Thinker · TH-0099
Chaim Perelman
Chaïm Perelman was a Polish-born Belgian philosopher who taught at the Free University of Brussels. Finding formal logic unable to account for reasoning about…
Chaïm Perelman was a Polish-born Belgian philosopher who taught at the Free University of Brussels. Finding formal logic unable to account for reasoning about values, law and practical decisions, he and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca studied how arguments actually win adherence. Their 'new rhetoric' treats argumentation as always addressed to an audience, and revived rhetoric as a serious subject for philosophy and legal theory.
Key ideas
- Argumentation aims at the adherence of an audience, not at formal demonstration.
- The 'universal audience' is an argument's idealised standard of reasonableness.
- Reasoning about values and justice is rational even though it is not deductive.
- Legal reasoning is a central model of practical argument.
Major works
- Traité de l'argumentation: La nouvelle rhétorique (1958, with Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca; The New Rhetoric, 1969)
- L'empire rhétorique (1977; The Realm of Rhetoric)
In the conversation
- Question When Sor Juana protests her own ignorance, is that rhetoric or argument, and does it matter?
On the map
The questions in The Coordinates of Thought where Chaim Perelman takes a place.
- 4.2.3 Rhetoric Is persuading someone different from giving them a reason?