Chaim Perelman

Notes

Notes Chapter 1. Perelman’s Life and Influence 1. According to Perelman’s daughter, Noémi Mattis-Perelman, her father’s Polish given name at birth was Henio (Henri in French), the phonetic analogue of which is Chaim in Hebrew. Perelman is said to have adopted the name Chaim following World War II in honor of Chaim Weizman, the first president of Israel (Mattis Tzedek 5). This account is corroborated by Perelman’s close friend, Mieczyslaw Maneli (35). It is an historical fact, however , that although he was called Henri as a youngster, Perelman’s first publications during his undergraduate years at Brussels, written in the early thirties , appeared under the name of “Chaim,” sometimes abbreviated “Ch.” (see “Esquisse,” “A Propos,” “Le Statut Social,” “De l’Arbitraire”). It should be added that the name Henri is not found in the biographical entries for Perelman in the standard reference works. Nor does it appear in the memoirs of the Belgian resistance leaders who have written about Perelman’s exploits during the Occupation. To complicate matters, a 1954 article (“Proof in Philosophy,” Hibbert Journal) appears under the name of “Charles Perelman.” Since Perelman usually abbreviated his first name, this anomaly probably resulted from an editorial misunderstanding, a conjecture offered by Noémi MattisPerelman in an interview with David Frank in June, 1999. 2. Perelman assumed that Johnstone had been the prime mover behind the invitation , and the tone of Oliver’s 1963 piece in Logique et Analyse lends weight to that assumption. See “The New Rhetoric and the Rhetoricians,” 189, and Oliver “Philosophy and/or Persuasion,” 572. 3. These are our translated titles of works published in French by Bruylant in Brussels. Chapter 3. A Theory of the Rhetorical Audience 1. Epideictic is the genre of oratory most centrally concerned with values. This is a genre that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca think has been seriously misunderstood , a misconception stemming from Aristotle’s view that the primary criterion for judging such discourse is aesthetic. For this reason, it is often 154 Notes called ceremonial discourse. The Belgians think that nothing could be further from the truth. For them, an epideictic discourse is not peripheral, but rather “forms a central part of the art of persuasion” (49). It is designed “to strengthen the disposition toward action by increasing adherence to the values it lauds” (50). 2. Although elsewhere in the Phaedrus, Socrates makes extensive use of imaginative allegory, his “flights of fancy” are always under strict intellectual control. Chapter 7. Rhetoric as a Technique and a Mode of Truth 1. We take Warnick’s suggestion that Perelman is responsible for the philosophical content of his joint work with Olbrechts-Tyteca. 2. Of course, as Kenneth Burke points out, both of Antony’s audiences, the Roman mob and the theatrical audience, are being manipulated, though in very different ways. To his theatrical audience, Antony’s speech unironically reveals a vengeful purpose, a desire to unleash “the dogs of war” against the conspirators (3.1.273). But this does not mean that Antony is entirely free from guile with an audience that has just become unwitting co-conspirators in an assassination. Addressing the theatrical audience in a soliloquy now entirely of Burke’s own devising, Antony says: “You have been made conspirators in a murder. For this transgression, there must be some expiative beast brought up for sacrifice. Such requirements guide us in the mixing of the Brutus recipe, for it is Brutus that must die to absolve you . . .” (334). According to Burke, the ground is laid for this sacrifice by showing that Brutus breaks the bonds of friendship and that the conspirators brush aside the obligations of hospitality. In this way, Burke says, Shakespeare dissociates their actions from the course of justice (336–337). In this sense, the funeral oration is doubly manipulative, each manipulation being coincident with the same political purpose on Shakespeare’s part: the absolute condemnation of political murder. 3. All interpretations of this speech are indebted to Leff and Mohrmann’s classical and cogent analysis. 4. This interpretation of the Phaedrus is heavily indebted to that of Nehamas and Woodruff in “Plato.” 5. These matters are of course contingent. In the United States, the additional coherence of private and public selves seems to be emerging as a political imperative . Chapter 9. The Figures as Argument 1. For the interesting comments of the Belgians on style generally, see The New Rhetoric, 149–167. 2. As Ortony’s volume makes clear, any statement...