John Dewey's ideas on politics derive from his epistemology of inquiry as practical problem-solving. Dewey's philosophy is important for democratic theory because it emphasizes deliberation through questioning. However, Dewey's philosophy shares with positivism the same conception of answering as exclusively the dissolution of questions. While Dewey's ideas are distinct from positivism in important respects, he rejects a constitutive role for questioning by constructing knowledge as problem-solving via experience. The problem-solving ideal lends itself to a scientific conception of politics. Applying Michel (...) Meyer's philosophy of questioning, problematology, to Dewey's logic, reveals that Dewey's theory of inquiry is itself the product of an inquiry, confirming that questioning plays a constitutive role in knowledge. This suggests a problematological reconstruction of knowledge which extends Dewey's ideas by affirming an enhanced status for questioning. Grounding knowledge in the principle of questioning provides the basis for extending the rhetorical analysis of politics. (shrink)

This article reviews the recent work of Alan G. Gross , with prominent notice, as well, of works by Leah Ceccarelli, Celeste Condit, and Jeanne Fahnestock, among others, in order to sketch out developments in the rhetoric of science.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------.

Chaim Perelman invokes the idea of “universal audience” for explaining the nature of philosophical argumentation as rational rhetoric. As opposed to this view, centuries before Perelman, Socrates argues that philosophy should be conducted as a dialogue between concrete individuals with very specific qualities. The paper presents these different views in order to claim that the philosopher addresses neither a universal audience nor a particular other, but mainly and essentially the philosopher herself/himself. This brings to light the problem of self-deception as (...) a central problem of philosophical thinking. In posing this view the paper uses Nietzsche’s definition of “the will to truth” as the will not to deceive, not even myself. (shrink)