Library of Rhetorics – serie

This text presents the New Theory of Argumentation, popularly known as the New Rhetoric, as an innovative theoretical and methodological system which is expected to become increasingly important. Two factors determine the importance of this philosophy: (1) The collapse of all modern ideologies, many sociopolitical systems and their associated philosophies, whether of the right or the left, means that the era of the quick, dogmatic perception of how to force people to feel free and happy is over. (2) New forms and institutions of social and economic life must be found among the wreckage. The solutions sought must work best for the greatest number of people and must be flexible enough to allow the reinterpretation of all our determinations, from the very beginning. The New Rhetoric rejects all absolutist and dogmatic ideas. But neither does it support absolute relativism. lt constitutes a method for the endless search for truthful explanations and for enlightened practical activity. Truth is only the process of approaching it. While critical of formal logic, the New Rhetoric develops the concepts of "other", "experimental", "flexible" and "logic of good sense".The introduction and elaboration of the concept of "reasonableness" is presented as a milestone in the evolution of scientific methodology. The New Rhetoric has overcome the traditional contradictions between logic, rationalism and dialectic and has laid new foundations for a modern theory of morality, law, legal interpretation, and human rights. This book discusses such problems as: new moral notions; the new dilemma of Cain; the spurious notions of "centrism"; Antigone's new arguments; "argumentation is not bargaining"; and new foundations of tolerance and justice. It ends with a section on "Resolutions for the New Century", written in the spirit of traditional enlightenment, rule of reason and humanism, but which goes beyond them.

The dominant paradigm in the sciences of language conceives the subject-in-community as a truth-sayer, a communicator, and a player-economist. The major ontology of the human community reconstructs being-together as a system of interactions and transactions subject to the rules of economic rationality and, as a consequence, the community as source and target of finite strategical games. The primordial value then is the circulation of information and ideal communication is favoured by the truth-functional status of our discourses. However, this dominant ontology has a few cracks. This is where the aesthetic dimension intrudes, establishing here and there the blink of an eye, shattering the economic, communicational, and truth-saying phantasm, scattering the field of being-together, fragmenting it. These aesthetic fringes conduct themselves according to the isotopy of blossoming, of rupture and fracture, of thresholds and discontinuity. Their effect is one of bedazzlement, trembling, shaking, upheaval, lightheadedness.Infinite games in conversation, the musicality of voices, understanding by flair and tact, the temporariness of nostalgic memory, reasonable pathos, are what has been emphasized in this book.

This work reveals Lessing's contribution to the history of rhetoric and his participation in the long-standing debate between philosophy and rhetoric. It also reassesses the importance of rhetoric to argumentation in the 18th-century and establishes that Lessing developed his own views on rhetoric and argumentation, and that these views were opposed to the anti-rhetorical position of other 18th-century intellectuals, including Kant. The few treatments of Lessing's polemical writings that have appeared in the last few years concentrate on the practice of rhetoric and not on Lessing's own views on language and argument. Moore's work, on the other hand, combines both an interest in style of argument and the philosophy which informs it. The book should interest students of European rhetoric, 18th-century German critical writing and 18th-century polemics on theatre and theology. All quotations in German have been translated into English to inform a wider audience.

The basic theme of this work is contained in the formula that metaphoric language reflects the functioning of our thought processes. Thus, the author uses language analysis as a medium through which we can perceive and analyze the way our mind functions. Results of the investigation point to the conclusion that the mind does not operate according to the representations of a logical-positivistically oriented theorist; the forms of language usage and mental mechanisms involved manifest ubiquitous nonliteralness. However, an overall metaphorical detour from the literal one-to-one correspondence is not for the sake of figurative fancy but is primarily for the purpose of achieving new significations. In such a context, that which is habitually considered to be ambiguous, vague and indeterminate, becomes a productive source of semantic creation which can often specify meaning in a more adequate way than literalness does. Metaphor emerges as a cognitive tool. It appears as an efficacious means of description and explanation, of heuristics and learning, and, as a final instance, an instrument of "worldmaking".Bearing in mind the significance of the "metaphorical turn", one can extend a conventional string of definitions with an additional characterization of a human being as a "metaphorical animal".

This book presents the New Theory of Argumentation, popularly known as the New Rhetoric, as an innovative theoretical and methodological system which will become increasingly important. Two factors determine the importance of this philosophy: (1) The collapse of all modern ideologies, many sociopolitical systems and their associated philosophies, whether of the right or the left, means that the era of the quick, dogmatic perception of how to force people to feel free and happy is over. (2) New forms and institutions of social and economic life must be found among the wreckage. The solutions sought must work best for the greatest number of people and must be flexible enough to allow the reinterpretation of all our determinations, from the very beginning. The New Rhetoric rejects all absolutist and dogmatic ideas. But neither does it support absolute relativism. It constitutes a method for the endless search for truthful explanations and for enlightened practical activity. Truth is only the process of approaching it. While critical of formal logic, the New Rhetoric develops the concepts of 'other', 'experimental', 'flexible', and 'logic of good sense'.The introduction and elaboration of the concept of 'reasonableness' is presented as a milestone in the evolution of scientific methodology. The New Rhetoric has overcome the traditional contradictions between logic, rationalism and dialectic and has laid new foundations for a modern theory of morality, law, legal interpretation, and human rights. This book discusses such problems as: new moral notions, the new dilemma of Cain, the spurious notions of 'centrism', Antigone's new arguments, 'argumentation is not bargaining', new foundations of tolerance and justice. It ends with a section on 'Resolutions for the New Century', written in the spirit of traditional enlightenment, rule of reason and humanism, but which goes beyond them.

The basic theme of Metaphors: Figures of the Mind is contained in the formula that metaphoric language reflects the functioning of our thought processes. Thus, the author of this book uses language analysis as a medium through which we can perceive and analyze the way our mind functions. Results of the investigation point to the conclusion that the mind does not operate according to the representations of a logical-positivistically oriented theorist; the forms of language usage and mental mechanisms involved manifest ubiquitous nonliteralness. However, an overall metaphorical detour from the literal one-to-one correspondence is not for the sake of figurative fancy but is primarily for the purpose of achieving new significations. In such a context, that which is habitually considered to be ambiguous, vague and indeterminate, becomes a productive source of semantic creation which can often specify meaning in a more adequate way than literalness does. Metaphor emerges as a cognitive tool. It appears as an efficacious means of description and explanation, of heuristics and learning, and, as a final instance, an instrument of 'worldmaking'.Bearing in mind the profound significance of the 'metaphorical turn', one can extend a conventional string of definitions with an additional characterization of a human being as a 'metaphorical animal'.

AESTHETICIZING PRAGMATICS The Gamut of Pragmatics Pragmatics emerged among the sciences of language at the end of the 1960's in reaction to certain totalizing models in linguistics: structuralism (primarily in Europe) and generative grammar (initially in the United States). Certain disciples of Chomsky became dissatisfied with autono­ mous syntax and later with generative semantics: they decided to break away from their mentor. Whereas Chomsky continued to talk a lot about very little, they defied him by speaking very suggestively about an exces­ sively broad range of phenomena. Pragmatics -which Bar-Hillel consid­ ered as a 'wastebasket discipline' in the fifties - nevertheless gained respectability. The history of pragmatics spans, of course, much more than three decades. The Stoic conception of language, in the shadow of the great Greek tradition and therefore intensely subversive, had in fact a pragmatic aim. The term pragmatisch appears in Kant: it expresses a relation with a human goal, this goal being only determinable within a community. This characterization naturally inspires the pragmaticism of l the Neo-Kantian Charles Sanders Peirce . It is this Kant-Peirce lineage that led to Morris and Carnap's rather bland conceptions of pragmatics, after the heavy losses incurred by positivism and behaviorism. In any case, despite the constant presence of a pragmatic approach in the history of thought, this reassessment of pragmatics (against the triumphs proclaimed by structuralism and generativism) was experienced as a Significant break­ through. A whole range of pragmatics came to the attention of linguists.