This essay explores Johnstone's idea that "rhetoric is a wedge." In particular, it explores the place of this idea in Johnstone's philosophy of argument, the need to confront this idea with argument, and ways of confronting it with ad rem and ad hominem arguments.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kinship:The Relationship Between Johnstone's Ideas about Philosophical Argument and the Pragma-Dialectical Theory of ArgumentationFrans H. van Eemeren and Peter Houtlosser1. Johnstone on the Nature of Philosophical ArgumentAs he himself declared in Validity and Rhetoric in Philosophical Argument (1978, 1), the late philosopher Henry W. Johnstone Jr. devoted a long period of his professional life to clarifying the nature of philosophical argument. His well-known view was that philosophical arguments (...) are sui generis, i.e., not to be judged by the standards of argumentation in science or everyday discourse. Philosophical arguments are not ad rem, but are based on premises that are expressed or implied commitments of a party in dialogue. This is why philosophical argumentation is, according to Johnstone, always ad hominem. In philosophical argumentation, every ad rem argument begs the question.Usually, ad hominem argumentation is dismissed as invalid. Johnstone, however, maintains that making use of argumentum ad hominem is the only way to establish a philosophical conclusion. In an argumentum ad hominem, inferences are drawn from propositions stated or implied by the other party and critical questions are raised about the conclusions that were drawn, so that it can be used to refute a philosophical position by showing that this position is inconsistent. As Walton (2001) rightly observes, this type of ad hominem argumentation boils down to arguing from commitments of the other party, i.e., ex concessis.The use of ad hominem argumentation as the criticism of a position in terms of its own presuppositions is, in Johnstone's view, the only valid argument in philosophy, if any philosophical argument is indeed valid. All philosophical polemic is in this perspective in fact addressed ad hominem. This applies not only to philosophical argumentation that concerns self-referential refutation but also to other ad hominem types of philosophical argumentation, including the tu quoque argument (1978, 11–12).According to Johnstone, there is no objective criterion for determining the validity of ad hominem argumentation. Validity must, says Johnstone in the [End Page 51] epilogue of his collected essays on philosophical argument, be viewed as "a regulative ideal" (135). Much earlier, Johnstone had already come to the conclusion that "the valid argument is the one that maintains philosophical discussion" (38). It is this self-perpetuating feature that is the distinctive rationality of philosophy. By forcing the interlocutor to elaborate his philosophical position rather than just repeat it, the gap between the interlocutors is bridged.In order to distinguish between constructive persuasive argumentation and mere repetition or other forms of paralyzing the discourse, the line must be drawn between responsible and irresponsible persuasion. This is a problem for Johnstone. Where the Ancients solved the problem by insisting that the persuader be virtuous, Johnstone proposed to base the distinction between responsible and irresponsible persuasion on the attitude of the philosopher and his interest in maintaining the philosophical enterprise. The philosopher is a critic who criticizes con amore. His intention to do so, however, is revealed "only in the way he goes about his work" (84).A more down to earth criterion for responsible persuasion that Johnstone proposed is that the discourse should not tend to degenerate. Logic, as the discipline concerned with reason, serves to prevent the discussion from degenerating, but it can do so only if the parties concerned have jointly committed themselves to certain logical principles. If in philosophical argument a defendant is under no obligation to acknowledge an inconsistency when the other party points out an inconsistency in his position, then the other party's criticism cannot count as valid. According to Johnstone, however, it will depend on the parties' presuppositions whether or not they consider two statements as being inconsistent. In other words, what is inconsistent for the one party may not be inconsistent for the other party.Few obligations are imposed on everyone; most obligations arise from commitments made by specific individuals or groups of individuals. As Johnstone says, "Even the cogent philosophical argument is not, of course, absolutely cogent; it is cogent only relatively to interlocutors who maintain the premises on which it depends" (27). Once we abandon the search for objective conditions under which philosophical arguments can be valid, according... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kinship:The Relationship Between Johnstone's Ideas about Philosophical Argument and the Pragma-Dialectical Theory of ArgumentationFrans H. van Eemeren and Peter Houtlosser1. Johnstone on the Nature of Philosophical ArgumentAs he himself declared in Validity and Rhetoric in Philosophical Argument (1978, 1), the late philosopher Henry W. Johnstone Jr. devoted a long period of his professional life to clarifying the nature of philosophical argument. His well-known view was that philosophical arguments (...) are sui generis, i.e., not to be judged by the standards of argumentation in science or everyday discourse. Philosophical arguments are not ad rem, but are based on premises that are expressed or implied commitments of a party in dialogue. This is why philosophical argumentation is, according to Johnstone, always ad hominem. In philosophical argumentation, every ad rem argument begs the question.Usually, ad hominem argumentation is dismissed as invalid. Johnstone, however, maintains that making use of argumentum ad hominem is the only way to establish a philosophical conclusion. In an argumentum ad hominem, inferences are drawn from propositions stated or implied by the other party and critical questions are raised about the conclusions that were drawn, so that it can be used to refute a philosophical position by showing that this position is inconsistent. As Walton (2001) rightly observes, this type of ad hominem argumentation boils down to arguing from commitments of the other party, i.e., ex concessis.The use of ad hominem argumentation as the criticism of a position in terms of its own presuppositions is, in Johnstone's view, the only valid argument in philosophy, if any philosophical argument is indeed valid. All philosophical polemic is in this perspective in fact addressed ad hominem. This applies not only to philosophical argumentation that concerns self-referential refutation but also to other ad hominem types of philosophical argumentation, including the tu quoque argument (1978, 11–12).According to Johnstone, there is no objective criterion for determining the validity of ad hominem argumentation. Validity must, says Johnstone in the [End Page 51] epilogue of his collected essays on philosophical argument, be viewed as "a regulative ideal" (135). Much earlier, Johnstone had already come to the conclusion that "the valid argument is the one that maintains philosophical discussion" (38). It is this self-perpetuating feature that is the distinctive rationality of philosophy. By forcing the interlocutor to elaborate his philosophical position rather than just repeat it, the gap between the interlocutors is bridged.In order to distinguish between constructive persuasive argumentation and mere repetition or other forms of paralyzing the discourse, the line must be drawn between responsible and irresponsible persuasion. This is a problem for Johnstone. Where the Ancients solved the problem by insisting that the persuader be virtuous, Johnstone proposed to base the distinction between responsible and irresponsible persuasion on the attitude of the philosopher and his interest in maintaining the philosophical enterprise. The philosopher is a critic who criticizes con amore. His intention to do so, however, is revealed "only in the way he goes about his work" (84).A more down to earth criterion for responsible persuasion that Johnstone proposed is that the discourse should not tend to degenerate. Logic, as the discipline concerned with reason, serves to prevent the discussion from degenerating, but it can do so only if the parties concerned have jointly committed themselves to certain logical principles. If in philosophical argument a defendant is under no obligation to acknowledge an inconsistency when the other party points out an inconsistency in his position, then the other party's criticism cannot count as valid. According to Johnstone, however, it will depend on the parties' presuppositions whether or not they consider two statements as being inconsistent. In other words, what is inconsistent for the one party may not be inconsistent for the other party.Few obligations are imposed on everyone; most obligations arise from commitments made by specific individuals or groups of individuals. As Johnstone says, "Even the cogent philosophical argument is not, of course, absolutely cogent; it is cogent only relatively to interlocutors who maintain the premises on which it depends" (27). Once we abandon the search for objective conditions under which philosophical arguments can be valid, according... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kinship:The Relationship Between Johnstone's Ideas about Philosophical Argument and the Pragma-Dialectical Theory of ArgumentationFrans H. van Eemeren and Peter Houtlosser1. Johnstone on the Nature of Philosophical ArgumentAs he himself declared in Validity and Rhetoric in Philosophical Argument (1978, 1), the late philosopher Henry W. Johnstone Jr. devoted a long period of his professional life to clarifying the nature of philosophical argument. His well-known view was that philosophical arguments (...) are sui generis, i.e., not to be judged by the standards of argumentation in science or everyday discourse. Philosophical arguments are not ad rem, but are based on premises that are expressed or implied commitments of a party in dialogue. This is why philosophical argumentation is, according to Johnstone, always ad hominem. In philosophical argumentation, every ad rem argument begs the question.Usually, ad hominem argumentation is dismissed as invalid. Johnstone, however, maintains that making use of argumentum ad hominem is the only way to establish a philosophical conclusion. In an argumentum ad hominem, inferences are drawn from propositions stated or implied by the other party and critical questions are raised about the conclusions that were drawn, so that it can be used to refute a philosophical position by showing that this position is inconsistent. As Walton (2001) rightly observes, this type of ad hominem argumentation boils down to arguing from commitments of the other party, i.e., ex concessis.The use of ad hominem argumentation as the criticism of a position in terms of its own presuppositions is, in Johnstone's view, the only valid argument in philosophy, if any philosophical argument is indeed valid. All philosophical polemic is in this perspective in fact addressed ad hominem. This applies not only to philosophical argumentation that concerns self-referential refutation but also to other ad hominem types of philosophical argumentation, including the tu quoque argument (1978, 11–12).According to Johnstone, there is no objective criterion for determining the validity of ad hominem argumentation. Validity must, says Johnstone in the [End Page 51] epilogue of his collected essays on philosophical argument, be viewed as "a regulative ideal" (135). Much earlier, Johnstone had already come to the conclusion that "the valid argument is the one that maintains philosophical discussion" (38). It is this self-perpetuating feature that is the distinctive rationality of philosophy. By forcing the interlocutor to elaborate his philosophical position rather than just repeat it, the gap between the interlocutors is bridged.In order to distinguish between constructive persuasive argumentation and mere repetition or other forms of paralyzing the discourse, the line must be drawn between responsible and irresponsible persuasion. This is a problem for Johnstone. Where the Ancients solved the problem by insisting that the persuader be virtuous, Johnstone proposed to base the distinction between responsible and irresponsible persuasion on the attitude of the philosopher and his interest in maintaining the philosophical enterprise. The philosopher is a critic who criticizes con amore. His intention to do so, however, is revealed "only in the way he goes about his work" (84).A more down to earth criterion for responsible persuasion that Johnstone proposed is that the discourse should not tend to degenerate. Logic, as the discipline concerned with reason, serves to prevent the discussion from degenerating, but it can do so only if the parties concerned have jointly committed themselves to certain logical principles. If in philosophical argument a defendant is under no obligation to acknowledge an inconsistency when the other party points out an inconsistency in his position, then the other party's criticism cannot count as valid. According to Johnstone, however, it will depend on the parties' presuppositions whether or not they consider two statements as being inconsistent. In other words, what is inconsistent for the one party may not be inconsistent for the other party.Few obligations are imposed on everyone; most obligations arise from commitments made by specific individuals or groups of individuals. As Johnstone says, "Even the cogent philosophical argument is not, of course, absolutely cogent; it is cogent only relatively to interlocutors who maintain the premises on which it depends" (27). Once we abandon the search for objective conditions under which philosophical arguments can be valid, according... (shrink)

This is an exploration of what Locke and Whately said about the Argumentatum ad Hominem, especially in the context of what they said about the other ad arguments, and with a view to ascertaining whether what they said lends support to the understanding of this argument implicit in Johnstone's thesis that all valid philosophical arguments are ad hominem. It is concluded that this support is forthcoming insofar as Locke and Whately had in mind an argument concerned with principles.The essay ends (...) with a brief reformulation of Johnstone's generalization regarding philosophical arguments. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.2 (2000) 101-115 [Access article in PDF] Case Study of the Use of a Circumstantial Ad Hominem in Political Argumentation Douglas Walton In the 1860s, Northern newspapers attacked Lincoln's policies by attacking his character, using the terms drunk, baboon, too slow, foolish, and dishonest. Steadily on the increase in political argumentation since then, the argumentum ad hominem has been carefully refined as an instrument of "oppo (...) tactics" and "going negative" by the public relations experts who now craft political campaigns at the national level. It has been so prominently used in the major political campaigns, debates, and advertisements of the past few years that there has even been a reaction against it--a feeling that we have gone too far in this direction and that some kind of restraint is needed. 1 But there has been no evidence of such restraint in the argumentation used in recent campaigns. Perhaps what might be helpful is a better understanding on the part of voters and campaigners of how to evaluate ad hominem arguments critically.How does the ad hominem argument really work as a way of molding public opinion, why is it so often so effective, and how can it be defended against? How can it be evaluated as a clearly identifiable type of argument, by some kind of objective standards, in a way that can be applied to particular cases? These appear to be tough questions, but recent research has made some not inconsiderable progress toward answering them.The purpose of this article is to present a new case study of a type of argument commonly used in political discourse, a case study that makes use of the dialectical normative framework for identifying and evaluating personal attack (ad hominem) arguments that is developed in a series of works by Henry W. Johnstone Jr. (1952); Alan Brinton (1985, 1995); Frans H. van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst (1984, 1995); Erik C. W. Krabbe and Douglas N. Walton (1993), Walton (1989, chap. 6; 1998); and van Eemeren, Grootendorst, Francisca Snoeck Henkemans et al. (1996). This particular case, although typical of so many ad hominem arguments currently [End Page 101] in use in political discourse, has some special features that turn out to be quite interesting not only in showing how the dialectical framework applies to cases, but also in advancing our knowledge of how the ad hominem type of argument works in political argumentation in a democratic system for which the media reportage of events is a big factor in influencing voting. 1. Framework for analysis and evaluation Although the argumentum ad hominem, or personal attack argument, has been traditionally treated as a fallacy in logic, recent research in argumentation (as cited above) shows that, in many cases,--including cases in political argumentation--ad hominem arguments, as used in conversational arguments, are not fallacious. Research has shown that, while some personal attack arguments can definitely be judged fallacious, many others are quite reasonable (when evaluated in the appropriate context), while still others should be evaluated as weak (insufficiently supported) but not fallacious. As shown in this case study, the real function of an ad hominem argument (when properly used) is to attack an arguer's credibility in order to criticize the argument she advocates.Before going any further, it is necessary to define some terminology brought to use in the research cited above. An ad hominem argument is the use of personal attack in a dialogue exchange between two parties, where the one party attacks the character of the other party as bad, in some respect, and then uses this attack as a basis for criticizing the other party's argument. An argument is fallacious if it is a special baptizable (Johnson 1987) type of argument that is used by one party in a dialogue exchange in such a way that it blocks or interferes with the collaborative realization of the goal of the type of dialogue in which the two participants are supposed to be engaged (Walton 1995). Thus, there is a difference between a weak... (shrink)

This is a critical examination of Johnstone's thesis that all valid philosophical arguments are ad hominem. I clarify his notions of valid, philosophical, and ad hominem. I illustrate the thesis with his refutation ofthe claim that only ordinary language is correct. r discuss his three supporting arguments (historical, theoretical, and intermediate). And r criticize the thesis with the objections that if an ad hominem argument is valid, it is really ad rem; that it's unclear how his own theoretical argument can (...) be ad hominem; that if an ad hominem argument is really valid, it would have to be based on the proponent's own assumptions; and that the thesis is not true of philosophical arguments that are constructive rather than critical. (shrink)

In the writings of Henry W. Johnstone, Jr. there can be found an evolving and gradually more sophisticated discussion of the relationship between rhetorical and dialectical argument. Johnstone's view on these matters was highly original, and at odds with the prevailing logical empiricism of the time, much like Toulmin's views on argumentation in The Uses of Argument (1958). In view of the rising importance of the issue of the relationship between rhetoric and informal logic, Johnstone's analysis of the (...) argumentum ad hominem, and its relationship to Hamblin's notion of commitment, is especially worth careful consideration. (shrink)

Personal reflections on the philosophical career of Henry Johnstone, B.S. Haverford College, 1942, and Ph.D. Harvard, 1950, professor at Williams College 1948-1952 and Pennsylvania State University, 1952 - 2000. Founder and editor of Philosophy and Rhetoric, Johnstone wrote eight books, including two logic texts, three monographs, and over 150 articles or reviews. The focus is on his efforts to resolve problems stemming from the conflict between the logical empiricism Johnstone embraced in his dissertation, and the arguments of his absolute (...) idealist colleagues at Williams, efforts he pursued in Philosophy and Argument (1959), and Validity and Rhetoric in Philosophical Argument (1978). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Proof and Persuasion in the Philosophical Debate about AbortionChris KaposyPhilosophers involved in debating the abortion issue often assume that the arguments they provide can offer decisive resolution.1 Arguments on the prolife side of the debate, for example, usually imply that it is rationally mandatory to view the fetus as having a right to life, or full moral standing.2 Such an account assumes that philosophical argument can compel the reader (...) to see the fetus in a certain way and that dissent risks irrationality.I wish to question this image of the use of philosophical argument in the abortion debate. I focus on the question of fetal moral standing, which is one of the subproblems in the debate. I am especially concerned with prolife arguments for fetal moral standing, since the prolife side must argue for a position that is compulsory. The prochoice side, in contrast, typically holds that people are entitled to believe what they want about the fetus’s moral standing.My position is that philosophical arguments should be understood as tools for persuasion in the abortion debate rather than as a method for discovering decisive proofs about the morality of abortion. I argue that because any one position on the moral standing of fetuses cannot be established decisively, law and policy should favour the prochoice position. In support of these conclusions, I present two common argumentative strategies used to suggest that the prolife view of the fetus is rationally [End Page 139] mandatory, and I illustrate why arguments involving these strategies do not compel us to view the fetus as having full moral standing.Framing the IssueIn order to show that abortion is wrong (in cases in which it is considered wrong), one must first establish that fetuses have full moral standing.3 It is a serious moral wrong to take the life of someone with full moral standing—this is part of what it means to have this status. The possessor of full moral standing is entitled to have his or her life protected. If abortion is wrong, then the fetus must have full moral standing, because without such standing, killing a fetus could be justified by the pregnant woman’s strong interest in ending an unwanted pregnancy. Those arguing against the moral permissibility of abortion must show that it is mandatory (in some way) to view the fetus as having full moral standing. There are a range of positions one could take with regard to the fetus’s status, from viewing the fetus as an incipient organism with no moral standing to seeing the fetus as gaining moral standing as the pregnancy progresses. But if it is mandatory to view the fetus as having full moral standing, all other positions must then be mistaken, incorrect, or somehow unjustified.This paper analyzes why philosophers opposed to abortion think it is mandatory to attribute full moral standing to fetuses. There are two popular argumentative strategies offering different accounts of the source of this obligation. The first strategy suggests that fetal full moral standing derives from morally relevant facts about the fetus. According to this line of argument, we are rationally obligated to view the fetus as having full moral standing because we cannot deny (without courting irrationality) that there are properties, characteristics, or attributes of the fetus that entitle it to this status.The second strategy is to claim that the fetus has full moral standing because this position is most consistent with our intuitions in cases unrelated to abortion. Philosophers taking this approach are fond of analogies comparing fetuses to comatose adults or to people at the end of life, for example. This strategy of appealing to your interlocutor’s sense of consistency I call the “shared-value” strategy.The two strategies map very well onto the distinction some have made between argumentum ad rem and argumentum ad hominem. The philosopher of rhetoric Henry Johnstone Jr. draws this distinction in very clear terms, and others in the history of philosophy make note of the difference [End Page 140] between these two types of arguments as well.4 The appeal to the facts (or argumentum ad rem) seeks to establish the truth of its... (shrink)

This article explores the modalities by which referring to past discursive performance of adversaries within a continuous polemical exchange is used in ad hominem attacks. Our starting point holds that in the context of lengthy debates, participants and third-party listeners share a rhetorical memory, which, dynamic and subjective as it may be, allows for the evaluation of participants’ characters based on their perceived discursive performances. By analysing opinion articles related to the Israeli political debate, this study shows how drawing (...) inference from adversaries’ prior statements and conduct is used to compromise their credibility as participants in the polemical exchange. It is found that, alongside supporting arguments from inconsistent commitment, previous discursive performance is mobilized to discredit speakers’ epistemic authority and their moral legitimacy. (shrink)

This article outlines criteria for the evaluation of the argumentum ad hominem (argument against the person, or personal attack in argument) that is traditionally a part of the curriculum in informal logic. The argument is shown to be a kind of criticism which works by shifting the burden of proof in dialogue through citing a pragmatic inconsistency in an arguer's position. Several specific cases of ad hominem argumentation which pose interesting problems in analyzing this type of criticism are studied.

An analysis of effectiveness of some of hume's arguments in a framework developed by the author. The author states his position that arguments attacking positions attempt to show that, Given the assumptions of a position, Certain consequences are incompatible with it--A valid species of "argumentum ad hominem". Although this species does not work for constructive philosophical "proofs," it will work inversely in arguments (defending such proofs) which cite possible objections. These charge "petitio": the objection assumes what the position denies or (...) "vice versa". Eight arguments are judged as "ad hominem" or as charging "petitio" and as effective or ineffective in either case. The analyses elaborate the author's position, And the mode of analysis is suggested as an adjunct to considering a philosopher's conclusions. (shrink)

Fichte's narrative persona in the Science of Knowledge is obnoxious. I try to disentangle regrettable signs of immaturity and paranoia from justifiable ad hominem arguments. Many of Fichte's ad hominem attacks on metaphysical realists are justified by his metaphysics and epistemology. We cannot criticize an important class of these arguments unless we criticize his epistemology and metaphysics. They are not matters of "style" separable from "substance". I show this inseparability, and point out a few inconsistencies, but otherwise do not comment (...) on Fichte's "substance". (shrink)

This paper combines methods of argumentation theory and artificial intelligence to extend existing work on the dialectical structure of crossexamination. The existing method used conflict diagrams to search for inconsistent statements in the testimony of a witness. This paper extends the method by using the inconsistency of commitments to draw an inference by the ad hominem argumentation scheme to the conclusion that the testimony is unreliable because of the bad ethical character for veracity of the witness.

The skeptical doubts entertained by Descartes give rise to seven distinct theses characterizable as solipsistic, each focused on one of three general epistemological problems, that of the reality of the perceived, that of the existence of the unperceived, and the so-called problem of the existence of an external world. The skeptical challenge in each case is concerned not with absolute certainty, but with the question of whether there is any warrant whatever for bridging the evidential gap between data and common-sense (...) tenets. ;The challenge is shown to be answerable neither with pragmatic considerations nor with semantic ones, nor by appeal either to usual perceptual procedures, or to the factual presuppositions of enquiry. Coherentist criteria of fit, consilience, and simplicity are equally uncompelling and irrelevant. Detailed examination shows charges of parasitism, whether self-referential, epistemic, conceptual, or linguistic, to fail against all but one form of Cartesian solipsism, that arising from the external world problem. In particular, it appears not only that the three assumptions of any linguistic parasitism argument, to wit, the ontocentricity of language, the impossibility of private language, and the logocentricity of thought, are each false, but also that solipsistic theses may be formulated either in revised English or in imagic thought. ;The conclusion dictated is that skepticism regarding the reality and existence of everyday objects is answerable only by a rational foundationalist enterprise building on the terrain of the sensuous flux of the radical skeptic. An introspective analysis of instances of thinking, whether non-symbolic, imagic, or linguistic, and of feeling and motivation shows an indispensable element of the thinking subject to be the tactual body. The accommodation of this circumstance makes forms of solipsism questioning the reality of the observed Googolizably arbitrary, and consequently their espousal irrational. Finally, an extrapolation of an inverse probability argument shows forms of solipsism denying the existence of the unobserved to be extremely unlikely to be true. The argument utilizes a method of random selection based on free choice, the one remaining option given the proscriptions against empirical knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper, I contend that evidence-focused strategies of science communication may be complemented by possibly more effective rhetorical arguments in current public debates on vaccines. I analyse the case of direct science communication - that is, communication of evidence - and show that it is difficult to effectively communicate evidential standards of science in the presence of well-equipped anti-science movements. Instead, I argue that effective rhetorical tools involve ad hominem strategies, that is, arguments involving claims of expertise. (...) I provide a rationale, and sketch a methodology, for using ad hominem arguments in science communication. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Philosophical Basis of RhetoricHenry W. JohnstoneI want to begin by distinguishing between what has a philosophical basis at all and what has none. Science, history, morals, and art have a philosophical basis. Fishing, tennis, needlecraft, and carpentry do not. The criterion that determines membership in each list is simple: an activity has a philosophical basis if, and only if, the practice of it distinguishes man from the animals. (...) It must be disqualified on the ground that some animals, as well as men, fish. It might be argued, however, that there is an art of fishing requiring tools utilizable by man alone, and that the ability to fish in this way distinguishes man form the animal. To be sure, in some cultures fishing with appropriate tools is necessary. In others, carpentry is. But if we came across a culture in which fishing did not occur, we would not say, "This creature does not fish; hence he is not a man'; and the same for carpentry. It may seem that the same question arises for science and history. Not all cultures are scientific. If science is indeed, as I maintain, necessary for men, what then prevents us from visiting some primitive tribe and saying, "These creatures have no science; hence they are not men"? The answer is that the culture we have encountered is prescientific. Even though its participants have at the moment no science, science is somehow "in the cards" for them. We would not characterize the nomads of Afghanistan as being in a pre-fishing era. We would not say that fishing was in the cards for them. Of course if the desert should become a sea, they will become fishermen, and there will have been a pre-fishing era. But it is not necessary to the character or status of the nomad that he represent either a pre-fishing or a fishing, or, for that matter, a post-fishing era. It is not necessary for man, however, that he be either prescientific man or scientific man or postscientific man. I add the last rubric to accommodate not only the tragic possibility of a cataclysm that could wipe out all humans capable of maintaining the tradition of science but also the ironic possibility that man might some day simply turn away from science. In either eventuality, man would be essentially characterized as a being living in a [End Page 15] postscientific era; that is, not merely as a being bereft of science, but as a being living a life either oriented to the cataclysm that had shattered the tradition of science or else oriented to the conviction that science is a thing of the past. The non-fishing nomad, on the other hand, need not take any position at all with regard to the nature or value of fishing. The possibility of fishing need receive no mention in any characterization of him.The principle I have roughly stated and exemplified implies that if rhetoric has a philosophical basis, it is necessary to man, in the sense that all men live in either a pre-rhetorical culture, or a rhetorical culture, or a post-rhetorical culture. Each of these cultures is characterized by a disposition toward rhetoric. In the pre-rhetorical era, even though man does not engage in any form of rhetoric that we can recognize, we can see rhetorical activity as in the cards for him. Perhaps someone will object that there never has been such an era; as long as man has existed, he has engaged in rhetoric. So much the better for my argument; for then it is all the more clearly the case that rhetoric is necessary to man. But if man has gone through a pre-rhetorical phase, he is distinguished form all nonhuman creatures in this respect. No one would say of rats, cats, or cows that they are not yet engaged in rhetoric, but that once the idea occurs to them they will be. But man is either rhetorical from the outset or fated to become so once a certain idea dawns upon him—this, at any rate, is what anyone would be claiming who asserted that rhetoric has a... (shrink)

This article focuses on Homers idea of reflexive rhetoric. The majority of Homeric deliberation scenes contain no deliberative calculi. One approach to this problem would be to generalize from the scenes where Odysseus uses deliberative calculi to those where he does not. One might argue, though, that data have to be transmitted to and outputted from a computer via interfaces, one where data are transformed into electrical impulses, and one where the output is printed as information. The deliberative calculus cannot (...) be the essential link between deliberation and persuasion, though it undoubtedly figures into the process of self-persuasion to the extent that it either explicitly or implicitly brings about a particular decision. In this perspective, the fact that Homer is frequently silent about deliberative calculi is irrelevant to the question of whether Odysseus persuades himself. The idea of Homeric rhetoric is alleged to pose the problem of anachronism. Moving toward an account of reflexive rhetoric allows to see in even greater detail the centrality of rhetoric to human condition. Accession Number: 18705553; Mifsud, Mari Lee 1; Affiliations: 1: Department of Rhetoric and Public Address, Whitman College.; Issue Info: 1998, Vol. 31 Issue 1, p41; Thesaurus Term: RHETORIC; Thesaurus Term: AUTHORSHIP; Thesaurus Term: LITERATURE; Subject Term: HOMER; Subject Term: ODYSSEUS (Greek mythology); Subject Term: ERRORS & blunders, Literary; Subject Term: PHILOSOPHY; Number of Pages: 14p; Document Type: Article. (shrink)

Perelman’s view of the role of persons in argument is one of the most distinctive features of his break with Cartesian assumptions about reasoning. Whereas the rationalist paradigm sought to minimize or eliminate personal considerations by dismissing them as distracting and irrelevant, Perelman insists that argumentation inevitably does and ought to place stress on the specific persons engaged in an argument and that the relationship between speaker and what is spoken is always relevant and important. In taking this position, Perelman (...) implicitly revives the classical conception of proof by character (ethos or “ethotic” argument), but despite an extended discussion of act and person in argument, The New Rhetoric does not give much consideration to the classical concept and confuses differing approaches to it within the tradition. The result is that Perelman treats the role of the speaker in argument only by reference to abstract techniques and does not recognize the importance of examining particular cases in order to thicken understanding of how ethotic argument works in the complex, situated context of its actual use. Consequently, Perelman’s account of the role of persons in argument should be supplement by reference to case studies, and to that end, I consider ethotic argument in W.E.B. Du Bois’ famous essay “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Rhetoric of Narrating Communal History in the Nineteenth-Century Finnish Historical NovelMari Hatavara (bio)Det var en mulen och dyster afton om våren 1718. Klockan knäppte fem minuter till sex i salen på den ståtliga herrgård, som tillhört den stolte Baronen Göran Boije, och som nu ägdes af hans enka, fru Catharina Boije. I detsamma hördes en klocka ringa gårdsfolket tillsamman för aftonbönen. I nedra ändan af salen samlades med (...) sakta steg allt gårdsfolket i tyst förbidan. Nu slog vägguret sex. […]It was a cloudy and dreary evening in the spring of 1718. The clock turned five to six in the great hall of the stately manor which once had belonged to the proud Baron Göran Boije, and which now was in the possession of his widow, Lady Catharina Boije. At the very moment, a bell was heard to summon all the folk together for an evening prayer. The servants gathered in the lower end of the hall with silent footsteps in a quiet waiting. The clock struck six now. […](All translations mine.)Finland's first historical novel, Fredrika Runeberg's Fru Catharina Boije och hennes döttrar (Lady Catharina Boije and Her Daughters) (1858),1 begins with this passage after a short frame narrative. The very first sentence provides the date where the story-world is set, and the lines following describe a setting suitable for that period of time. This is in accordance with the generic tradition of the historical novel. Even if the historical novel has very few characters whom theorists would agree upon, most theories of historical novel concur on the statement that the genre is "by definition referential, gesturing toward a world commonly understood to have existed" (Maxwell 545). This emphasis on the story-world has dominated the study of the historical novel. What I want to stress, however, are the specific ways in which a historical novel—to use Richard Maxwell's words—gestures toward this commonly comprehensible, preexistent world. How is the story-world made understandable to a reader and offered as the past? I want to demonstrate the importance of the literary means that help mediate between the past of the story-world and the present of the reader.The passage above begins with the retrospective view: the narrator refers to a date over two hundred years ago, and the passage is in the past tense. The text does, however, also apply expressions like "now." This indicates a point of view that is present in the story-world, at least in terms of temporality. The impression of a viewpoint present in the story-world is further emphasized by the frequent references to aural experience; the [End Page 21] sounds heard (the bell and the clock) and not heard (silent footsteps and quiet waiting) offer the reader an interpretative position that takes her into the story-world through experience. The origin of the experience, however, is not specified. Two questions arise that are crucial to my argument: Is the experiencing subject located temporally in the story-time or in the narrator's retrospective time? Is there a single experiencing subject? While the first question tackles the relationship between the past tense and the deictic markers indicating the present ("now"), the second question is concerned with features like the hearing of the sound of the bell in the passage: because the hearing is depicted in the passive mode, the hearer could be anybody or everybody.These two questions, the first about temporality and the second about the experiencing subject, intersect in the study of narrative identity. Alan Palmer suggests that in current research on narrative literature the individual consciousness has been emphasized at the expense of the social, and he stresses the importance of studying the latter (136). Still, individual and social modes of narrativizing one's past and present share common features, with the most important one perhaps being the need to mediate between different levels of time. Whereas self-narrations attempt to bridge the gap between the former, experiencing I, and the present, narrating I, historical narratives attempt to bridge the gap between characters experiencing the... (shrink)

Given the pragmatic tum recently taken by argumentation studies, we owe renewed attention to Henry Johnstone's views on the primacy of process over product. In particular, Johnstone's decidedly non-cooperative model is a refreshing alternative to the current dialogic theories of arguing, one which opens the way for specifically rhetorical lines of inquiry.

This paper looks into the known evidence on the origins of the type of argument called the circumstantial ad hominemargument in modern logic textbooks, and introduces some new evidence. This new evidence comes primarily from recent historical work by Jaap Mansfeld and Jonathan Barnes citing many cases where philosophers in the ancient world were attacked on the grounds that their personal actions failed to be consistent with their philosophical teachings. On the total body of evidence, two hypotheses about the roots (...) of the circumstantial ad hominem are considered. One is that it came from Aristotle through Locke. The other is that it may have had separate roots in these ancient philosophical writings that criticized philosophers for not practicing what they preached. (shrink)

Henry Johnstone's philosophical development was guided by a persistent need to reform the concept of validity -either by reinterpreting it or by finding a substitute for it. This project lead Johnstone into interesting confrontations with the concept of rhetoric and especiaUy with the work of Chaim Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca. The project culminated in a failed attempt to develop a formal ethics of rhetoric and argumentation, but this attempt was itself not consistent with some of Johnstone's other characterizations ofan ethics (...) of argument ation. A virtue ethics would be truer to the Johnstonian philosophical project than a formal ethics of argument. Resume. (shrink)

I suggest two valid and sound arguments refuting physicalism, whether it is reductive or supervenience physicalism. The first argument is a self-referential one that is not involved with any self-referential inconsistency. The second argument demonstrates that physicalism is inescapably involved with self-referential inconsistency. Both arguments show that arguments and propositions (to be distinguished from sentences) are not physical existents. They are rather mental existents that are not reducible to any physical existent and (...) do not supervene on anything physical. From these two arguments, it clearly follows that any physicalist argument or proposition, as a mental existent, is self-refuting. (AN PHL2326365) Subjects: EXISTENTS; INCONSISTENCY; METAPHYSICS; MIND; PHYSICALISM; SELF-REFERENCE. (shrink)

A self-fulfilling fallacy (SFF) is a fallacious argument whose conclusion is that the very fallacy employed is an invalid or otherwise illegitimate inferential procedure. This paper discusses three different ways in which SFF’s might serve to justify their conclusions. SFF’s might have probative value as honest and straightforward arguments, they might serve to justify the premise of a meta-argument or, following a point made by Roy Sorensen, they might provide a non-inferential basis for accepting their conclusion. The paper concludes (...) with an assessment of the relative merits of these proposals. (shrink)

This chapter deals with one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy, ad hominem: circumstantial. The circumstantial variety of the ad hominem argument is distinct from the direct form in that instead of directly attacking the character of the arguer, one draws attention to an inconsistency in the personal circumstances of the proponent (his/her commitments) and the content of his/her argument/position as a way to question his/her sincerity or credibility. As with all the ad hominem argument forms, the ad (...) hominem: circumstantial has both fallacious and legitimate uses. Fallacious uses of the ad hominem argument type are pernicious, in part, because of how difficult it can be to respond to them in an effective way. One of the main issues with ad hominem arguments is telling which are fallacious and which are not. (shrink)

The situationally disqualifying ad hominem attack is an argumentative move in critical dialogue whereby one participant points out certain features in his adversary's personal situation that are claimed to make it inappropriate for this adversary to take a particular point of view, to argue in a particular way, or to launch certain criticisms. In this paper, we discuss some examples of this way of arguing. Other types of ad hominem argumentation are discussed as well and compared with the situationally disqualifying (...) type. The socalled Houtlosser Dilemma highlights the danger of unconditionally condoning ad hominem arguments. We propose a classification of ad hominem, and a more restrictive use of the term 'circumstantial'. Finally, we discuss whether ad hominem arguments are (always?) to be rejected as fallacious. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.1 (2000) vii-ix [Access article in PDF] In Memory of Henry I first met Henry W. Johstone Jr. during the spring of 1968. I was a doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin and Henry was in Madison as part of a distinguished visitor series hosted by my mentor, Lloyd Bitzer. Lloyd had invited a group of graduate students to his home to (...) meet the guest of honor. I was particularly excited because Henry had accepted my paper on Aristotle's theory of exemplification to appear in the new international journal Philosophy and Rhetoric, which he edited. This was my first publication and I wanted to thank him, which seemed to this novice the appropriate thing to do. I remember that evening for Henry's seeming reserve, which I later learned was a deep shyness that masked his capacity for uncanny directness and a wicked sense of humor, and for his generosity in deflecting my naiveté about the basis for editorial judgments. I also remember it for his deft way of engaging a room of young rhetoricians with questions that conveyed his doubt about their subject (he later changed his mind) without clouding his sincere openness to what we had to say. The following fall, we met again during my interview for a position in the Speech Department at Penn State University. I was offered the position and became Henry's colleague as Book Review Editor of P&R. For the next thirty years, I was blessed to serve as Henry's partner-in-crime in the joys of life that may remain today only among the professoriate. We shared in the editorial work of the journal, in co-teaching our graduate seminar in Philosophy and Rhetoric, in our intellectual passion for the bonds and wars between philosophy and rhetoric, and in the pleasure of choosing the right bottle of wine. But more than that, we shared these common pursuits in contexts of luncheons, dinners, and social occasions that mixed intellectual work with the pleasure of treasured company.My son phoned today to tell me that Henry had died. His passing leaves a void in my life that goes beyond the loss of a friend and colleague. Henry was the person who, through patient selection of manuscripts for me to referee and guidance, taught me how to read journal submissions and offer critiques that might help the author to improve and the journal to prosper. Henry was the person who taught me the value of generosity with junior colleagues by his respectful and serious engagement of my own work. He had a marvelous capacity to entertain any idea seriously, to consider the possibility that even a far-fetched conjecture might have value rather than rejecting it out of hand. He lived the ideas he wrote about as a philosopher, arguing always ad hominem and con amore. Henry was the person who took me in tow as a young Turk and suffered my impatience with the conservative ways of our established institution [End Page vii] by taking me to lunch, engaging me in discussions of ideas, and sharing the delights of intellectual work, and in the process helping me retain my ideals and my focus.Lunch for Henry was more than a noontime meal. It was the way he sustained bonds with those he valued as friends and colleagues. He would call two weeks in advance to arrange a date at the Allen Room of the State College Hotel. He would arrive at my office ten minutes early and we would take a leisurely stroll along the Old Main Mall to the hotel. Our arrival was announced by the host with "Good afternoon Dr. Johnstone," that showed in its formality deep respect and in its tone equally deep affection. Henry always took a cocktail with lunch, inviting his companion to join him, and unless you were specific about the bill beforehand, Henry usually insisted on paying. Settling the bill was never an issue for Henry. He often included a graduate assistant from the journal or an assistant professor in our party and seemed to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.3 (2000) v-vii [Access article in PDF] On Feminizing the Philosophy of Rhetoric Molly Meijer Wertheimer When asked to define his editorial policies in choosing articles to publish in Philosophy and Rhetoric, Henry W. Johnstone Jr. disavowed following any strict editorial guidelines; instead, he gave two examples to show how selection worked as a process. In one case, he agreed to publish an "off the (...) wall article" by a distinguished classicist; in another, he accepted an unusually long article--a "behemoth"--by an eminent rhetorician. These examples demonstrate what was to me one of Henry's most unusual and endearing traits as an editor and scholar: he was willing always to go wherever the argument led. It was probably in this spirit that he agreed to publish a special issue on "Feminizing the Philosophy of Rhetoric." I want to thank him posthumously for that decision. As "guest editor" of the issue, I feel privileged to present four well-written essays and two reviews that lead the readers of Philosophy and Rhetoric to consider some philosophical issues that emerge when we overlap concepts of "gender," "culture," and "rhetoric."The essays in this issue explore tactics women have used to get their messages across to others who would not--even could not--entertain speech seriously if presented by a woman. In the first essay, "Unveiling Esther as a Pragmatic Radical Rhetoric," Susan Zaeske reads the Book of Esther as a rhetorical manual of exile and empowerment. She traces features of the narrative that were useful as a model of rhetorical behavior early on, as well as appropriations that were made throughout the Middle Ages, Antebellum South, and even in our own day. Her essay emphasizes the riskiness to the speaker that is often entailed by the act of speaking, especially when the listener is "all-powerful" (199); when "his decisions are based not on careful deliberation, but on who influences him the most, usually by prodding his sense of power and manliness" (200). In the narrative, the speaker, Queen Esther, is depicted as utterly thoughtful, careful, well planned and well timed. She seems very much in control of an "indirect" rhetoric. Says Zaeske, "[T]he book teaches that direct, resistant rhetoric is ineffective, even dangerous, while clever, indirect, noncon- frontational methods will succeed in gaining the desired end--power" (202). [End Page v] This is a "conciliatory strategy wise women are forced to use in the patriarchal world" (qtd. on p. 202). And this kind of strategy is contrasted to the defiant rhetoric of Vashti, the former queen, Esther's predecessor, who was banished for saying no to one of the king's commands. Silence and supplication, according to Zaeske, when adopted self-consciously as strategies, are effective with hostile, neanderthal-type auditors. They are "radical," at least in the sense that they are "extreme."Nan Johnson, in her essay "Reigning in the Court of Silence: Women and Rhetorical Space in Postbellum America," furthers discussion of women's rhetorical options. In Zaeske's essay, women assume positions of supplicants or petitioners, or they stand defiant in the face of an oppressive listener (the king). The former are idolized; the latter are demonized. Centuries later, in the fifty years following the Civil War, similar representations of women appeared in conduct literature. Johnson describes a media blitz of ideas and images in etiquette and other self-help manuals that sought to define rhetorical behaviors and actions appropriate for men and women. Some of the writings idolized the "quiet woman" of the home, who reigned silently as queen stitching together via indirection a rhetoric of nurturance that moved beyond the home only through the actions of husbands and sons. This kind of rhetoric was viewed as a natural consequence of femininity. Other writings demonized the woman who spoke from the public platform as a teacher, preacher, and advocate, and who needed a rhetorical education to do so effectively. Many writings highlighted the negative consequences of rhetorical experience to women (who risked their femininity and the love of their families) and to their families (who risked the true source of... (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to explore the interrelation between persuasion tactics and properties of speech acts. We investigate two types of arguments ad: ad hominem and ad baculum. We show that with both of these tactics, the structures that play a key role are not inferential, but rather ethotic, i.e., related to the speaker’s character and trust. We use the concepts of illocutionary force and constitutive conditions related to the character or status of the speaker in order to (...) explain the dynamics of these two techniques. In keeping with the research focus of the Polish School of Argumentation, we examine how the pragmatic and rhetorical aspects of the force of ad hominem and ad baculum arguments exploit trust in the speaker’s status to influence the audience’s cognition. (shrink)

Christopher Johnson has put forward in this journal the view that ad hominem reasoning may be more generally reasonable than is allowed by writers such as myself, basing his view on virtue epistemology. I review his account, as well as the standard account, of ad hominem reasoning, and show how the standard account would handle the cases he sketches in defense of his own view. I then give four criticisms of his view generally: the problems of virtue conflict, vagueness, conflation (...) of speech acts, and self-defeating counsel. I then discuss four reasons why the standard account is superior: it better fits legal reality, the account of other fallacies, psychological science, and political reality. (shrink)

Douglas N. Walton considers the question of whether the conventions of informal conversation can be articulated more precisely than they are at present. Specifically, he addresses the problem of the fallacy of ad hominem argumentation as it occurs in natural settings. Can rules be formulated to determine if criticisms of apparent hypocrisy in an argument are defensible or refutable? Walton suggests that they can, and ultimately defends the thesis that ad hominem reasoning is not fallacious per se. He carries his (...) analysis to the core of action--theoretic reasoning--by examining a number of specimen arguments. As suggested by the title, the conclusion of ad hominem argument is demonstrated to be relative to the arguer's position. In the appendixes of the book, articles by Gerald McAuliffe and Gordon R. Lowe illustrate vivid and powerful cases in which Walton's contentions are put to the test. (shrink)

A book review of _Free Choice: A Self-referential Argument_ by J. M. Boyle, Jr., G. Grisez, and O. Tollefsen. The review concerns the pragmatical self-referential argument employed in the book, and points to the fact that the argument is itself self-referentially inconsistent, but on the level of metalogical self-reference.

This review article provides a brief descriptive overview of past efforts to use self-referential argumentation, distinguishing pragmatical from metalogical self-referential approaches. The reviewer claims that the pragmatical self-referential argument proposed in this book is itself metalogically self-referentially inconsistent, and directs the reader to other relevant published works by the reviewer.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the applicability of multivariate mapping techniques to the exploration of the rhetorical semiotic brand image structure of ad films. By drawing on correspondence analysis and multidimensional scaling, two techniques that are amply used in corpus linguistics and in marketing research, but also on the data reduction technique of factor analysis, it will be displayed how a set of nuclear semes and classemes or an intended semic structure that underlies ad filmic discursive (...) structures may be projected alongside rhetorical figures by its internal stakeholders (i.e., a brand management team, an account planning team or a marketing research team) with view to attaining differential brand associations. The illustration of the exploratory analytical methods takes place by recourse to a corpus of 62 ad filmic texts from 13 sub-brands of the 3 major brands in the UK cereals market and 321 ad filmic segments that resulted from the segmentation procedure. This paper seeks to contribute to advancements in the brand image and advertising rhetoric research streams by addressing distinctive modes of advertising rhetorical configuration at the level of the ad filmic text (as against print ads where the bulk of research on advertising rhetoric has concentrated), and moreover on a segment-by-segment level, rather than treating the ad film as a standalone unit of analysis, by adopting a multimodal outlook to advertising configurations that takes into account not only the verbal or the visual mode, but also interactions among modes, by adopting a product category-specific approach to advertising/brand textuality that draws on rhetorical semiotics and by employing exploratory statistical methods against the background of content analytic output. (shrink)

Considering Pragma-Dialectics honors the monumental contributions of one of the foremost international figures in current argumentation scholarship: Frans van Eemeren. The volume presents the research efforts of his colleagues and addresses how their work relates to the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation with which van Eemeren’s name is so intimately connected. This tribute serves to highlight the varied approaches to the study of argumentation and is destined to inspire researchers to advance scholarship in the field far into the future. Replete with (...) contributions from highly-esteemed academics in argumentation study, chapters in this volume address such topics as: *Pragma-dialectic versus epistemic theories of arguing and arguments; *Pragma-dialectics and self-advocacy in physician-patient interactions; *The pragma-dialectical analysis of the ad hominem family; *Rhetoric, dialectic, and the functions of argument; and *The semantics of reasonableness. As an exceptional volume and a fitting tribute, this work will be of interest to all argumentation scholars considering the astute insights and scholarly legacy of Frans van Eemeren. (shrink)

In his work on personal identity, Derek Parfit makes two revolutionary claims: firstly, that personal identity is not what matters in survival; and secondly, that what does matter is relation R. In this article I demonstrate his position here to be inconsistent, with the former claim being defensible only in case the latter is false. Parfit intends his famous fission argument to establish the unimportance of identity – a conclusion disputed by, among others, Mark Johnston. My approach is to critically (...) assess their debate, focusing on Johnston's reductio of Parfit's position. I contend that although Parfit's own response fails, there are other ways to save the fission argument. The unimportance of identity then comes at a cost, however, because the reductio can only be avoided by accepting either that nothing matters in survival, or else that facts about particles and forces do. Either way, relation R cannot be what matters. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.3 (2000) 221-242 [Access article in PDF] Reigning in the Court of Silence: Women and Rhetorical Space in Postbellum America Nan Johnson [Figures]Nervous, enthusiastic, and talkative women are the foam and sparkle, quiet women the wine of life. The senses ache and grow weary of the perpetual glare and brilliancy of the former, but turn with a sense of security and repose to the mild, (...) mellow glow irradiating the sphere of the latter. We associate all ideas of rest with quiet women. They are soul-divinities reverently guarding their sacred trusts in the Court of Silence. When she speaks, her words are aptly chosen and fitly spoken. She is wise and thoughtful, but loving and meek. "Still waters run deep," but not in the world-applied sense; babbling rills do not wear their channels deep, but streams of calmest flow have hidden depths undreamed of, unsuspected.--Anonymous, "Quiet Women" 461In an article entitled "Quiet Women," which appeared in The Ladies' Repository in 1868, an anonymous author argues that "quiet women are the wine of life." Capturing the deep cultural longing of the postbellum period for the icon of the American woman as angel of the hearth, this portrait deifies the quiet woman and demonizes the other possibilities: the enthusiastic woman, the talkative woman, the brilliant woman, and the babbling woman. The mild and mellow queen of the "Court of Silence" is graceful, calm, and, most important of all, silent. In this characterization, an idealized woman is defined as necessarily rhetorically meek. By worshiping "the quiet woman," influential proponents of public opinion such as The Ladies' Repository reinscribed for a postbellum readership a definition of true womanhood that equated silence with feminine virtue and enthusiastic vocality with its opposite. The argument that the rhetorical conduct of the "wise and thoughtful" woman could be contrasted instructively with the trivial and ultimately inconsequential rhetorical behavior of loud and talkative women is one that was made in so many cultural conversations of the postbellum period that it achieved the power of an ideological trope. 1 [End Page 221]Efforts to regulate women's rhetorical behavior intensified rather than abated in the decades following the Civil War as women pursued education, the right to vote, property rights, and mobility in public life. In conduct literature, a genre that proliferated during the postbellum period, the preferred construction of the "quiet" woman was a mainstay in an ideological agenda that supported the generally held nineteenth-century view that character and the nature of one's rhetoric are mutually revealing. Like other types of self-help materials marketed in the last decades of the century, such as elocution manuals and letter-writing guides, conduct manuals included among their vast tables of contents the matters of how and where one ought to speak. In their coverage of deportment in all areas of life, conduct manuals promised the aspiring middle-class American an education in the home in the culturally valuable skills of public speaking and writing. 2 The collective enterprise of the parlor rhetoric movement and conduct literature in particular was to offer happiness and success to those who would follow certain rules. Enormously popular in the postbellum period and well into the turn of the century, conduct manuals argued a conservative gender agenda that appealed to the middle-class readers of a nation who seemed eager to accept the idea that correct deportment in daily life could help to restore the social calm the postwar nation longed for. Although by the 1880s the American public had well in mind notable examples of women, such as Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Frances Willard, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who had assumed powerful reformist voices in the causes of abolition, temperance, and women's rights, the rhetorical space these women occupied in shaping political and cultural life was viewed as the exception rather than the rule. 3 In spite of the high profile rhetorical careers of a handful of women, or, perhaps, because of them, postbellum America wondered uneasily just how public women's lives... (shrink)

A RELATIVISTIC THEORY OF PHENOMENOLOCICAL CONSTITUTION: A SELF-REFERENTIAL, TRANSCENDENTAL APPROACH TO CONCEPTUAL PATHOLOGY. (Vol. I: French; Vol. II: English) -/- Steven James Bartlett -/- Doctoral dissertation director: Paul Ricoeur, Université de Paris Other doctoral committee members: Jean Ladrière and Alphonse de Waehlens, Université Catholique de Louvain Defended publically at the Université Catholique de Louvain, January, 1971. -/- Universite de Paris X (France), 1971. 797pp. -/- The principal objective of the work is to construct an analytically precise methodology which (...) can serve to identify, eliminate, and avoid a certain widespread _conceptual fault_ or _misconstruction_, called a "projective misconstruction" or "projection" by the author. It is argued that this variety of error in our thinking (i) infects a great number of our everyday, scientific, and philosophical concepts, claims, and theories, (ii) has largely been undetected, and (iii), when remedied, leads to a less controversial and more rigorous elucidation of the transcendental preconditions of human knowledge than has traditionally been possible. The dissertation identifies, perhaps for the first time, a _projective_ variety of self-referential inconsistency, and proposes an innovative, self-reflexive approach to transcendental argument in a logical and phenomenological context. The strength of the approach lies, it is claimed, in the fact that a rejection of the approach is possible only on pain of self-referential inconsistency. The argument is developed in the following stages: A general introduction identifies the central theme of the work, defines the scope of applicability of the results reached, and sketches the direction of the studies that follow. The preliminary discussion culminates in a recognition of the need for a _critique of impure reason_. The body of the work is divided into two parts: Section I seeks to develop a methodology, on a purely formal basis, which is, on the one hand, capable of being used to study the transcendental foundations of the special sciences, including its own proper transcendental foundation. On the other hand, the methodology proposed is intended as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool for dealing with _projective_ uses of concepts. The approach initiates an analysis of concepts from a perspective which views _knowledge as coordination_. Section I describes formal structures that possess the status of preconditions in such a coordinative account of knowledge. Special attention is given to the preconditions of _identifying reference_ to logical particulars. The first section attempts, then, to provide a self-referential, transcendental methodology which is essentially revisionary in that it is motivated by a concern for conceptual error-elimination. Phenomenology, considered in its unique capacity as a self-referential, transcendental discipline, is of special relevance to the study. Section II accordingly examines a group of concepts which come into question in connection with the central theme of _phenomenological constitution_. The "_de-projective methodology_" developed in Section I is applied to these concepts that have a foundational importance in transcendental phenomenology. A translation is, in effect, proposed from the language of consciousness to a language in which preconditions of referring are investigated. The result achieved is the elimination of self-defeating, projective concepts from a rigorous, phenomenological study of the constitutive foundations of science. The dissertation was presented in a two volume, double-language format for the convenience of French and English researchers. Each volume contains an analytical index. (shrink)

Most opposition to induced abortion turns on the belief that human fetuses are persons from conception. On this view, the moral status of the fetus alone requires those in a position to provide aid—gestational mothers—to make tremendous sacrifices to benefit the fetus. Recently, critics have argued that this pro-life position requires more than opposition to induced abortion. Pro-life theorists are relatively silent on the issues of spontaneous abortion, surplus in vitro fertilisation human embryos, and the suffering and death of born (...) persons due to lack of access to food, shelter and medical care. Colgrove et al call such arguments inconsistency arguments, arguing they ‘do not matter’ and mischaracterise them as ad hominem attacks. Here, I argue these are better understood as moral dilemmas. While some critics argue pro-life inaction is evidence that they do not really believe human fetuses are persons, I contend this inaction is likely the result of resolvable confusion rather than moral negligence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.1 (2002) 43-56 [Access article in PDF] Jack London's Medusa of Truth Per Serritslev Petersen FROM THE VERY START of his literary career, Jack London believed that a good fiction writer must also be a good thinker—that fictional authenticity and integrity must somehow be imbedded in philosophical authenticity and integrity. In his early essay "On the Writer's Philosophy of Life," and in his early letters to (...) Cloudsley Johns, his intellectually "slovenly" friend (who also happened to share his literary ambitions and interests), London insists, again and again, on the proper philosophical foundation of the successful writer. This is how poor Cloudsley, who had previously been told to "get in and systematically ground [himself] in history, economics, biology and the kindred branches" 1 gets browbeaten by his self-appointed mentor and master, a veritable Jack of all trades, in a letter dated March 15, 1900: "To be well fitted for the tragedy of existence (intellectual existence), one must have a working philosophy, a synthesis of things. Have you a synthesis of things? Do you write, and talk, and build upon a foundation which you know is securely laid? Or do you not rather build with a hazy idea of 'to hell with the foundation.'" London then proceeds to catechize his friend on scientific principles such as the indestructibility of Matter, the persistence of Force, and the overall "dynamic principle, true of the metamorphosis of the universe"—principles that Cloudsley is urged to study "carefully and painstakingly" before he can ever claim to have "a firm foundation for [his] philosophy of life" (Letters, pp. 170-71).In London's admittedly heavy-handed ad hominem argument, one recognizes the philosophical sledgehammer of Ernest Everhard, the revolutionary hero of The Iron Heel and one of the fictional exponents of "that cold forbidding philosophy, materialistic monism," 2 which also [End Page 43] served as the scientific foundation of London's own philosophy of life. There are, however, not one, but two components to London's philosophy, which, as I shall argue in this essay, together constitute an essentially dialectical construction, a dynamic juxtaposition of and negotiation with, on the one hand, the "cold forbidding" Medusa of Truth and, on the other hand, the life-enhancing Aphrodite of Romance, the second of which is one of several versions of the vital Maia-Lie (Maia being the Buddhist term for the power that creates or re-creates the world as cosmic illusion).Two points need to be stressed from the outset. First, London's work is implicitly aligned with literary naturalism—the "Zolaistic Movement" of modern American fiction that the genteel writer and editor Thomas Bailey Aldrich famously condemned for its "miasmatic breath" 3 —even though London himself would always qualify his own naturalism by insisting that, artistically, he was "an emotional materialist" (Letters, p. 329), and that his realism was, in the words of Martin Eden, one of his fictional alter egos, "an impassioned realism, shot through with human aspiration and faith." 4 Second, London's work is explicitly aligned with philosophical naturalism (as distinct from supernaturalism)—that is, naturalism as the philosophical or epistemological view that, to quote The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (1995), "everything is natural, i.e. that everything there is belongs to the world of nature, and so can be studied by the methods appropriate for studying that world." In philosophical practice, naturalism and materialism have tended to coalesce, materialism being basically understood as the view that everything is made of matter, which can be studied by the methods of natural science. Like London's philosophical alter ego Ernest Everhard (and also like fictional protagonists such as Wolf Larsen and Martin Eden), London declared himself "a materialistic monist," although, as he admitted to Cloudsley Johns, "there is dam little satisfaction in it." Rhetorically impersonating, as it were, Wolf Larsen, London, in the same letter, asks himself and his correspondent, "what squirming anywhere, damned or otherwise, means anything? That's the question I am always prone to put: What's this chemical ferment called life about? Small wonder that small men... (shrink)