Rational and Personal

Perelman proves how interconnected rhetoric is with philosophy. I think the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy is one that I would have never guessed exists until I took this course, which often feels like a philosophy class. It was funny, I was working on the synthesis paper a little while ago and a friend asked me to define rhetoric...it took forever because I could never settle on an answer. My friend responded something like, "It's not that hard, it's how you argue." (Before this class I would have said something like that too.) I responded, "It cannot be that simple!!!" I think that the reason that rhetoric is so complex is because it is rooted in our values...which is a very complex system. There is a lot more that goes into our arguments than evidence. Evidence is created, chosen, formulated by our narratives, who we are, and the values that shape our identity (kind of like Ramage claimed in ch. 2). Perelman claims, "The preeminent realm of argumentation, dialectic, and rhetoric is that in which values come into play" (160).

Last week's post I talked about binaries (yay!) in rhetoric being rational and imaginative, like of what Campbell was talking about. Perelman, I noticed, confirms that a large part of rhetoric is gaining both of the binaries, blending them in a way that appeals to an audience while supporting a claim. He claims that how we argue rationally is mathematical. "A hypothesis, to be accepted, must be supported by good reasons, recognized as such by other people, members of the same scientific community. The status of knowledge thus ceases to be impersonal because every scientific thought becomes a human one, i.e., fallible, situated in and subjected to controversy" (159). What I found interesting about his approach to argumentation is that he claims that it is mathematical, we form a hypothesis (we often use "thesis") and wrap evidence around it to persuade our audience, but also personal. Every scientific thought is rooted in our values. This quote shattered my conception of there being a rational binary as well as an personal one. Our rationality is formed by our personality, or values. Rhetoric is personal and rational at the same time. "In identifying this rhetoric with the general theory of persuasive discourse, which seeks to gain both the intellectual and the emotional adherence to any sort of audience, we affirm that every discourse which does not claim an impersonal validity belongs to rhetoric" (161-162).  I never have thought of rhetoric being both a rational and personal way of approaching argumentation.

Relating this back to Ramage's concepts of statsis, toolmin and Burke's Pentad, Perelman could claim that our values form our policies and evidence for our claim (which is a human thought rooted in values). I like thinking of purpose as motives, like Kelly brought up last week. Our motives are formed by our values and our motives guide how we form a claim and our evidence in supporting that claim is chosen by our values.