Work · Political Philosophy & Ethics (20th–21st c.)
The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation
Written with Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca: an analysis of argument in law, politics and philosophy, where proof is impossible but reasoning is still possible – how speakers start from premises an audience accepts and win its adherence through association and dissociation of ideas.
Introduction
Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca published the two volumes of the “Traité de l’argumentation” in Paris in 1958, after ten years of joint work; the English translation “The New Rhetoric” appeared in 1969. Drawing on Aristotle’s rhetoric and topics and on a wide range of examples from law, politics, philosophy and literature, the book analyses the starting points of argument, the techniques of association – quasi-logical arguments, arguments based on the structure of reality, arguments that establish it – and the dissociation of concepts. Central is the idea of the audience, including the “universal audience” of all reasonable people. The book became, with Toulmin’s “The Uses of Argument”, a founding work of modern argumentation theory.
Connections
Builds on
- Organonc. 350 BCE · Aristotle
- On Justice1945 · Chaïm Perelman
More works by Chaïm Perelman
- 1945On Justice
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