This article deals with the relationship between argumentation and persuasion. It defends the idea that these two concepts are not as opposed as all too often said. If it is important to recognize their differences (there are argumentative discourses without persuasion and persuasive discourses without argumentation), there is nevertheless an overlap, in which characteristics are taken from both. We propose to call this overlap “persuasive argumentation”. In order to bridge argumentation and persuasion, we will first distinguish the latter from manipulation. (...) In the second part of this article, we will analyze four cases of persuasive argumentation: the enthymeme, a few rhetorical figures, narration and visual argumentation. (shrink)

In this paper the thesis is argued that there is no need for a special legal logic to deal with the defeasibility of legal arguments. An important argument for this thesis is that legal judgements ask for a complete justification and that such a complete justification requires a deductively valid argument.

Perelman's work has been very influential in various disciplines, among them philosophy, rhetoric and law. Especially the typology of argumentative schemes which he developed together with L. Olbrechts-Tyteca has been considered as an excellent classification of arguments in natural language. There are, however, some weaknesses of this typology which make its application to empirical research quite difficult, namely, the lack of explicitness and the absence of clear criteria of demarcation. Still, the typology is highly relevant for empirical research, if these (...) weaknesses are removed. This is illustrated with an example: the scheme called ‘the division of the whole into its parts’ by Perelman/Olbrechts-Tyteca is described explicitly and then applied to the analysis of a sample of everyday arguments (mostly taken from newspapers). (shrink)

Theoretical interest in Perelman's thought is linked, for the main part, to the place he accords to the notion of argumentation, defined in his work in reference to the Greek philosophy, as represented by Plato and Aristotle, in contrast to the assertions of the sophists and rhetors. He separates the notion of demonstration and that of argumentation and supports his position on an analysis of the debates which were common in the sophistic and rhetoric period.It is in different ways that (...) the notion of argumentation comes into the work of Perelman. By taking up again the analysis of justice with the aim of removing the various strata of meaning which had accumulated on it as a result of the reductions of Plato and the dialectical analyses of Aristotle, Perelman showed that the theory of argumentation transcends the domain of right in which it is rooted and ought not be abandoned to lawyers only. Thus, he follows a train of thought to which he accords a certain nobilty in the name of the new rhetoric. This manner of considering the relationship of the moderns to the Greeks leads him to set up the notion of argumentation in his own texts, where it demonstrates a logical retreat which enables him to work back from Aristotle to Plato and from him to the rhetors and sophists, whose discourse is defined on the level of the self-referential.The exemplary character of Perelman's work is on account of this rehabilitation of argumentation in the old rhetoric which will be examined here. (shrink)

The author holds that the old theory according to which philosophy is the matrix of argumentation studies must be entirely reviewed currently. He argues that argumentation theory, as an interdisciplinary domain, may start playing, in new terms, the role which ― in the Cartesian tree ― was that of philosophy as the trunk of the different branches of human knowledge, as long as a set of requirements, which he lists, were met.