In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 39.1 (2006) 45-71 [Access article in PDF] Presencing "Communion" in Chaïm Perelman's New Rhetoric Richard Graff Wendy Winn Department of RhetoricUniversity of MinnesotaOver the second half of his long and distinguished career, Chaïm Perelman reiterated the central themes of his theory of rhetoric many times. As the audience for his work expanded, Perelman was repeatedly invited to summarize the principles presented in La nouvelle (...) rhétorique, his magnum opus authored in collaboration with Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, which appeared in 1958. On these occasions, he would often attempt to clarify or refine the major concepts presented in that treatise. Nevertheless, even today many aspects of Perelman's work remain enigmatic. In outline, The New Rhetoric itself conveys a sense of structural and theoretical clarity, but for many readers this first impression evaporates when they confront the complexity and detail of the work's exposition. In the preface to their new study of Perelman, Alan Gross and Ray Dearin observe:The New Rhetoric is difficult to read, a task made even more difficult for American audiences because virtually all its examples and illustrations are from a literature in a foreign language.... Moreover, Perelman's later attempts to achieve clarity, in The Realm of Rhetoric, and numerous shorter articles, are equally puzzling. Consequently, some of Perelman's best ideas are virtually buried in a very long work, and therefore largely lost even to the most careful readers. In addition, on such central issues as the relationship between rhetoric and philosophy Perelman remains maddeningly obscure. (2003, ix) While Perelman's status as a pioneering figure in the rejuvenation of rhetorical study in Continental Europe is secure, as is his placement among the canonical twentieth-century theorists by American scholars, such difficulties constitute an impediment to contemporary understanding and future appreciation of his achievement; and the sprawling character of The New Rhetoric certainly has not helped to counteract the less [End Page 45] sympathetic reception his work has received in some corners of rhetorical and argumentation studies.1Gross and Dearin's volume joins several other recent studies that have contributed to the untangling of Perelman's thought and to the profitable application of his ideas.2 Still, some of Perelman's "best ideas" remain buried and sorely in need of excavation. Chief among these are considerations prompted by Perelman's use of the evocative yet mysterious term "communion." Although communion appears repeatedly among the panoply of concepts and argumentative techniques described in The New Rhetoric, explicit discussion of it there is brief and scattered, and the subject receives only glancing mention in Perelman's subsequent publications. In turn, communion has been all but ignored in the scholarship responding to or extending Perelman's work.3 This is even the case in studies where one would expect to see more serious engagement with Perelman's ideas on the subject—notably, in those that consider the status of values in argumentation and the role of rhetoric in the constitution and maintenance of community.4In this essay, we offer a detailed analysis of Perelman's conception of communion and, in the course of endowing the concept with greater "presence," aim to show its rich implications for these areas of inquiry. We argue that the idea of communion is a vital, if understated, component of Perelman's proposed "new rhetoric." Like other aspects of Perelman's theory, however, it is an expansive and somewhat slippery notion. In The New Rhetoric, communion is used in a very general sense as the term denoting a community's agreement on questions of value, but also, more narrowly, as an objective sought in certain forms of discourse and as an effect of specific linguistic-stylistic devices. The exegesis needed to indicate the subtle links between these senses will enable us to describe the manner in which Perelman endeavored to integrate the technical lore inherited from the classical tradition of rhetoric with a broadly social and determinedly pluralisticconception of argumentation.We begin by examining communion in relation to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's ideas... (shrink)

Introduction.--Epicurus.--The cynics.--The stoics: Epictetus.--The stoics: Marcus Aurelius.--A philosophic missionary: Dion Chrysostom.--Plutarch.--A popular preacher: Maximus Tyrius.--A theosophist: Apollonius of Tyana.--The sophists: Polemon and Herodes Atticus.--A prince of neurotics: Aelius Aristodes.--Lucian.--Epilogue.

You'd never know Athens was locked in a life-or-death struggle from the tranquil and leisurely philosophical discussion that unfolds through the pages of the Republic...Plato's masterpiece continues to inform our questions and our thinking when it comes to being, truth, beauty, goodness, justice, community, the soul, and more." -From Dr. Littlejohn's Introduction. On the way back from a festival, Socrates is waylaid by some friends who compel him to go home with them. There he and his companions engage in a (...) long discussion about whether it is worse to suffer evil or to commit it. Far from being dry or abstract, Plato's dialogue is full of practical questions about the nature of justice, education, power, and virtue, and it ends with two of the most vivid myths ever devised by man. This Canon Classic is translated clearly by Benjamin Jowett, and unlike all other works of philosophy, it's actually fun to read. The Canon Classics series presents the most definitive works of Western literature in a colorful, well-crafted, and affordable way. Unlike many other thrift editions, our classics are printed on thicker text stock and feature individualized designs that prioritize readability by means of proper margins, leading, characters per line, font, trim size, etc. Each book's materials and layout combine to make the classics a simple and striking addition to classrooms and homes, ideal for introducing the best of literary culture and human experience to the next generation. This Worldview Edition features an introduction divided into sections on The World Around, About the Author, What Other Notables Said, Setting, Characters, & Plot Summary, Worldview Analysis, 21 Significant Questions & Answers, and Further Discussion & Review. (shrink)

This unique book clearly explains genetic and neuroimaging research on intelligence and how neuroscience findings may lead to enhancing it.

This book presents the remarkable correspondence between Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch, emigre philosophers influenced by Edmund Husserl, who fled Europe on the eve of World War II and ultimately became seminal figures in the establishment of phenomenology in the United States. Their deep and lasting friendship grew out of their mutual concern with the question of the connections between science and the life-world. Interwoven with philosophical exchange is the two scholars' encounter with the unfamiliar problems of American academic life—what (...) Gurwitsch called the "passology" of exile. Apart from its brilliant and moving portrait of two distinguished men, the correspondence holds rich significance for current issues in philosophy and the social sciences. (shrink)

Attention to internal body sensations is practiced in most meditation traditions. Many traditions state that this practice results in increased awareness of internal body sensations, but scientific studies evaluating this claim are lacking. We predicted that experienced meditators would display performance superior to that of nonmeditators on heartbeat detection, a standard noninvasive measure of resting interoceptive awareness. We compared two groups of meditators (Tibetan Buddhist and Kundalini) to an age- and body mass index-matched group of nonmeditators. Contrary to our prediction, (...) we found no evidence that meditators were superior to nonmeditators in the heartbeat detection task, across several sessions and respiratory modulation conditions. Compared to nonmeditators, however, meditators consistently rated their interoceptive performance as superior and the difficulty of the task as easier. These results provide evidence against the notion that practicing attention to internal body sensations, a core feature of meditation, enhances the ability to sense the heartbeat at rest. (shrink)

The central issue of Descartes’s Meditations is an intensely personal one. Descartes asks a simple question of himself, one that each of us can also ask of ourselves, “What am I to believe?” One way of construing this question--indeed, the way Descartes himself construed it--is as a methodological one. The immediate aim is not so much to generate a specific list of propositions for me to believe. Rather, I want to formulate for myself some general advice about how to proceed (...) intellectually. (shrink)

A-LOGIC is a full-length book (600+ pg). It functions as a system of logic designed to: 1) solve the standard paradoxes and major problems of standard mathematical logic; 2) minimize that logic's anomalies with respect to ordinary language, yet; 3) prove that all theorems in mathematical logic are tautologies. It covers lst order logic the logic of the words "and", "or", "not", "all" and "some". But it also has a non truth functional "if...then" and differs in its definition of validity, (...) its semantics and its theorems. In the book A-logic is contrasted step by step with standard mathematical logic as presented and defended by Quine. All of standard logic's theorems are proven tautologies in A-logic. But some argument-forms called "valid" in standard logic are not valid in A-logic -- notably non-sequiturs like "(P and not-P), therefore Q". In addition A-logic has many tautologies with its non-truthfunctional "if ... then" that standard logic can not derive -- e.g., "Not-(if P&Q then not-P)." A-logic's semantics is based on syntactically defined concepts of logical synonymy and containment of meanings rather than on truth-values and truth-functions. Its "if...then" sentences (called "C-conditionals") are valid if and only if (i) the meaning of the consequent is logically contained in that of the antecedent, and (ii) the antecedent and consequent are jointly consistent. The predicate "valid" holds only of C-conditionals and arguments. No valid C-conditionals are translatable into standard logic though all of them imply tautologies of standard logic. (shrink)

This book draws upon philosophical arguments, criminological evidence, and legal literature on prisoners' rights and sentencing to explore the restrictions and deprivations that can be legitimately imposed on serious offenders in the name of punishment.

The essays in this collection examine developments in three fundamental biological disciplines--embryology, evolutionary biology, and genetics--in conflict with each other for much of the twentieth century. They consider key methodological problems and the difficulty of overcoming them. Richard Burian interweaves historical appreciation of the settings within which scientists work, substantial knowledge of the biological problems at stake and the methodological and philosophical issues faced in integrating biological knowledge drawn from disparate sources.

Physicians have for some time been questioning the prevailing view of medicine as applied biology. It is urged that medicine needs to be reconceived so as to provide appropriate emphasis on the patient's experience and understanding of illness. After reviewing these arguments and the scientific paradigm underlying the received view in light of certain themes in medicine's history and of current thinking, Pellegrino's thesis is analyzed: medicine should be understood as an inherently moral enterprise, a form of praxis focused on (...) "the healing relationship". Understanding the illness experience and the professed healer's "compassion" supports Pellegrino's view, and suggests that the healing relationship is perhaps best conceived as a form of dialogue. Keywords: compassion, dialogue, healing relationship, illness experience, interpretation CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

For most of this past century, scholarship on the topics of personal- ity and emotion has emerged from the humanities and social sciences. In the past decade, a remarkable change has occurred in the influence of neuro- science on the conceptualization and study of these phenomena. This article ar- gues that the categories that have emerged from psychiatric nosology and descriptive personality theory may be inadequate, and that new categories and dimensions derived from neuroscience research may produce a more tractable (...) parsing of this complex domain. The article concludes by noting that the dis- covery of these biological differences among individuals does not imply that the origins of these differences lie in heritable influences. Experiential shaping of the brain circuitry underlying emotion is powerful. The neural architecture provides the final common pathway through which culture, social factors, and genetics all operate together. (shrink)

The assent of man, Michael Berube -- Getting rid of the appearance-reality distinction -- Universalist grandeur and analytic philosophy -- Romanticism, narrative philosophy, and human finitude.

How do we know and understand who we really are as human beings? The concept of 'the self' is central to many strands of psychology and philosophy. This book tackles the problem of how to define persons and selves and discusses the ways in which different disciplines, such as biology, sociology and philosophy, have dealt with this topic. Richard S. Hallam examines the notion that the idea of the self as some sort of entity is a human construction and, (...) in effect, a virtual reality. At the same time, this virtual self is intimately related to the reality of ourselves as biological organisms. Aiming to integrate a constructionist understanding of self with the universalizing assumptions that are needed in natural science approaches, this text is unique in its attempt to create a dialogue across academic disciplines, while retaining a consistent perspective on the problem of relating nature to culture. (shrink)

Is there a moral right to freedom of conscience? Should a legal right to freedom of conscience be established in each country on Earth? This essay argues for negative answers to both questions. The term freedom of conscience might refer to freedom of thought and the freedom of expression that sustains freedom of thought. In this sense we might affirm the right of each person to form individual opinions about the right and the good, about what we owe one another (...) by way of due consideration of others, and about what is worthy of pursuit in life, on the basis of free discussion of these matters. In the present discussion, these freedoms, important as they might be, are not under consideration. Let us assume freedom of thought and expression are secured. The status of freedom of conscience in the sense that is our concern in this discussion is still wide open. (shrink)

This book gathers together for the first time an important body of texts written between 1672 and 1686 by the great German philosopher and polymath Gottfried Leibniz. These writings, most of them previously untranslated, represent Leibniz's sustained attempt on a problem whose solution was crucial to the development of his thought, that of the composition of the continuum. The volume begins with excerpts from Leibniz's Paris writings, in which he tackles such problems as whether the infinite division of matter entails (...) perfect points, whether matter and space can be regarded as true wholes, whether motion is truly continuous, and the nature of body and substance. Comprising the second section is Pacidius Philalethi, Leibniz's brilliant dialogue of late 1676 on the problem of the continuity of motion. In the selections of the final section, from his Hanover writings of 1677-1686, Leibniz abandons his earlier transcreationism and atomism in favor of the theory of corporeal substance, where the reality of body and motion is founded in substantial form or force.Leibniz's texts (one in French, the rest in Latin) are presented with facing-page English translations, together with an introduction, notes, appendixes containing related excerpts from earlier works by Leibniz and his predecessors, and a valuable glossary detailing important terms and their translations. (shrink)

This text provides a truly comprehensive guide to one of the most important and challenging works of modern philosophy. The systematic complexity of Hegel's radical project in the Science of Logic prevents many from understanding and appreciating its value. By independently and critically working through Hegel's argument, this book offers an enlightening aid for study and anchors the Science of Logic at a central position in the philosophical canon.

Epiphenomenalism claims that all conscious events are caused immediately by brain events, and no conscious events cause brain events. In order to have a justified belief in a theory someone needs a justified belief that it or some higher-level theory predicts certain events and those events occurred. To have either of the latter beliefs we depend ultimately on the evidence of apparent experience, memory, and testimony, which is credible in the absence of defeaters; it is an undermining defeater to a (...) belief produced by apparent memory that it was not caused by a past belief, and to a belief produced by apparent testimony that it was not caused by an intention to say what the speaker believes. A justified belief in epiphenomenalism requires either evidence about when conscious events occurred or evidence about what some theory that brain events are caused solely by physical events predicts, but epiphenomenalism rules out the availability of the evidence of apparent memory and testimony on these matters. Hence only a rare individual scientist who could hold in her mind at one time the proof that a theory makes certain predictions could have a justified belief that epiphenomenalism is true. It follows that recent neurophysiological work in the tradition of Libet has no tendency whatever to provide a justified belief in epiphenomenalism. (shrink)