I've uploaded a Chaim Perelman piece called "The New Rhetoric: A Theory of Practical Reasoning," up to D2L. Please bring a copy of this to class on Monday - it's dense enough that we'll take a couple of days to work through it, but please try to read it by Monday. I'd like you to come to class with three questions about things you don't understand, written down and ready to ask - that's where we'll begin in class.
Perelman came to rhetoric, as you will see in his piece, because he needed a way to create logical arguments that could support value judgements. On the one hand, he came to believe that demonstration, which you can think of in the same category as a mathematical, scientific, or philosophical proof, could never "prove" the truth of a value judgement. On the other hand, he was not willing to accept a relativist position claiming that all "truths" were equal. After initially stating that there were no ways to defend value judgements logically, he went looking for a method, and he found one in in Aristotle, though it took some tweaking.
Perelman was especially interested in epideictic rhetoric, the rhetoric of praise and blame, because that sort of rhetoric depends on audience buy-in to certain kinds of values. In forensic rhetoric and deliberative rhetoric (as you'll remember, judicial and political), the arguments are about fact. In epideictic rhetoric, the arguments are about values. Furthermore, the success of the argument depends on the rhetor and the audience agreeing with the same sort of value judgements.
For Perelman, one of the major tasks of the rhetor is to frame an argument in a way that begins from a point of agreement with the audience (you'll see the connection here to the idea of stasis). If rhetoric is going to work, that is, the starting point of its work must be a place of agreement. That place can be based in truths or in fact or in presumptions - already agreed to by the audience (in the case of truths and fact) or opinions you don't need to defend (like, "We shouldn't discriminate on the basis of race," a presumption in our era that in not so recent eras would have been exactly opposite) - facts and truths are thus a little more solid and less likely to change over time than presumptions. But that place of agreement can also be based in what Perelman calls "values, hierarchies, and the
loci of the preferable." It's his exploration of values, and the way that he leans on epideictic rhetoric, that's the "new" in "new rhetoric."
That's a fast and dirty intro means to ease you into it - when you read, don't pummel yourself for not understanding some parts - instead, pay attention to two aspects as you read: 1) what makes sense to you as you read it? How can you use that to help understand larger ideas in the piece and 2) what is it you don't understand? My point with that question is that you identify as specifically as possible the aspect of whatever you read that is confusing you - that part will likely be the basis of the 3 questions you bring to class on Monday.
Have a good weekend.
