Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Pragmatic Justification and Perelman’s Philosophical Rhetoric

  • Chapter
Practical Reasoning in Human Affairs

Part of the book series: Synthese Library ((SYLI,volume 183))

Abstract

It is because of the possibility of argumentation which provides reasons, but not compelling reasons, that it is possible to escape the dilemma: adherence to an objectively and universally valid truth, or recourse to suggestion and violence to secure acceptance for our opinions and decisions. The theory of argumentation will help to develop what a logic of value judgments has tried in vain to provide, namely the justification of the possibility of a human community in the sphere of action when this justification cannot be based on a reality or objective truth.1

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 169.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. Chaim Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, trans. John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1969), p. 514.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Ray E. McKerrow, ‘Rhetorical Validity: An Analysis of Three Perspectives on the Justification of Rhetorical Argument,’ Journal of the American Forensic Association 13 (1977), 133–141.

    Google Scholar 

  3. ‘Rhetorical Validity,’ 135.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Ray E. McKerrow, ‘Rationality and Reasonableness in a Theory of Argument,’ in Advances in Argumentation Theory and Research, ed. J. Robert Cox and Charles Arthur Willard (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1982), pp. 113–114.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Robert Audi, ‘A Theory of Practical Reasoning,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 17 (1980), 32.

    Google Scholar 

  6. J. Robert Cox and Charles Arthur Willard, ‘Introduction: The Field of Argumentation,’ Advances, p. xi.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Walter Weimer, Notes on the Methodology of Scientific Research, (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1979), p. 9.

    Google Scholar 

  8. McKerrow, ‘Rationality and Reasonableness,’ p. 115.

    Google Scholar 

  9. David Annis, ‘A Contextualist Theory of Epistemic Justification,’ American Philosophical Quartely 15 (1978), 213; see Hilary Kornblith, ‘Beyond Foundationalism and the Coherence Theory,’ Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980), 600-603.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Nicholas Rescher, ‘Foundationalism, Coherentism, and the Idea of Cognitive Systematization,’ Journal of Philosophy 71 (1974), 704–705.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Kornblith, ‘Beyond Foundationalism,’ 601–603; for a brief critique of Rescher’s theory, see Mark Pastin, ‘Foundationalism Redux,’ Journal of Philosophy 71 (1974), 709-710.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Weimer, p. 9.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Keith Lehrer, ‘systematic Justification: Selections from Knowledge’, in Essays on Knowledge and Justification, ed. George Pappas and Marshall Swain (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1978), p. 291; see McKerrow, ‘Rationality and Reasonableness,’ p. 116.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Weimer, p. 48.

    Google Scholar 

  15. Annis, 213-219.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Annis, 215.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Annis, 215.

    Google Scholar 

  18. Annis, 216.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Annis, 217-218; see Stephen Toulmin, The Uses of Argument (London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1958).

    Google Scholar 

  20. Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge (New York: Basic Books, 1983), p. 167.

    Google Scholar 

  21. McKerrow, ‘Rationality and Reasonableness,’ pp. 120–121.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Rescher, 708.

    Google Scholar 

  23. George Pappas, ‘Ongoing Knowledge,’ Synthese 55 (1983), 253–267.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. McKerrow, ‘Rationality and Reasonableness,’ pp. 108–112.

    Google Scholar 

  25. Joseph Margolis, ‘Pragmatism Without Foundations,’ American Philosphical Quarterly 21 (1984), 76.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Karl-Otto Apel, Towards a Transformation of Philosophy, trans, by Glyn Adey and David Frisby (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), pp. 282, 280; quoted in Margolis, 77.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Margolis, 77.

    Google Scholar 

  28. Margolis, 76.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Chaim Perelman, The New Rhetoric and the Humanities, trans. William Kluback (Boston, MA: D. Reidel, 1979), p. 56; See Perelman, ‘The New Rhetoric and the Rhetoricians: Remembrances and Comments,’ QJS 70 (1984), 189.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  30. Perelman, Humanities, p. 55.

    Google Scholar 

  31. Perelman, Justice, Law, and Argument (Boston, MA: D. Reidel, 1980), p. 58.

    Google Scholar 

  32. Perelman, Justice, p. 58.

    Google Scholar 

  33. Perelman, Humanities, p. 58.

    Google Scholar 

  34. Perelman, Humanities, p. 111.

    Google Scholar 

  35. Perelman, Humanities, p. 114.

    Google Scholar 

  36. Perelman, Humanities, p. 115; see William Kluback and M. Becker, ‘The Signif-icance of Chaim Perelman’s Philosophy of Rhetoric,’ Revue Internationale de Philosophie 33 (1979), 33-46.

    Google Scholar 

  37. Evelyn Barker, ‘A Neo-Aristotelian Approach to Dialectical Reasoning,’ Revue Internationale de Philosophie 34 (1980), 482–489. See Perelman, Justice, p. 150.

    Google Scholar 

  38. Perelman, Humanities, pp. 117–123.

    Google Scholar 

  39. Perelman, Humanities, p. 71.

    Google Scholar 

  40. Walter R. Fisher, ‘Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral Argument,’ Communication Monographs 51 (1984), 4–6.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Perelman, Humanities, pp. 117–118.

    Google Scholar 

  42. Perelman, Justice, p. 65.

    Google Scholar 

  43. Perelman, The Idea of Justice and the Problem of Argument, trans. J. Petrie (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), p. 97.

    Google Scholar 

  44. Perelman, Idea of Justice, p. 97.

    Google Scholar 

  45. Perelman, Idea of Justice, p. 132.

    Google Scholar 

  46. Perelman, Humanities, p. 127.

    Google Scholar 

  47. Perelman, Justice, p. 170.

    Google Scholar 

  48. Perelman, Justice, p. 173.

    Google Scholar 

  49. Perelman, Idea of Justice, p. 117.

    Google Scholar 

  50. Perelman, Idea of Justice, p. 133.

    Google Scholar 

  51. Perelman, ‘Remembrances and Comments,’ 193; see Perelman, ‘Philosophy and Rhetoric,’ in Advances, trans. Judy F. Merryman, p. 296; Perelman, Justice, p. 61.

    Google Scholar 

  52. William D. Harpine, ‘Can Rhetoric and Dialectic Serve the Purposes of logic,’ Philosophy and Rhetoric 18 (1985), 96–112.

    Google Scholar 

  53. Perelman, Justice, p. 61.

    Google Scholar 

  54. Perelman, New Rhetoric, pp. 83–85; see Perelman, Humanities, p. 159; J. Robert Cox, ‘The Die is Cast: Topical and Ontological Dimensions of the Locus of the Irreparable,’ QJS 68 (1982), 227-239.

    Google Scholar 

  55. Perelman, Justice, p. 155.

    Google Scholar 

  56. See Harold Zyskind, ‘Introduction,’ in Perelman, Humanities, ix–xxii. (Reprinted from ‘The New Rhetoric and Formalism,’ Revue Internationale de Philosophie 33 (1979), 18-32.)

    Google Scholar 

  57. Perelman, Idea of Justice, pp. 81–82.

    Google Scholar 

  58. Perelman, Idea of Justice, pp. 82, 85.

    Google Scholar 

  59. Perelman, Justice, p. 73.

    Google Scholar 

  60. Eric Wm. Skopec, ‘Rhetoric, Knowledge, and the Universal Audience in Chaim Perelman’s New Rhetoric’ paper presented at SCA Doctoral Honors Seminar, Temple Univ., (1972), p. 6.

    Google Scholar 

  61. Perelman, ‘Remembrances and Comments,’ 190–192; Perelman is responding to “errors” in several essays: see John Ray, “Perelman’s Universal Audience, QJS 64 (1978), 361-75; Joseph Wenzel, ‘Perspectives on Argument,’ in Proceedings of the Summer Conference on Argumentation, ed. Jack Rhodes and Sara Newell (Annandale, VA:SCA/AFA, 1980), 112-133.

    Google Scholar 

  62. Perelman, Justice, p. 72; see Perelman, ‘Remembrances and Comments,’ 191.

    Google Scholar 

  63. Perelman, Justice, pp. 72–73; see Perelman,‘Philosophy and Rhetoric,’ p. 293.

    Google Scholar 

  64. Perelman, Humanities, p. 60; see Perelman, ‘Philosophy and Rhetoric,’ p. 293.

    Google Scholar 

  65. Perelman, Justice, p. 74.

    Google Scholar 

  66. Perelman, Justice, p. 74.

    Google Scholar 

  67. Perelman, Justice, p. 63.

    Google Scholar 

  68. Perelman, Justice, p. 65.

    Google Scholar 

  69. Perelman, Justice, pp. 163–174.

    Google Scholar 

  70. Perelman, ‘Remembrances and Comments,’ 193.

    Google Scholar 

  71. Perelman, ‘Philosophy and Rhetoric,’ 293.

    Google Scholar 

  72. Perelman, ‘Philosophy and Rhetoric,’ 293.

    Google Scholar 

  73. Perelman, ‘Rhetoric and Politics,’ Philosophy and Rhetoric 17 (1984), 133.

    Google Scholar 

  74. Michel Foucault, ‘Politics and Ethics,’ in Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow, trans. Catherine Porter (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), p. 374.

    Google Scholar 

  75. Gilbert Harman, ‘Reasoning and Explanatory Coherence,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 17 (1980), 154.

    Google Scholar 

  76. See Ray E. McKerrow, ‘Critical Rhetoric and the Discourse of Power,’ paper presented at SCA Convention, Chicago, 1984.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Raymie E. McKerrow
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Communication, The Ohio State University, USA

    James L. Golden  & Joseph J. Pilotta  & 

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 1986 D. Reidel Publishing Company

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

McKerrow, R.E. (1986). Pragmatic Justification and Perelman’s Philosophical Rhetoric. In: Golden, J.L., Pilotta, J.J. (eds) Practical Reasoning in Human Affairs. Synthese Library, vol 183. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4674-3_11

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4674-3_11

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-8578-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-009-4674-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation