Abstract
In ancient Greece, which is generally considered to be the cradle of our culture, the expression “rhetoric and politics” meant a debate at the heart of philosophy — a debate which brought the philosopher and the sophist to grips with each other, a debate whose stake is the essence of the political. For common opinion today, the expression “rhetoric and politics” means the discourse of politicians: their favorite figures are catalogued, the words they pronounce are counted, sometimes even the way they are affected by the media is investigated. It is true that between these two periods, the very notion of rhetoric has evolved to the point that it merits the label of “limited rhetoric” [rhétorique restreinte].1 As for sophistry, it hardly means but the condemnation brought against false reasoning any more.
Theodorus: What names?
Socrates: Sophist, statesman, philosopher.
(Plato, The Sophist)
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Notes
Gerard Genette, «La rhetorique restreinte», Communication No. 16, 1970.
See for example D. Kambouchner et al., «Le retrait du politique«, Editions Galilée, 1983, and «Politique Fin de siècle», Traverse, pp. 33–34, January 1985.
We would like to thank Charles Leben, Yves Lichtenberger, and Michel Narcy for their precious advice in the areas of law and political institutions, of the practice of negotiation and of classical philosophy.
Plato, Statesman,259d. Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics I.ii.4.
Plato, Statesman, 29 1e
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1355b.
Plato, Statesman, 297c, 301e.
Statesman 291.c.
Plato, Loeb Classical Library, Laws, Book X, II, p. 305.
Chaôm Perelman, L’Empire Rhétorique, Vrin, p. 23.
Chaôm Perelman, «Rhétorique et Politique», in Langage et Politique, Ed. Marcel Grans ton and Peter Mair, Bruylant, Brussels.
Barbara Cassin, «Si Parmenide», Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1980.
On the fact that the question of rhetoric is at the heart of the debate between philosophy and sophistry, see Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, Brussels, pp. 35–38.
“Rhetoric is the analogue of the dialectic”, Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1354a.
Plato, Phaedrus, p. 273: on this point about Cartesian thought and its consequences for the negation of rhetoric, see, for example Charles S. Pierce. “Descartes is the father of modern philosophy and of the spirit of Cartesianism — what differentiates him from the scholastics which he displaces may be succinctly formulated as follows: [.] 3) the multifarious argumentation of the Middle Ages is replaced by a series of inferences which are often dependent upon not very obvious premises.” Anticartesian texts, Aubier. Cartesian concepts are linked to the idea of the world like the written book in mathematical language.
Aristotle Politics, I, VII, 1.
Cf. Romain Laufer and Catherine Paradeise, Le Prince Bureaucraté: Machiavel au Pays du Marketing, Flammarion, 1982. To be published in 1989 by Transaction Books (New Brunswick, USA) under the tide “Marketing Democracy: opinion and media formation.”
Laufer and Paradeise, op. cit.
“Positivism, as it developed in the second half of the nineteenth century, signals the most marked decline in rhetoric which was eliminated from the French lycee programs in 1885.” Perelman, Le champ de Vargumentation, Brussels, 1970, p.29.
On the history of counting in politics since the French Revolution, see Laufer and Paradeise, op. cit. «du vote au sondage», pp. 86–114.
“In reality, there is no true political party (1815–1875). Even at the heart of the Parliament, parties are inorganic.” Francois Borella, Les Partis politiques en Europe, Collection Point, le Seuil, 1984, p. 114.
Cf. Romain Laufer and Alain Burlaud, Management Public: Gestion et Légitimité, Dalloz 1980.
Cf. Laufer and Paradeise, op. cit.
On marketing as rhetoric, see Romain Laufer, «Marketing, Sophistique et Légitimité», in Le plaisir de parler: Etudes de sophistique comparée (Actes du colloque «Qu’est-ce que la sophistique?» Cerisy, 7–17 September 1984. To appear).
Cf. Laufer and Paradeise, op. cit., pp. 289–345.
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Laufer, R. (1989). Rhetoric and Politics. In: Meyer, M. (eds) From Metaphysics to Rhetoric. Synthese Library, vol 202. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2593-9_13
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