Chaim Perelman

The New Rhetoric: A Theory of Practical Reasoning

Perelman traces the evolution of definitions of rhetoric in order to establish why philosophical interest in the subject has waned. This was due to its association with the ornate use of language. Perelman determines that a speech’s “goal is to intensify an adherence to values, to create a disposition to act, and finally to bring people to act. Seen in such perspective, rhetoric becomes a subject of great philosophical interest” (151). He likewise maps out the avenues philosophical inquiry limited him to for “ideal[s] of practical reason, that is, the establishment of rules and models for reasonable action” (152). He sought to study the ways authors of diverse disciplines reasoned about values with Olbrechts-Tyteca and (re)discovered what Aristotle termed “analytics.” Thus he termed this new/revived branch of study dedicated to the analysis of informal reasoning “The New Rhetoric” (153).

“The new rhetoric is a theory of argumentation” (153). According to Perelman this is complementary to the theory of demonstration, which is “a calculation made in accordance with rules that have been laid down beforehand. No recourse is allowed to evidence or to any intuition other than that of the senses. A demonstration is regarded as correct or incorrect according as it conforms, or fails to conform, to the rules” (153). Rhetoric, new or old, strives to gain and/or fortify audience loyalty to a thesis; the orator hopes to gain their agreement. Perhaps this loyalty will begin as a theoretical devotion, but it may be hoped that it will “eventually be manifested through a disposition to act,” creating a practical devotion rather than merely a theoretical one, a loyalty which “provoke[s] immediate action, the making of a decision, or a commitment to act” (154). Here argumentation is dissimilar from demonstration because it “presupposes a meeting of minds: the will on the part of the orator [speaker or writer] to persuade and not to compel or command, and a disposition on the part of the audience to listen” – a “mutual goodwill” (154). Thus “all argumentation aims somehow at modifying an existing state of affairs” and presupposes a “common language” (154-155).

Here Perelman insists that this is where “The New Rhetoric” fractures from the old. He says Aristotle saw dialectic as providing techniques of discussion for a common search for truth. Rhetoric provides techniques for conducting a debate where various points of view are presented and the audience decides the truth (individually). So the dialectical discussion focused on truth determined by the participants; the rhetorical discussion focused on pieces of an argument determined by a third party, non-participant. In the new rhetoric, argumentation is nonformal reasoning that strives to gain and/or fortify audience loyalty to a thesis and appears either in discussion or debate, either in the search for truth or the triumph of a cause. It follows a juridical rather than mathematical model. Two opposing views can be considered equally reasonable because there is no “unicity” of truth. No one has to be right.

“To reconcile philosophic claims to rationality with the plurality of philosophical systems, we must recognize that the appeal to reason must be identified not as an appeal to a single truth but instead as an appeal for the adherence of an audience, which can be thought of” … “as encompassing all reasonable and competent men” (157).

Perelman says the audience plays a crucial role because when arguments seek to persuade, they need to be adapted to audience, founded on beliefs that audience accepts with such conviction that the rest of the discourse may be based on it. This basis of agreement is founded on such “objects” as facts, truths, presumptions, values, hierarchies, and loci.

Philosophical reasoning and philosophical arguments are NOT operations with premises and conclusions. They ARE operations upon operations with premises and conclusions. “‘Proving is a one-level business; philosophical arguing is …an interlevel business’. If proof is restricted to the operation of drawing valid inferences, it is undeniable that philosophers and jurists only rarely prove what they assert. Their reasoning, however, does aim at justifying the points that they make, and such reasoning provides an example of the argumentation with which the new rhetoric is concerned“(174).

Perelman wanted to show that “the traditional view [of argumentation] is mistaken in claiming that justification is like demonstration but based on normative principles. In fact, justification never directly concerns a proposition but looks instead to an attitude, a decision, or an action. ‘Justifying a proposition’ actually consists in justifying one’s adherence to it, whether it is a statement capable of verification or an unverifiable norm” (175). “Justification plays a central role in philosophy; it is essential wherever practical reason is involved” (175).

To sum up:  Perelman closes by stating that philosophers need to stop confining their “methodological inquiries to what can be accomplished by formal logic and the analysis of language.  A more dynamic approach to the problems of language would also reveal the extent to which language, far from being only an instrument of communication, is also a tool for action and is well adapted to such a purpose” (177).  He hopes that a synthesis to “seemingly” opposed tendencies of contemporary philosophy will be possible.

Kenneth Burke

A Grammar of Motives and A Rhetoric of Motives

The Five Key Terms of Dramatism

“The basic forms of thought… are exemplified [demonstrated] in the attributing of motives” (Burke 76). Forms of thought are present everywhere.

Any complete statement about motives will offer some kind of answers to these five categories (questions)

Dramatistic Pentad:

Act: What took place, in thought or deed (what was done)

Scene: The background of the act/situation it occurred in (when or where it was done)

Agent: What person or kind of person performed the act (who did it)

Agency: What means or instruments he used (how he did it)

Purpose: The purpose (why)

“…all statements that assign motives can be shown to arise out of them [the Pentad] and to terminate in them” (76)

This system allows one to be complex, but the principles generating it are simplistic.

Grammar of Motives: A concern with the terms alone w/out reference to the ways they can be/have been used to define motives.

Any statements using these “grammatical resources” can be (broadly) called philosophies, or, if unsystematic, fragments of a philosophy. Grammatical resources are principles, and the various philosophies are “casuistries,” or the application of principles to a temporal situation.

Grammatical consideration of “scene” would be the general concept of background or setting. A philosophical consideration of “scene” would be the ways in which a thinker conceives of the ultimate ground, or scene, of human action (as God, nature, environment, history, means of production, etc).

“…[the] project needed a grounding in formal considerations logically prior to both the rhetorical and the psychological [symbolic] (78)” – Grammar is proto-rhetorical/symbolic

“Theological, metaphysical, and juridical doctrines offer the best illustration of the concerns we place under the heading of Grammar; the forms and methods of art best illustrate the concerns of the Symbolic; and the ideal material to reveal the nature of Rhetoric comprises observations on parliamentary and diplomatic devices, editorial bias, sales methods and incidents of social sparring. However, the three fields overlap considerably. And we shall note, in passing, how the Rhetoric and the Symbolic hover about the edges of our central theme, the Grammar” (78).

So, Grammar is a proto-category of Rhetoric and the Symbolic. Grammar is a methodology for looking at the world, making sense of the world, constructing a worldview. Rhetoric is the inspection of language, uses of language, social interactions: how language functions.