FROM THE EDITORS 

By this issue we wish to remember and honour Henry W. Johnstone, Jr. (1920-2000), 
founder of the journal Philosophy and Rhetoric and late Professor Emeritus of Philo so-
phy at The Pennsylvania State University. Although none of his essays appeared in the 
pages of this journal, we recognize him as a leading scholar in argumentation studies. He 
encouraged many new scholars in the field, sometimes by publishing a paper in Philoso-
phy and Rhetoric, and at other times by a continuing correspondence. We have asked 
some of these scholars who benefitted from Johnstone's philosophical friendship to write 
essays on an aspect of his contributions to the field. 

Richard B. Angell recalls the graduate student days he shared with Johnstone at 
Harvard University. Their friendship and respect for each other's work continued through 
the years. They shared a concern for the importance of the study of argumentation, as 
evidenced by Angell's 1964 textbook, Reasoning and Logic, which sought to make the 
study of logic relevant to reasoning in practical life. 

Maurice Finocchiaro and Johnstone both worked to rescue the argumentum ad hom-
inem from its limited treatment in introductory logic texts. When Johnstone learned of 
Finocchiaro's 1974 paper, "The Concept of Ad Hominem Argument in GaliIeo and Locke" 
(which traced the term 'ad hominem' to Galileo's Dialogues), it occasioned a fruitful 
correspondence between them. In his paper, Finocchiaro gives Johnstone's thesis about 
the role of ad hominem arguments in philosophical argumentation a thorough and careful 
review. 

James Crosswhite published his first article in Philosophy and Rhetoric in 1989, and 
was encouraged by Johnstone's subsequent correspondence. Crosswhite examines de-
velopments in Johnstone's views on validity and his Kantian theory of rhetoric, finding 
both places where he agrees and also places where he disagrees. 

Jean Goodwin's paper (which is also being published in The Pennsylvania Journal of 
Communication and is reprinted here with permission) portrays Johnstone as "a realistic 
Hobbes contrasted with the optimistic Rousseaus" of contemporary argumentation theory. 
In this paper, she explores Johnstone's view that argumentation is disagreement "all the 
way down," and the role that rhetoric plays in this conception. 

Douglas Walton credits Johnstone with being among the first modern logicians to 
recognize the importance of rhetoric in argumentation, and with having the courage to 
follow this insight in a philosophical climate hostile to rhetoric. In his essay in this issue, 
Walton is especially concerned to discuss the relationship between dialectic and rhetoric, 
and to credit Johnstone with having led the way in showing the importance and richness 
of rhetoric for logicians and philosophers. 

The first article in this issue speaks of Johnstone in his early years at Harvard Univer-
sity. It is appropriate, then, that the issue should close with a paper by Mari Lee Mifsud, 
because she worked closely with Johnstone toward the end of his career. In her paper, 
Mifsud elaborates a difficult concept that is central to Johnstone's rhetorical theory, that 
of rhetoric functioning as a "wedge," a process of mentally separating a speaker from her 
position, thereby causing her to become conscious of it. 

We wish to thank these scholars for their cooperation in contributing to this special 
issue of Informal Logic.