Philosophical Theories of Chaim Perelman

The Belgian philosopher and law professor has spent his professional career specializing in an unexpected area. Carlin Romano observes:

Chaim Perelman is a grand anomaly. His early training and writings screamed "logical empiricist" . . . And like his country's foremost cultural export - the Belgian waffle - [he] . . . is nothing if not crisp, logical, and linear. So what's he doing devoting his mature career to a disreputable atavism like rhetoric . . . generally defined as flimflam stuff for speech teachers? Rediscovering Western philosophy, that's what (1989, p. 11).

In one of the earliest of Perelman's writings covered in this paper (December 22, 1955), the philosopher asks, "How do we apply reason to values?" He proposes that a starkly mathematical approach, seeking to pinpoint an ultimate truth through the strict appl

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ts out to persuade a given audience and that this audience determines some of the initial points from which the argument proceeds. In an article originally published in 1951, Perelman contends, "What is accepted by certain persons is not necessarily accepted by others; and so the audience may extend from the individual himself . . . through the whole series of particular audiences to the universal audience" (1989, p. 44), and he points out that this "universal audience" is only an ideal concept, a group that changes with different times and with different speakers. In The New Rhetoric, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca expand on this idea, considering issues such as the size of the audience and the ways in which a speaker adapts himself or herself to the circumstances of the argument. The volume laid out the groundwork for all of Perelman's subsequent consideration and refinement of his thinking about rhetoric. He did not, however, propose that any of his writings were the last word on the subject. In fact, The New Rhetoric serves as a mere starting point for the development of Perelman's theories. Ray D. Dearin identifies a key to understanding the flexibility Perelman brings to his thinking. Dearin notes that Perelman differe
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Approximate Word count = 1413
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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