Le but de cet article est de jeter quelques lumières sur le fonctionnement de la polyphonie dans le discours et l’argumentation juridiques, en insistant sur l’importance des notions-clés d’(in)défaisabilité, de présomption, de polyphonie, d’échelle argumentative. Les premiers linéaments d’une théorie générale de l’argumentation juridique sont ici exposés (1). La théorie en question se veut topique (raisonnements défaisables) et logique (raisonnements indéfaisables). Face aux théories unidimensionnelles (réductionnisme logique ou réductionnisme topique) une théorie bidimensionnelle est souhaitable, qui inclue à la fois le (...) traitement des raisonnements défaisables et indéfaisables. Afin de développer cette esquisse de théorie de l’argumentation juridique, plusieurs notions sont définies (2): la défaisabilité (2.1), la présomption (2.2), la polyphonie (2.3), les échelles argumentatives (2.4). Enfin, un tableau général de quelques marqueurs argumentatifs résume les différents rôles que peuvent jouer les arguments dans la polyphonie du droit (3). (shrink)

ABSTRACT This study explores the influence of the French Symbolist poet, novelist, and literary critic Remy de Gourmont on Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca's conception of dissociation. It proposes translatio—the medieval trope describing a transfer of ideas—as a lens through which to read the significance of Gourmont's thought on the New Rhetoric Project. Thus forgoing more traditional comparative approaches such as intertextuality, this study argues that translatio serves here as a particularly valuable conceptual tool: it unveils the evolution of Perelman's (...) thought over time, and Olbrechts-Tyteca's significant contribution to it; it also provides a clearer understanding of the relationship between association and dissociation in the NRP than what is generally understood by scholars of the Traité. More importantly, translatio unveils the features that make their conception of dissociation one of the truly innovative aspects of the NRP. (shrink)

Central to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s philosophical revival of rhetoric and dialectic is the importance given to the temporal character of argumentation. Unlike demonstration, situated within the “empty time” of a single instant, the authors of The New Rhetoric understand argumentation as an action that unfolds within the “full time” of meaningful human life. By taking a broader view of his work beyond The New Rhetoric, I first outline Perelman’s understanding of time and temporality and the challenge that it poses for (...) the study of argumentation. Next, I emphasize the distinction between argumentation’s internal and external temporal structures, and then show how Perelman problematizes a static view of a number of basic argumentative concepts by bringing out their essentially temporal character. Finally, in clarifying what is at stake in Perelman’s account, I conclude by drawing attention to a number of issues in contemporary argumentation studies that may benefit from a reconsideration of Perelman’s analysis of time. (shrink)

This article provides a basic general introduction to Ramus, and evaluates his role in the history of logic and rhetoric, especially with relation to the study of argumentation. The author agrees with Ong and other historians of logic that Ramus is not to be taken seriously as a logician, and that his undoubted importance in the history of ideas is to be found elsewhere.Ramus advocates a belief in nature, experience and reason, and rejects the reliance on the authority of ancient (...) philosophers, above all Aristotle, though ‘experience’ does not mean scientific experiment and, paradoxically, includes the example of great philosophers and writers. In the end Ramus is seen as responsible for substituting for ancient classical rhetoric an entirely ornamental rhetoric of figures which was to take over education (with the exception of the Jesuit schools) almost until our own day. This curtailing and diminishing of rhetoric is seen as a degeneration. Ancient five-part rhetoric had been concerned with convincing and persuading: Aristotle distinguished the analytic, scientific reasoning of logic, from dialectic which was based on opinion and probability and had close links with rhetoric; by the time of Cicero and Quintilian, who addressed themselves to jurists and politicians, logic has given way to dialectic. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance the two become assimilated; the evolution of this is traced here through the thirteenth-century Summulae logicales of Peter of Spain to the fifteenth-century German humanist logician Rudolph Agricola, who influenced Ramus partly through the intermediary of Johann Sturm. Ramus took over their topical theories but restricted them to logic/dialectic, and left rhetoric with little more than tropes and figures. He believed that there was only one method for teaching all the arts, and one dialectic common to them all. The distinction between analytical and dialectical has disappeared, with far-reaching consequences for the study of argumentation. Over the centuries logic has lost its connection with controversy and persuasion. With the development of the post-Cartesian, post-Baconian emphasis on the clarity of scientific discourse, and the mid-nineteenth-century interest in mathematical and formal logic, the process was complete. Argumentation, or the ‘new rhetoric’, aims to fill the gap thus created. (shrink)