In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Philosophy and Rhetoric 40.4 (2007) 394-405

Rationality and Narrative:
A Relationship of Priority
Kip Redick
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
Christopher Newport University
Lori Underwood

Introduction

In The New Rhetoric, Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca write that philosophers, in setting forth arguments, claim to be addressing a universal audience,

not because they hope to obtain the effective assent of all men—they know very well that only a small minority will ever read their works—but because they think that all who understand the reasons they give will have to accept their conclusions. The agreement of a universal audience is thus a matter, not of fact, but of right.

(1971, 31)

They go on to say that "Argumentation addressed to a universal audience must convince the reader that the reasons adduced are of a compelling character, that they are self-evident, and possess an absolute and timeless validity, independent of local or historical contingencies" (32). A problem arises for informal logicians and rhetoricians in the claim that the reasons must escape constraints of time and place. In order to escape local or historical contingencies, to be timeless and self-evident, reasons must rise above local narrative constructs. But does this mean rising above all narrative constructs? Does Perelman's notion of the universal audience divorce argumentation from context? Narrative rationality, as set forth by Walter Fisher and others, opens the way for an interpretation of a universal audience that is grounded in a particular context. Rationality itself can be understood to rise from the human impulse to tell stories. If to interact with one another in an activity as basic as argumentation requires a nexus of narrative and rationality, which if either of these components is ontologically and/or practically prior? [End Page 394]

Narrative Priority

In laying out the case that rationality rises from narrative, differing types of rationality will be examined. Next, these divergent rationalities will be shown to be rooted in narrative constructs. The dialogues of Plato will be used to show that casting a new argumentative audience is done through narrative. Finally, an examination of Cartesian methodology in light of narrative audience constructs will show that divorcing rationality from narrative fails.

Divergent Rationalities

Given that rationality refers most generally to the ordered establishment of beliefs or justification of actions, a belief or action is judged rational when there are good reasons set forth to support those beliefs or actions. Rationality is manifest in the ability to engage in goal-directed thinking during which progress is made based on the acceptance and rejection of reasons.1 Activities that manifest rationality constitute what Johnson terms "reasoning" (1996, 244–45). Reasoning activities share one fundamental property: they are all instances of teleological cognition and include but are not limited to the process of argumentation. The question remains as to the criteria for good reasons. Truth, consistency, and coherence are often appealed to as categories used to judge the efficacy of reasons. Informal logicians have pointed out that in order for these categories to be useful in determining the efficacy of good reasons, a situational context beyond linguistic syntax is required. The problems of formal logic hinge on the universality of forms that require no concrete situational context. If truth, consistency, and coherence are appealed to independent of such a context, we are moving toward a formal logic.

There are good reasons that do not fall within the constraints of formal reasoning. Walter Ong points out an example of this in his study of the effects of literacy on consciousness. He uses the research of A. R. Luria, conducted in the former Soviet Union and within the provinces of Uzbekistan and Kirghizia during the early 1930s, to show that the reasoning of oral peoples differs significantly from literate peoples. The basis for the distinction is in different ways of categorizing experience.

Literate peoples' categorization is based upon alphabetic noetic processes, allowing persons to manipulate complex abstract statements within a system that is removed from concrete experience. Ong says...

pdf