See, for example, Perelmanâs remarks written in his 1977 prologue to Lâempire rhétorique: Rhétorique et argumentation (Paris, 2002), 9; this prologue has only recently been translated into English: See B.D. Scott, The Rhetoricity of Philosophical Practice: On the Rhetorical Audience in Perelman and Ricoeur after the Badiou-Cassin Debate (Ph.D. dissertation, KU Leuven, 2023), 345â352. On the (non-) translation of this prologue, see Bolduc, âAbsence and Presence: Translators and Prefacesâ, in J. Boase-BeierâH. FurukawaâL. Fisher (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Literary Translation, (London, 2018), 351â75.
A. Lalande, Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie, 5th ed (Paris, 1947).
TN: In his posthumously published âPierre de la Ramée et le déclin de la rhétoriqueâ, Argumentation 5 (1991) 347â356, Perelman ascribes to sixteenth-century logician Petrus Ramus the origin of the decline of rhetoric.
P. Baroja, La caverna del Humorismo (Madrid, 1919), 50, 87, 111, 137, 201, 280.
E. Magne, La rhétorique au XIXe siècle, (Paris, 1838), Préface, p. 5: âIn the Journal of Public Instruction one said, in 1836, that rhetoric, without the official protection of university rules, would be today dead in Franceâ. TN: Our translation.
This concerns an article on the same subject published by Whately in the Encyclopaedia metropolitana. TN: See R. D. Whately, Elements of Rhetoric, Comprising the Substance of the Article in the Encyclopaedia metropolitana: with additions, etc., 5th ed. rev. (London, 1836).
R. D. Whately, Elements of Rhetoric (London and Oxford, 1828), Preface, p. 1. TN: Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca included in this footnote the French translation of the quotation for this English text, again revealing their active practice of translation.
TN: We see here in Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs language an urgent passion, which may recall Perelmanâs use of languageââNâavons-nous pas le droit dâespérerââin the articles dedicated to assimilation and the Jewish question.
Aristotle, Rhétorique, book 1, 1357a, trad. M. Dufour, Collection des Universités de France (Paris, 1932). TN: The English translation derives from Aristotle, On Rhetoric. A Treatise of Civic Discourse, trans. George A. Kennedy. 2nd edition (Oxford, 2007), 41.
Aristotle, Rhétorique, book 1, Topiques, book 1, book 8; Premiers analytiques, II. TN: Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca do not provide references to which editions of the Topiques and Premiers analytiques they used; however, we may speculate that they were using Aristotle, Organon V, Les Topiques livres 1â4, trans. J. Tricot (Paris, 1939) and Aristotle, Organon 5.2, Les Topiques livres 5â8, trans. J. Tricot (Paris, 1939) and Aristotle, Organon 3, Les premiers analytiques, trans. J. Tricot (Paris, 1936).
TN: Here, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca signal their divergence from Aristotle.
TN: As we have seen above, seeking the basis of value judgments is the foundational concern of Perelmanâs work, present already in his 1933 âDe lâarbitraireâ.
TN: Note the rapprochement that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca make between logic and rhetoric here.
Cicero, De Oratore, book I, 31; book II, 10,11,12. TN: Although Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca do not provide the details of the edition they were using here, we may speculate that it may have been Cicero, De Oratore, ed. and trans. F. Richard (Paris, 1932).
TN: Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs use of âembarassésâ here suggests they read Quintilian as uneasy about his efforts to expand the role of the epideictic beyond Aristotle, and marks how their expansion of it, by contrast, does not hold this same level of uneasiness or doubt.
Quintilian, Institution oratoire, trad. H. Borneque (Paris, 1933), t.1, liv. III, chap. vii, § 3, p. 373. TN: The English translation derives from Quintilian, The Oratorâs Education, ed. and trans. D. A. Russell, LCL 125, vol. 2, p. 103.
TN: We find here an initial gesture at communion, a goal of the epideictic which presupposes agreement on values and the relationship with the audience, describes as a âcommunion des espritsâ in the Traité 67â74; New Rhetoric 51â56. However, as they also caution in the Traité, propaganda may be one vehicle for creating such communion. See also below, where they note that propaganda may be a one-way relationship.
TN: Here we see an insistence that argument takes place in place, the subject of Perelmanâs later article on temporality.
TN: This important explanation of the epideictic is missing from the Traité.
TN: Notice here too the unveiled criticism Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca make of Aristotleâs understanding of the epideictic.
R. D. Whately, Elements of Rhetoric (Oxford, 1928), Part III, chap. I, § 6, p. 198.
TN: Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca use an unusually militarized expression, âprêter le flancâ translated here as ârun the riskâ, which refers to exposing the sides (or flanks) of troops to attack.
La Bruyère, âCaractères, De la chaireâ [On the pulpit] 2, in J. Benda (ed.), Oeuvres, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade 23 (Paris, 1935), 456. TN: English translation from The Characters of Jean de La Bruyère, newly rendered into English by Henri Van Laun, 1820â1896. New York, 1885. Published online February 2011 by Bartleby.com; © Copyright Bartleby.com, Inc.
La Bruyère, âCaractères, De la chaireâ [On the pulpit] 11, in Oeuvres, 460.
TN: Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca here signal the way in which the Ancients, and in particular Aristotle, built into the very structure of their rhetorical theory the eventual demise of rhetoric.
Aristotle, Rhétorique, book 1, 1355a, trad. M. Dufour. TN: The English may be found in Aristotle, On Rhetoric, p. 34.
Cf. J. Paulhan, Les fleurs de Tarbes, ou la terreur dans les lettres (Paris, 1941).
Cf. I. A. Richards, Mencius on the mind (London, 1932); The Philosophy of Rhetoric (Oxford, 1936). TN: This division of epideictic discourse into two strands of thought will allow Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca to highlight the differences between their rhetoric and other mid-twentieth century, poetic forms, as seen in the special issue of Communications of 1970 dedicated to the renewal of rhetoric. See Bolduc, Translation and the Rediscovery of Rhetoric 400â416.
M. Ossowska, Podstawy Nauki o Moralnosci (Les fondements dâune science de la morale [Foundations for a Science of Morality]) (Warsaw, 1947), 132â133. TN: This suggestion that Perelman had read this in his native Polish is a clear reminder of the polyglot intellectual culture in which he can be located.
C. L. Stevenson, Ethics and Language (New Haven, CT, 1945), 27.
TN: In his letter to M. G. de Cristofaro Sandrini (14 April 1970) Perelman insists on the liberty of the audience conveyed via rhetoric. Brussels, Université libre de Bruxelles, Perelman Archives BE.ULB-ARCH/89PP 037.1.
Pascal, Pensées 334 (C 217), in J. Chevalier (ed.), Oeuvres complètes, pp. 1171â1172, [which corresponds with] Pensées 195, in L. Brunschvicg (ed.), Pensées et opuscules, pp. 424â425; Pascal, Pensées 335 (C 217), in J. Chevalier (ed.), Oeuvres complètes, pp. 1172â1180; in L. Brunschvicg (ed.), Pensées et opuscules 194, 415â423. TN: Note that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca are using the original 1936 edition; the page numbers above have been corrected for the above editions. For the English, see The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal, 194 and 195 (Garden City, NY, 1901), 68â76.
Cf. Ossowska, Podstawy Nauki o Moralnosci.
Quintilien, Institution oratoire, book III, chap. VII, VIII; book V, chap. XII; book XII.
Dale Carnegie in Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business [New York, 1937], 460â461, cited from the German Die Macht der Rede, trans. Hermann von Wedderkop (Zurich, 1940), 250. TN: This citation demonstrates Perelmanâs and Olbrechts- Tytecaâs ability (and even preference) to read in other languages, and once again their immersion in a multilingual and European intellectual culture. They may have also made use of the French translation, Comment se faire des amis pour réussir dans la vie (Paris, 1950).
For the history of the dialectic, cf. K. Dürr, âDie Entwicklung der Dialektik von Platon bis Hegelâ, Dialectica 1.1 (1947) 45â62. TN: In a letter written 2 September 1970 to Antonio Pieretti, Perelman insists that dialectical reason cannot be dissociated from the idea of audience. Brussels, Université libre de Bruxelles, Perelman Archives BE.ULB-ARCH/89PP 037.1.
TN: In a letter written 2 September 1970 to Antonio Pieretti, Perelman highlights that even Johnstone, who had been of the opinion that the universal audience in dialectical reasoning could be represented by a single person, had since changed his mind. Brussels, Université libre de Bruxelles, Perelman Archives BE.ULB-ARCH/89PP 037.1. In another letter dating from 1970 (14 April) to M. G. de Cristofaro Sandrini, Perelman ascribes to the universal audience the power of defining rationality, and of transcending social conservatism. Brussels, Université libre de Bruxelles, Perelman Archives BE.ULB-ARCH/89PP 037.1.
TN: Notice that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca are clear that the universal audience is a construct, influenced by the social context in which the rhetor is situated, rather than a real audience. Insisting that the universal audience is a product of the rhetorâs mind also means that it is not a philosophic absolute. Readers of the English translation of the Traité alone have been at times misled into thinking that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs universal audience is such an absolute.
TN: Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs use of âauthorâ here rather than âoratorâ reflects their broadening of rhetoric beyond the spoken word.
Pascal, Pensées 589 (17), in J. Chevalier (ed.), Oeuvres complètes 1275â1276, [which corresponds with] Pensées 758, in L. Brunschvicg (ed.), Pensées et opuscules, p. 685. TN: Note that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca are using the original 1936 edition; the page numbers above have been corrected for the above editions. For the English, see The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal 758, p. 269.
Aristotle, Rhetoric 1416a, in Art rhétorique et art poétique, trad. J. Voilquin and J. Capelle (Paris, 1944), book III, chap. XV, 7. TN: For the English, see Aristotle, On Rhetoric, ed. Kennedy, p. 237.
La Bruyère, âLes caractèresâ, âDes jugementsâ, [Of Opinions] 47 in Åuvres, 379.
G. Leibniz, Nouveaux essais sur lâentendement, in Oeuvres, ed. C. J. Gerhardt, vol. 5 (Berlin, 1882), 226. TN: English translation from P. Remnant and J. Bennett, New essays on Understanding, Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge, 1996), Bk 2:27, section 244.
TN: Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca signal here the novelty of their conception of dissociation.
G. W. Leibniz, Essais sur Théodicée, in Oeuvres, ed. C. I. Gerhardt, vol. 6 (Leipzig, 1932), 284. TN: Although Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca cite this 1932 edition, the original edition by Gerhardt was published in Berlin by Weidmannsche Buchhandlung in 1885, and this is the edition that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca cite elsewhere, as in âActe et personne dans lâargumentationâ, in Rhétorique et philosophie pour une théorie de lâargumentation en philosophie (Paris, 1952), 73. The English translation is from G. W. Leibniz, Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil, ed. Austin Farrer, trans. by E. M. Huggard (New Haven, 1952), 299. This reference points also to Olbrechts-Tytecaâs later work on the comic in her 1974 Comique du discours.
Cf. an interesting chapter in Florian Znaniecki, from the University of Poznan, and printed in Poland, The Laws of Social Psychology (Chicago, 1925).
Cf. Cicero, De Inventione, book II, chap. XXIV; Rhétorique à C. Herennius, book I, chap. XV. TN: The references can be found in Cicero, De inventione, ed. and trans. G. Achard (Paris, 1994) and De inventione; De optimo genere oratorum; Topica, trans. H. M. Hubbell, LCL 386 (Cambridge, MA, 1949); Rhétorique à Herennius, ed. Achard (Paris, 1989). The term âbagagesâ used here is quite technical, and refers broadly to the supplies, equipment, and weapons necessary on military campaigns. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca allude to the episode in which Gaius Popilius, surrounded by the Gauls, entered into negotiation with them to be allowed to lead his army out, if he left aside his arms. Further, the reference to Ciceroâs De inventione in particular recalls how the turn to rhetoric took place via the translations of the De inventione of Brunetto Latini and, of Latiniâs translation by Jean Paulhan. See Bolduc, Translation and the Rediscovery of Rhetoric.
R. Browning, The Poems of Robert Browning (Oxford, 1919). Bishop Blougramâs Apology, p. 152. TN: Although a reference to Browning does not appear in her 1974 Comique du discours, given her deep reading of literature, we believe that this literary reference may very well be the contribution of Olbrechts-Tyteca. See also their reference to other sections of Bishop Blougramâs Apology in the Traité 246, 324, 333, 657; New Rhetoric 182, 240â241, 247, 496.
W. Churchill, Mémoires sur la deuxième guerre mondiale (Paris, 1948), t.1, p. 112. TN: In English: The Second World War, vol. 1 The Gathering Storm (Boston, 1948), 112.
V. Pareto, Traité de sociologie générale, trad. P. Boven, 2 vols (Paris, 1917â1919).
Cf. R. L. Drilsma, De woorden der wei of de wil vande wetgever. Proeve eener bijdrage tot de leer der rechtsuitlegging uitgaande van Raymond Saleilles en François Gény (Amsterdam, 1948). The author stresses the work of linguists and notably of A. Reichling, S.J., Het woord (Nijmegen, 1935); âHet handelingskarakter van het woordâ, De nieuwe Taalgids, 31 (1937) 308â332.
E. Dupréel, âLa logique et les sociologuesâ, Revue de lâInstitut de sociologie 4.1â2 (1924) 3â72; âLa pensée confuseâ, Annales de lâEcole des hautes études de Gand 3 (1939) 17â27. TN: This essay also appears in Essais pluralistes. Mélanges offerts à lâoccasion de son soixante- dixième anniversaire et de sa retraite de lâUniversité libre de Bruxelles (Paris, 1949).
La Bruyère, âLes caractèresâ, âDes biens de fortuneâ [Of the Gifts of Fortune] 23, in Oeuvres, 202, and note of J. Benda, 709.
TN: Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca use here the term âprocédéâ, which is tied to a means or a process, and which is a major focal point of their analysis in the Traité. We translate it here as method, but in every instance provide the French procédé, in order to differentiate it from method [méthode].
C. I. Lewis, An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (La Salle, IL, 1946), 493.
TN: Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca here firmly note the originality of their work.
TN: As in the earlier âPhilosophies premièresâ, we see with this example a reminder of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecaâs deep familiarity with the importance of the postwar reconstruction of Western Europe.
TN: This discussion of tolerance recalls Perelmanâs striking conclusion to âDe lâarbitraireâ (as well as his reflections on the uncomfortable position of the Jews in history in his âQuestion juiveâ) and underscores his real-world concern for tolerance among social groups.
M. Proust, à la recherche du temps perdu (Paris, 1923), t. VI, 2: La prisonnière, p. 228. TN: The English is drawn from Remembrance of Things Past, trans. C. K. S. Moncrieff and T. Kilmartin (New York, 1982), vol. 3 âThe Captiveâ p. 377. Like the reference to Paulhan that follows, this reference may be one of the markers of Olbrechts-Tytecaâs contribution.
Cf. J. Paulhan, Les fleurs de Tarbes; ou, La terreur dans les lettres (Paris, 1941); Braque le Patron (Geneva-Paris, 1946).
Cf. E. Dupréel, âLe renoncementâ, Archives de la Société Belge de Philosophie 2.2 (1930) 1â36.
Quintilian, Institution oratoire, trad. H. Borneque (Paris, 1933), book IV, chap. I, 8.
Cited by Dale Carnegie in Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business, 268, from the German edition Die Macht der Rede, trans. Hermann von Wedderkop, 162.
The introduction being, in our opinion, a complex reasoning, combining rhetorical processes with logical inferences and a call to experience, we have not taken it into account in our preliminary analyses, esteeming that a study of it could only be fruitful after a detailed presentation of the means of rhetorical proofs.
Cicero, De Oratore, book III, 16.
Leibniz, Nouveaux essais sur lâentendement, in C. J. Gerhardt (ed.), Oeuvres, vol. 5, p. 399. TN: For the English, see Leibniz, New essays on Understanding IV:7, section 418. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca use here ârefondéâ [rebuilt] rather than âorganizedâ, as appears in the English translation.
Leibniz, Nouveaux essais sur lâentendement, in C. J. Gerhardt (ed.), Oeuvres, vol. 5, p. 308. TN: See New essays on Understanding III:10, section 350.
Leibniz, Nouveaux essais sur lâentendement, in in C. J. Gerhardt (ed.), Oeuvres, vol. 5, p. 353. TN: Leibniz, New essays on Understanding IV:2, section 372.
Leibniz, Nouveaux essais sur lâentendement, in in C. J. Gerhardt (ed.), Oeuvres, vol. 5, pp. 445â448. TN: Leibniz, New essays on Understanding IV:15.
This study appears under the title of Eristisch Dialektik in A. Schopenhauer, Sämtliche Werke herausgegeben von Dr. Paul Deussen, 6th Band, herausgegeben von Franz Mockrauer (Munich, 1923). Cf. also Schopenhauerâs allusions to this work in Parerga und Paralipomena and the chapter on rhetoric in Die Weil als Wille und Vorstellung. TN: Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca may have been working with Parerga und Paralipomena (Berlin, 1851. Repr. ed. R. von Koeber, 2 vols. Berlin, 1891). A more recent German edition appears in Parerga und Paralipomena. Werke in fünf Bänden nach den Ausgaben letzter Hand, vol. 1. (Leipzig, 2006). See also Die Weil als Wille und Vorstellung 3rd. ed. 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1859). English editions are: Parerga und Paralipomena, Short Philosophical Essays, ed. E. F. G. Payne, 2 vols. (Oxford, 2016) and The World as Will and Representation, trans. J. Norman, A. Welchman, and C. Janaway, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 2010); vol. 2 (Cambridge, 2018).
Quintilian, Institution oratoire, book II, chap. XVII, 30 ff. TN: With âembarasseâ Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca recall the contrast they had made earlier in this article between Quintilianâs uneasiness about expanding the epideictic beyond Aristotle with their own belief in the utility and necessity of such an expansion.
TN: An example of this argumentation pro et contra may be found in Boncompagno da Signaâs 1235 Rhetorica novissima as a figure of rhetorical ornamentation, perhaps influenced by the practice of resolving contraria in the law. See T. O. Tunberg, âWhat is Boncampagnoâs âNewest Rhetoricâ?â Traditio 42 (1986) 324. Boncompagno qualifies such argumentation as âcommendare personas et cuncta que sub celi ambitu continentur, et eisdem commendationibus contraireâ. Boncompagno da Signa, Rhetorica novissima, ed. A. Gaudenzi. Scripta Anecdota Glossatorum. Bibliotheca Iuridica Medii Aevi 2. 1892; (rpt. Turin, 1962) 287.
J. S. Mill, Système de logique, trans. from the 6th English edition by Louis Peisse, 2 vol. Paris, 1866, t.1, Preface, p. xxii. TN: English translation from A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive (London, 1956), Preface to the third and fourth editions, p. vi.
TN: Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca are referring here to Gaston Bachelardâs Le Rationalisme appliqué (Paris, 1949).