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The Universal Audience Revisited

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Practical Reasoning in Human Affairs

Part of the book series: Synthese Library ((SYLI,volume 183))

Abstract

By common consent it is agreed that Perelman’s idea of the universal audience is a central thesis in all of his writings on rhetoric. Because of the space which Perelman devoted to this issue, the subject has received considerable attention by students of argument; and this, in turn, has generated numerous responses from the author. Before proceeding to answer some of his critics shortly before his death, Perelman observed: “It is the notion of the universal audience which has created the most misunderstandings among my rhetorician readers.”1 Most of the misunderstandings that occurred, he reminded his critics in this essay, stemmed from their apparent misinterpretaion of what was said in parts of The New Rhetoric.2

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Notes

  1. ‘The New Rhetoric and the Rhetoricians: Remembrances and Comments,’ Quarterly Journal of Speech 70 (May 1984), 190.

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  2. The section that was misinterpreted, according to Perelman, included pages 31 and 32. See ibid.

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  3. See Perelman’s opening essay in this volume.

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  4. Topica, I.1. All references to this work are from the Loeb Classical Library edition. Trans. E. S. Forster (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966).

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  5. Topica.

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  6. See I.1, I.x, I.xi, VII. 1, and VIII.xi.

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  7. I.1.

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  8. Carl J. Freidrich, ed., The Philosophy of Kant (New York: The Mordern Library, 1949), p. 170.

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  9. See, in particular, the essay by John W. Ray, ‘Perelman’s Universal Audience,’ Quarterly Journal of Speech 64 (December 1978), 361–375.

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  10. Philosophy & Rhetoric 1 (January 1968), 22.

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  11. The Idea of Justice and the Problem of Argument (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), pp. 155, 169.

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  12. ‘Reply to Mr. Zaner,’ Philosophy & Rhetoric 1 (Summer 1968), 170.

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  13. See the opening chapter of this volume.

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  14. ‘Reply to Mr. Zaner.’

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  15. For a discussion of the “significant symbol,” see James L. Golden, Goodwin F. Berquist, and William E. Coleman, The Rhetoric of Western Thought, 3rd. ed. (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1983), pp. 210–211.

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  16. In his lecture at Ohio State University, Perelman said: “I can’t forget my past, my traditions, my culture; but I like to transcend it.”

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  17. Mind 53 (1944), Vol. III, pp. 159–160.

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  18. I.11 and VIII.xiv.

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  19. Justice (New York: Random House, 1967), p. 85.

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  20. The Idea of Justice and the Problem of Argument, p. 169. He put it this way in his essay on ‘The Rational and the Reasonable’: “The reasonable of one age is not the reasonable of another; it can vary like common sense.” The New Rhetoric and the Humanities (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1979), p. 120.

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  21. ‘Rhetoric and Philosophy,’ 22.

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  22. ‘The New Rhetoric and the Rhetoricians: Remembrances and Comments,’ 194.

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  23. ‘The New Rhetoric and the Rhetoricians,’ p. 193.

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  24. ‘Perelman’s New Rhetoric,’ Quarterly Journal of Speech 56 (February 1970), 88.

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  25. Validity and Rhetoric in Philosophical Argument (University Park, Pa.: The Dialogue Press of Man and World, Publishers, 1978), pp. 20–21. 91, 101-106. For a further analysis of Johnstone’s criticisms, along with those of other scholars, see Ray Dearin, ‘Perelman’s “Universal Audience” as a Rhetorical Concept,’ TheoRhet, No. 2 (December 1970), 1-10. The author wishes to express his gratitude to Dearin for the use of his manuscript.

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  26. ‘The Significance of Chaim Perelman’s Philosophy of Rhetoric,’ Revue Internationable de Philosophie (1979), 34–46.

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  27. ‘The New Rhetoric and Dialectics,’ Revue Internationale De Philosophie (1979), 219–234.

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  28. ‘The New Rhetoric and Formalism,’ Revue Internationale De Philosophie (1979), 21–32.

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  29. The New Rhetoric and the Humanities, xiv–xxi.

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  30. Lloyed Bitzer and Edwin Black, eds., The Prospect of Rhetoric (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971), p. 235.

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  31. ‘The New Rhetoric and the Rhetoricians,’ p. 194.

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  32. The author is indebted to Ray Dearin, the guest editor of the special edition of JAFA in honor of Perelman, for forwarding to him a manuscript copy of the essay.

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  33. Kenneth Burke’s notion of the “representative anecdote” is built upon the premise that an act which is a “selection of reality,” a “prototype,” or a “summation” of a larger drama is a legitimate segment for critical analysis. See A Grammar of Motives and A Rhetoric of Motives (Cleveland, Ohio: The World Publishing Company, 1962), pp. 60–61.

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  34. The Art of Persuasion in Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 149.

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  35. The Art of Persuasion in Greece, p. 149.

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  36. J. S. Watson, Trans., Cicero on Oratory and Orators (New York: Arthur Hinds and Company, n.d.), Bk. I, Liv.

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  37. ‘socrates’ Defense (Apology),’ in Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, eds., The Collected Dialogues of Plato (New York: Pantheon Books, 1961), p. 26.

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  38. The Collected Dialogues of Plato, p. 10.

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  39. For a full scale model of the Socratic method of dialectic, see James L. Golden, ‘Plato Revisited: A Theory of Discourse for All Seacons,’ Robert J. Connors, Lisa S. Ede, and Andrea A. Lunsford, eds., Essays on Classical Rhetoric and Modern Discourse (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press), p. 32.

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  40. ‘Socrates’ Defense,’ p. 23.

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  41. ‘Socrates’ Defense,’ p. 26.

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  42. The New Rhetoric and the Humanities, p. 57.

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  43. Richard Weaver, The Ethics of Rhetoric (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1965), p. 25.

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  44. The text of the speech appears in Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1960 (New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1961), pp. 391–393.

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  45. Chaim Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), p. 218. This volume, though not quoted frequently, has had a major influence on the arguments advanced in this study.

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  46. The Making of the President, p. 392.

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  47. Ibid., p. 262. Also see Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1965), pp. 192–193.

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  48. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965), p. 68.

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Authors
  1. James L. Golden
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Communication, The Ohio State University, USA

    James L. Golden  & Joseph J. Pilotta  & 

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© 1986 D. Reidel Publishing Company

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Golden, J.L. (1986). The Universal Audience Revisited. In: Golden, J.L., Pilotta, J.J. (eds) Practical Reasoning in Human Affairs. Synthese Library, vol 183. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4674-3_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4674-3_15

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-8578-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-009-4674-3

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