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Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.1 (2002) 50-76



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Justifying Practical Reason:
What Chaïm Perelman's New Rhetoric Can Learn from Frege's Attack on Psychologism1 - [PDF]

Louise Cummings


Introduction

Chaïm Perelman's new rhetoric represents both the foundation of his normative inquiry into the notion of justice and a fascinating exploration of argumentation that has relevance for philosophers and nonphilosophers alike. Notwithstanding the undoubted merits of the new rhetoric, the process of theorizing by means of which it is formulated is inherently problematic. The problematic nature of this process derives from its pursuit within the unintelligible perspective of a metaphysical standpoint. In order to demonstrate the unintelligibility of this standpoint and of the theorizing that issues from it, I establish a parallel between Perelman's new rhetoric and Frege's views on logic. Specifically, I claim that while Frege wavers between a Kantian and an unKantian (scientific) conception of logic, Perelman wavers between a nonscientific and a scientific conception of practical reason. A scientific conception of logic and practical reason, I argue, makes it seem, respectively, that we can subject the laws of logic to a demand for judgment and that we can justify the ideals of practical reason. The unintelligibility of such a demand is demonstrated by Frege when he challenges the position of psychologism in logic. Indeed, Frege's challenge in this case effectively determines the form of the challenge that I mount subsequently against the intelligibility of Perelman's attempt to justify the ideals of practical reason. Both Frege's and Perelman's approaches fail, I argue, on account of their institution within philosophical inquiry of the methodology of scientific inquiry. Finally, the scientistic nature of the accounts of these theorists is examined in relation to comments by Hilary Putnam concerning the structure of philosophical controversy in general. [End Page 50]

1. Why Perelman believed we need a new rhetoric

Perelman's new rhetoric represents the culmination of his study of justice, a study pursued from within the perspective of logical empiricism (logical positivism). Central to that study is the concept of formal justice, an understanding of which is dependent on the further notion of action (justice, on the view of Perelman and other writers, is the manifestation of reason in action). Perelman describes formal justice as follows: "An act is formally just if it observes a rule which sets out the obligation to treat all the members of a given category in a certain way" (1963, 45).

Such a rule faces a demand for justification. This demand issues from the fact that the formal character of this rule renders the rule liable to modifications, modifications that then validate as formally just, actions of "real inequality":

We may wonder, not without reason, whether this indefiniteness over the very content of the rule may not lead shrewd minds to evade any accusation of formal injustice, while leaving them almost complete liberty of action and allowing them the fullest possible scope for arbitrary behaviour. Indeed, when we wish not to treat according to the rule a member of a certain essential category, there is nothing to stop us from modifying the rule by means of a supplementary condition causing two categories to emerge where formerly there was only one. This subdivision would at once make it possible to differentiate between the treatment of persons who would thence-forward belong to two different categories. . . . What is the upshot of these thoughts? That it is possible, by means of a modification of the rule, to avoid formal injustice, and this can be done in all cases where the rule itself is not prescribed. In all those cases formal justice can coincide with real inequality due to the arbitrary factor in the rules. The result is that formal justice plays a very minor role in all cases in which there is no question of established rules, imposed on the one who has to observe them. (1963, 46-47; emphases added)

Justification consists in deducing the rules of justice "from a broader...

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