Tindale


Perelman, Informal Logic and the Historicity of Reason     341 

Perelman, Informal Logic and 
the Historicity of Reason 

University of Windsor CHRISTOPHER W. TINDALE 

Abstract: Résumé:  Dans un article posthume 
Perelman discute de sa décision de joindre sa 
théorie d’argumentation à la rhétorique 
plutôt qu’à la logique non formelle. Ceci est 
dû partiellement à l’importance qu’il accorde 
à l’auditoire, et partiellement à l’attitude 
négative des logiciens non formels à l’égard 
de la rhétorique. Dans cet article j’explore 
ses deux raisons en examinant les bénéfices 
que son œuvre peut apporter à la logique 
non formelle, et les contributions que celle- 
ci pourrait apporter au projet de Perelman 
et d’Olbrecht-Tyteca. 

© Informal Logic Vol. 26, No. 3 (2006): pp. 341-357. 

Keywords:  audience, evaluation, informal logic, historicity of reason, noninteractive 
audience, Perelman, Reason, rhetoric. 

1. Introduction 

  In a posthumous paper, Perelman 
discusses his decision to bring his theory of 
argumentation together with rhetoric rather 
than calling it an informal logic. This is due 
in part because of the centrality he gives to 
audience, and in part because of the negative 
attitude that informal logicians have to 
rhetoric. In this paper, I explore both of these 
concerns by way of considering what benefits 
Perelman’s work can have for informal logic, 
and what insights the work of informal 
logicians might bring to the project of 
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca. 

In a posthumous paper, Perelman makes an interesting observation: “It is on account 
of the importance of audience that I bring the theory of argumentation together 
with rhetoric rather than styling it an informal logic, as do the young logicians of 
today who take an interest in argumentation, but for whom the word ‘rhetoric’ 
retains its pejorative aspect” (1989, p. 247).1 The identity of those “young logicians” 
(this would have been written in the early 1980s) must remain a mystery. What 
should matter to us is the choice involved along with the reasons for it. Two points 
emerge: that informal logic is judged not to value the importance of audience, and 
that logicians drawn to informal logic hold rhetoric in disdain. In considering 
Perelman’s relationship to informal logic, I want to begin by investigating these 
two ideas to determine the degree to which the charges have merit, particularly 
over the span of the last twenty years of informal logic’s development. 

These are two quite different questions. It might be that in the development of 
informal logic an appreciation of audience has indeed emerged, while rhetoric per 
se is viewed negatively due to its continued association with strategies of exploitation 



342     Christopher W. Tindale 

in the manner of eristical tricks that bend an audience to the will of arguer in 
underhanded ways rather than through the force of good reasons. Whatever the 
case, I believe that Perelman’s work shares many important themes with the projects 
of informal logic, such that they both have points of value to contribute to each 
other. Moreover, the value of what Perelman’s work promises lies exactly in these 
two areas of concern: the positive treatment of rhetoric in argumentation, and 
central role of audiences with its important associated historical sense of rationality. 

2. The Reaction to Rhetoric 

The degree to which the word “rhetoric” has ever had a pejorative association for 
informal logicians is unclear. Perelman is less than helpful here, failing to elaborate 
on the remark and provide names with which he associates the attitude. While 
rhetoric and philosophy have long since lost the connections they held for Aristotle 
and those who followed him, we cannot simply infer from this that rhetoric has 
been viewed distrustfully simply because it has been judged irrelevant to the truth- 
seeking goals of philosophers. 

It is possible that Perelman has in mind remarks like this from Copi (1982, 
p.88) who speaks of rhetoric being “of course…wholly worthless in resolving a 
question of fact;” and the more damning statement in his Informal Logic: “In 
political campaigns today almost every rhetorical trick is played to make the worse 
seem the better cause” (Copi, 1986, p.97). But elsewhere in his standard text, Copi 
speaks positively about rhetoric, and the later book that seems to associate it with 
the tricks of eristics did not appear until after Perelman’s death. More alarming is 
John Nolt’s then-popular informal logic text which specifically identifies rhetoric 
as being “concerned with influencing people’s beliefs without regard for truth” 
(1984, p.278). Again, perhaps at issue was the work of “standard” informal logicians 
like Johnson and Blair, with whom Perelman was familiar.2 A rhetorician giving a 
cursory read to the first edition of Logical Self-Defense (1977) may well be arrested 
by a section titled “Eliminating Rhetoric” (p.107) that offered advice on extracting 
the argument from the rhetoric and diluting the persuasive force of some 
characterizations that are built into the language.3 These selective “glimpses” may 
well capture the general appreciation of rhetoric (or lack thereof) in the late 1970’s 
and early 1980’s (when Perelman would have made his judgment). But it also 
seems reasonable to suggest that this attitude was grounded more in ignorance 
than ill-will. That is, philosophically-trained informal logicians were likely unaware 
that rhetoric could have anything other than a pejorative sense. Subsequent exposure 
to the works of rhetoricians and speech communication scholars, as the interests 
of many informal logicians has coincided with those of that community, has brought 
a more accurate appreciation of the wider senses ‘rhetoric’ can have, including the 
positive. Thus, later work by informal logicians has tended to reflect this greater 
awareness and sensitivity.4 A case in point is the Johnson and Blair text, which by 
the third edition (1993) asserts: “In our opinion, rhetoric as a discipline has important 



Perelman, Informal Logic and the Historicity of Reason     343 

insights about argumentation which logicians need to embrace…. In our experience, 
logicians tend to underestimate the importance of audience and context to the 
comprehension and evaluation of argumentation” (pp.142-43). This corrective 
has the added merit of also addressing the second concern in Perelman’s statement. 

It is difficult, then, to see the pejorative sense of rhetoric promoted in the work 
of serious informal logicians. If anything, there is a tendency toward neglect rather 
than dismissal. Granted, the general suspicion of rhetoric in public media seems a 
widely shared prejudice. It is seen in the everyday rejections of positions as being 
largely rhetorical. More pertinently, though, it can creep into the tenor of some of 
the criticisms mobilized against the New Rhetoric5 (discussed below) that identifies 
in the focus on audience an extreme relativism which invites, if not encourages, 
exploitation, a goal traditionally associated with the pejorative sense. But such a 
license to exploit is never a view that Perelman tolerated and I will argue that no 
balanced reading of the New Rhetoric can seriously find support for it there. 

Perelman’s entire academic career is grounded in and characterized by an abiding 
interest in justice, and that interest saturates the work on argumentation. While not 
explicitly stated, it is fair to interpret the rhetorical argumentation that he develops 
as a counter to all moves to exploitation of audiences and as a tool that will facilitate 
the development of a more just society. Fairly presented, argumentation animates 
human freedom (1969, p.514), germinating that sphere in which reasonable choice 
can be exercised. And it does this because the rationality of the activity itself is 
predicated upon the existence of a community of minds. 

Any community requires a range of commonalities of language and of interests 
that binds it. But entering into argumentation with others also confers value upon 
them, recognizes them as worth persuading and attaching importance to their 
agreement (1969, p.16).6 Establishing communion with an audience (in the rhetorical 
sense) involves understanding their positions, viewing things from their perspective 
and sharing that perspective to some degree. Moreover, this attitude elicits “some 
concern for the interlocutor” and requires that the arguer “be interested in his state 
of mind” (p.16). 

 Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca illustrate the nature of this concern with remarks 
that bear on the use of the ad baculum. The use of force is contrasted with the use 
of reasoned argument, which appeals to the free judgment of the other person or 
persons, who are not seen as objects. “Recourse to argumentation assumes the 
establishment of a community of minds, which, while it lasts, excludes the use of 
violence” (p.55). One is even exhorted to employ one’s own beliefs in persuasion 
only to the extent that the interlocutor is willing to give assent to them. Clearly, 
such advice tells against a pejorative sense of rhetoric where any means may be 
used to persuade an audience.7 

Still, the menace of that pejorative sense lurks always in the shadows of the 
New Rhetoric, sometimes encroaching into discussions where it is identified and 
addressed. This is particularly evident in some of the closing sections, where the 



344     Christopher W. Tindale 

authors are acutely conscious of objections that may be raised to their project. 
Many of the strategies of argumentation and schemes they describe may be rejected 
as contrivances, artificial means to the end of persuasion, hiding the arguer’s 
intentions behind a variety of devices: “Argument addressed to others and eloquence 
in all its forms has always been subject to disqualification and is constantly exposed 
to it.… It is sufficient to qualify what has been said as “rhetorical” to rob it of its 
effectiveness” (p.450). The charge of “device” arises like a charge of “fallacy,” at 
least insofar as it undermines the effectiveness of the argumentation. But unlike a 
fallacy, a rhetorical device is indeed the vehicle of persuasiveness and needs to be 
retained. The more effective devices are those that go unnoticed, that appear natural. 
And this naturalness is achieved by a variety of means, such as matching the 
device to what, in the hearer’s likely estimation, is appropriate for the object of the 
discourse (p.453). As useful as such means may be to allay the concern over 
devices, the most fitting strategy may be to encourage audience involvement in the 
argumentation itself, so that the audience shares something of what is developed. 
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca hint that such a move is desirable when they appeal 
to Pascal: “…people are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they 
have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of 
others” (cited in Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969, p.453). First-hand 
recognition of something is likely to be more compelling than a second-hand relating 
of it, because the person “sees” the point and invests in the idea. Self-persuasion, 
insofar as it is being explicitly encouraged here, indicates further the non-exploitative 
sense of rhetoric that governs the proceedings. 

In light of the foregoing explanation, we can perhaps appreciate why Perelman 
would be so alarmed by any perceived hint of a pejorative attitude toward rhetoric 
in the work of like-minded logicians. It is not so much that such an attitude is 
misguided as that it discourages serious appreciation of rhetoric in logical contexts. 
It was far better to adopt the kind of perspective that animates the model of 
rhetorical argumentation advocated by Perelman (and Olbrechts-Tyteca). This is a 
model that values the audience and presents the arguer and audience as co-operating 
in a shared community of mutual regard. 

3. Audience 

The attention to audience in the New Rhetoric and the stress on adherence indicates 
a key difference from the approaches of informal logic. Argumentation, for Perelman 
and Olbrechts-Tyteca, involves the attempt to bring about adherence in the minds 
of an audience, understood as those to whom the argumentation is addressed 
(1969, p.7). Thus, the thrust of what they present is aimed at the construction of 
arguments, at how to put arguments together in order to win over audiences to a 
point of view. Informal logic, on the other hand, largely expresses an interest in the 
products of argumentation (the arguments) and the degree to which they can be 
deemed strong or cogent (Johnson & Blair, 2000; Freeman, 2005; Finocchiaro, 



Perelman, Informal Logic and the Historicity of Reason     345 

2005).8 At the same time, both sets of theorists put forward a complete model of 
argumentation which involves both the production or invention of arguments and 
criteria to assess their strength. To that end the new rhetoricians must provide 
some comment on evaluation and the criteria of strength to be employed; and the 
informal logicians must address the invention of arguments. The evaluation of the 
new rhetoricians, if it is going to gain wide adherence itself, must involve more 
than determining whether adherence has been achieved; just as the advice given by 
informal logicians about the construction of arguments must involve more than 
the avoidance of fallacies. 

One theorist closely aligned with the informal logicians who has addressed the 
issue of audience in a critical way is Trudy Govier (1999, Ch. 11). In fact, her 
discussion is an implicit challenge to the work of Perelman since she judges that 
the kind of audience for which much argumentation is produced (particularly in 
the mass media) is a noninteractive audience the beliefs and intentions of which 
cannot be known. As she reviews the situation, informal logicians have implicitly 
assumed an importance for audience in a number of ways. Premise acceptability, 
for example, involves the evaluation of whether the premises of an argument are 
acceptable to someone (1999, p.185).9 This is fine for what she calls “direct 
evaluation,” when the audience is the person being addressed directly by the 
argument. Even historical arguments (she uses the case of Hume’s argument against 
miracles) can be evaluated when we take the reasonable stance that such an argument 
has the kind of broad relevance such that it can be treated as being directed to us. 
I can decide to become the audience for an argument, should I find that it addresses 
me. But if we look at arguments indirectly, then we are taking on a perspective 
other than our own where we are asking whether other people should have been 
persuaded by them. It is here that her concerns with the noninteractive audience 
come to the fore. By a noninteractive audience she means a “noninteractive, 
heterogeneous audience whose views are unknown and unpredictable” (p.188). 
Anyone who constructs arguments for the mass media, for example, or aims their 
arguments at nonspecialists, confronts such a noninteractive audience. Such seems 
to be the antithesis of the audience as it is viewed in Perelman’s rhetoric. At the 
time of construction the arguer knows little about the audience and cannot interact 
with them. Not even a device like the universal audience can help us here, since the 
noninteractive audience shares only its indeterminateness, not its status as a standard 
of reasonableness. 

After considering such points, Govier concludes that it is not useful to appeal 
to audience to resolve issues such as acceptability, and so falls back on other more 
standard informal logic criteria like whether premises are common knowledge, or 
knowable a priori, or defended elsewhere, or on reliable testimony or authority 
(p.199). In general, these are the criteria she uses for assessing acceptability in her 
own informal logic textbook (1997, and subsequent editions). Thus, it is not entirely 
the case that audience has been ignored in informal logic but, given the force and 



346     Christopher W. Tindale 

authority of Govier’s critique, there seems to have been little appetite to adopt it as 
a central consideration in either evaluation or construction, particularly when the 
criteria that she has identified can be preferred. 

Undoubtedly, the noninteractive audience, as Govier has presented it, is a serious 
challenge to those who wish to argue for the centrality of audience. I will address 
that below. But what might first strike us as strange is the alternative that she 
provides. It is by no means obvious that her criteria do avoid recourse to an 
audience. Granted, whether something is knowable a priori might qualify if we 
have no concerns about who is doing the knowing. But other criteria like ‘common 
knowledge’ and ‘testimony appeals’ put us right back in the interactive arena. We 
do not know, for example, what people know in common, but we can assess what 
ideas and beliefs are current in certain contexts. On these terms we can assess 
what people in those contexts should accept. Here, we are talking about the 
environment of an audience that is being addressed, an environment that we share 
if we find ourselves addressed by the argument. In judging acceptability, we judge 
how well the arguer has captured that context. Likewise, whether we accept the 
appeal to someone’s testimony or the word of an authority depends in many (perhaps 
most) cases on contextual features surrounding that appeal. Some claims seem 
strange in certain contexts, and an audience would be justified in challenging the 
testimony of the claimant. Much depends on what counts as normal in that context 
or community. Thus, it is by no means clear that Govier has provided the informal 
logician a raft in a sea of noninteractiveness, let alone the safety of a shore. Wherever 
we turn, an audience can be waiting, whether our business is construction or 
evaluation. 

In spite of the difference of focus, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s ways of 
gaining adherence involve strategies of argumentation that do overlap some of the 
material that we would find in an informal logic text. Moreover other aspects of 
their account contribute useful insights to the project of informal logic generally, 
especially if they promise a solution to the problem of audience that still lingers 
after Govier’s treatment. 

The starting point of argumentation, for Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, involves 
basic premises understood as types of agreement. Thus, they will speak of facts, 
which are types of agreement that involve no further strengthening (1969, p.67) 
and truths, which relate to systems of wider import. These primary agreements, 
or starting points, can suggest certain loci (or topoi) that may be employed to meet 
an audience where it “lives” and move its members toward a position the arguer 
wishes them to consider. Loci of quantity, for example, may capture generally 
agreed upon ideas, such as that more education is better than less. The arguer can 
assume this and not have to provide argumentation for it. Such presumptions can 
be justified in terms of what Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca describe as a general 
inertia in a society. Inertia in argumentation (like its parallel principle in physics) 
relates to the fund of established ideas and principles that do not need to be discussed 



Perelman, Informal Logic and the Historicity of Reason     347 

anew each time because there is a weight of societal agreement in their favour 
(pp.105-06).10 Whether prompted by habit or a desire for coherence, we assume 
that what has been adopted will continue into the future unless some compelling 
case for change can be justified through argument (as does occur whenever we 
break with constraints of tradition which constitutes the body of agreements by 
which people live). It is, then, change, and not inertia that needs justification. But 
in all these instances, choices are made in relation to the intended audience. The 
arguer does not work in a vacuum, but against the background of a known set of 
beliefs and understandings that are shared with the audience. The arguments that 
develop may emerge as products characterized by premises and claims, but they 
have been crafted in situ, that is, at the point of interaction between arguer and 
audience. As such, the “presence” of the audience has affected the nature of the 
argument—has set constraints to it, conditioned its premises and even the scheme 
that has been adopted. If there is a parallel concept to this in informal logic, that of 
‘common knowledge’ comes closest. In fact, on the terms just explained we can 
appreciate further how the preference for this idea in determining acceptability has 
not escaped the terrain of audience since we must always ask whose knowledge is 
under consideration in any judgment of ‘common knowledge’. Even the arguer 
addressing her points in the mass media understands the broad range of attitudes 
and knowledge that comprise the pool of inertia at any particular time. Drawing on 
her own experience, Govier notes how unexpected voices in her mass audience 
later speak out in ways that show her arguments have been received as she could 
never have anticipated. But this does not undermine the value of the argumentation 
itself; it only speaks to its dialogical nature and the ongoing discourses that it can 
engender. 

We see the contributions made by the audience emphasized in Perelman and 
Olbrechts-Tyteca’s treatment of an argument type, deemed fallacious by many, 
and ubiquitous in informal logic textbooks, and that is the ad hominem. But the 
treatment this is given will not be so familiar. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca have 
earlier made a key distinction between a particular audience and a universal audience 
rooted in it that represents the power of reason in that audience.11 Ad hominem 
arguments, with their bases in opinion, are directed at particular audiences because 
they will have no weight for the universal audience (p.111). The premises of such 
arguments “fix the framework within which the argument unfolds: it is for this 
reason that we link the examination of this question with agreements particular to 
certain argumentations” (p.111). This serves to emphasize how really audience- 
specific the argumentation is at what we may think of as “ground level.” Each 
argument is addressed to the person or persons involved, hence its ad hominem 
nature. By contrast, the sense in which this label has been more widely used is 
identified as the ad personam, the attempt to disqualify someone through a personal 
attack. While such strategies are not given the kind of complex treatment we now 
see developed in the writings of informal logic,12 their relationship to the more 



348     Christopher W. Tindale 

general ad hominem serves to reinforce a feature of the ‘ad’ arguments that is 
being appreciated with increasing frequency—they are context dependent and so 
the persuasive elements of the argument will lie not in its internal relationship 
between parts but externally in relation to features of the context. 

This begins to show how the rhetorical not just enters in, but grounds Perelman 
and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s approach to argumentation. Begging the Question is 
characterized in a similar way in a treatment that addresses what has been a problem 
in the logical tradition—the apparent validity of a fallacious argument. The New 
Rhetoric does not treat Begging the Question in a formal sense, that is, as a technique 
of demonstration; but as a problem of adherence. Thus, “it is not an error of logic, 
but of rhetoric” (p.112). It assumes that an interlocutor has already given adherence 
to the proposition which the arguer is trying to get that person to accept. Only 
within the framework of an argumentation that is rooted in a concern with audience 
(and not in a demonstration) can such instances of Begging the Question be 
appraised, because only in such contexts do we weigh what propositions an audience 
already accepts and which ones they might reasonably be brought to accept. It is 
fruitless to assess the relationship of propositions in isolation from the minds that 
are proposed to hold them. 

Generally, other “labels” that should interest the informal logician arise in the 
New Rhetoric in relation to similar concerns. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 
approach the construction of argumentation in terms of techniques, some of which, 
like the Argument of Waste (p.279),13 are based on the structure of reality and 
others of which, like the Argument from Analogy (p.372),14 establish the structure 
of reality. In each case, the technique is to be employed in relation to the intended 
audience and appropriate strategies for gaining the adherence of that audience in a 
reasonable way. In a similar way, they had previously presented the techniques 
that they term quasi-logical arguments. These arguments acquire their persuasiveness 
from their resemblance to formal patterns of argument. So ‘incompatibility’ 
resembles ‘contradiction’ (pp.195-97) and ridicule borrows its persuasiveness from 
the reductio (p.205). But in each case the appeal is to the underlying circumstances 
rather than to a formal system. Propositions become incompatible, for example, 
“as the result of a certain determination of notions with respect to particular 
circumstances” (p.201); and the ridiculous arises in contrast to opinions that are 
accepted (p.206). While we cannot suggest a parallel between quasi-logical 
arguments and informal argument patterns, since the latter do not derive their 
force from any close relation with formal logic, they do share a common agenda 
of dealing with reasoning outside of formal systems, of being in their respective 
ways logics of argumentation (where this is set in contrast with demonstration). 
Among the large variety of techniques advanced by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 
whether quasi-logical, based on reality, or establishing the structure of reality, the 
choices governing the construction of the content and the techniques to be employed 
arise always in relation to the audience whose adherence is at issue.15 



Perelman, Informal Logic and the Historicity of Reason     349 

4. Evaluation 

Where there is more room for overlap between Perelman’s approach and informal 
logic is in the common interest in evaluation. While the majority of the New Rhetoric 
seems aimed at construction, the model cannot be presented as a complete model 
of argumentation without some sense of how argumentation will be evaluated. Of 
course, the pat response to this is to echo Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s own 
remarks throughout the opening sections of the book: Argumentation aims at the 
adherence of an audience and so the obvious measure of that success is seeing 
that such adherence ensues. Thus we see critical reactions to the model restricting 
its notion of soundness to this condition. A common reaction is the following: 

Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca offer a rhetorical concept of rationality in 
which soundness of argumentation is equated with the degree to which 
argumentation is well suited to those for whom it is intended. This means 
that the soundness of argument is, according to this criterion, always related 
to an audience. (van Eemeren, et. al., 1996) 

This assumption that the New Rhetoric reduces soundness to effectiveness is 
partly encouraged by the way Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca present their ideas. 
The way they reconsider, for example, the distinction between persuading and 
convincing, that has traditionally divided rhetoricians and philosophers, can create 
confusion. They talk at length about the way those concerned with action value 
persuasion, while those concerned with the rational character of adherence value 
convincing (1969, p.27). But as they also explain, this distinction itself is 
misconceived. While a syllogism may induce conviction but not persuasion, that is 
only because it is being considered in isolation from its context, as a product. It is 
for this reason that they explicitly refuse to adopt a sharp division between the 
two. They are interested in “the difference between conviction and persuasion as 
it is experienced by the hearer,” (p.29) and judge that this will always be imprecise. 
The hearer, while persuaded, “imagines transferred to other audiences” (p.29) the 
argument presented, and so considers it both at the level of the personal and at the 
level of the general. Hence, conviction reinforces persuasion and cannot be clearly 
distinguished from it. This begins to suggest ways around the charge that 
effectiveness is all that is at issue, but it does not tell the whole story, nor does it 
disperse the spectre of relativism that is often associated with it (van Eemeren and 
Grootendorst, 1995—an extreme relativism, really, that sees the criteria of 
reasonableness not relative to communities but to individual arguers.16 

We cannot ignore the emphasis on adherence in the early parts of the New 
Rhetoric that give fuel to this reading. But nor should we ignore what might be 
viewed as the climax of the book with its turn to a discussion of when arguments 
are strong, and when weak. In terms of the general tone of the critique, we might 
expect the answer there to be something along the lines of: when we see an audience 
act in a way that indicates adherence to the claim, then the argument is strong 
because successful; and when we see no adherence take root, the argument is 



350     Christopher W. Tindale 

weak. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca do say some things that gesture in this 
direction. The strength of arguments will be connected to a hearer’s adherence to 
the premises (p.461). But this is adherence at the starting point of an argument, 
not its terminus in action. The strength of an argument lies partly in the difficulty 
that there is in refuting it. Thus, while the strength of arguments will vary with the 
audience, this is in relation to the types of arguments that are chosen for different 
audiences. They note, for example, that Aristotle recommended argument by example 
for deliberative oratory and Whately advised arguments from cause to effect when 
addressing certain minds. The intent here is to focus on the arguments used and 
criteria of strength associated with them and in particular their refutation. They 
then raise what must be the crucial question for informal logicians reading the New 
Rhetoric: “Is a strong argument an effective argument which gains the adherence 
of the audience, or is it a valid argument, which ought to gain it?” (p.463). Like 
many distinctions Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca evoke, this one cannot be absolute. 
What would count as the normal (descriptive) and the norm (prescriptive) can 
only be defined through “an audience whose reactions provide the measure of 
normality and whose adherence is the foundation of standards of value” (p.463). 
This is to ask whence our standards of reasonableness arise, in relation to which 
audience? To address these kinds of questions and respond to their own regarding 
strength, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca invoke an earlier discussion of the rule 
of justice. 

Success is one thing, and certainly the rhetorical arguer pursues this. But she 
also wants success on rational grounds, and to that extent her argument must 
meet a more exacting condition that will allow it to be tested. The rule of justice is 
first introduced back in the section on quasi-logical arguments. There, the rule of 
justice requires “giving identical treatment to beings or situations of the same kind. 
The reasonableness of this rule and the power that it is recognized as having derive 
from the principle of inertia, from which originates in particular the importance 
that is given to precedent” (pp.218-19). As we saw above, established ideas and 
principles do not need to be discussed anew each time because there is an inertial 
force of societal agreement in their favour. For Perelman in particular this idea 
underlies the legal validity of precedence in law. In these terms, the rule of justice 
allows us to pass from earlier cases to future cases (p.219). 

At the close of the book (what Crosswhite calls its “center of gravity” [2000, 
p.7]), this rule is brought in to address the discussion of validity. After all, what 
provides the criterion of validity?17 Usually, it is some theory of knowledge involving 
techniques that have been effective in various fields of learning and that can be 
transferred to others. This has given rise to the clash between the methodologies 
of different fields and the quest for the unity of science grounded in the criterion 
of self-evidence. But when the self-evident is the criterion of validity it discredits 
all argumentation which may be effective but does not provide “real” proof. This 
aside (since Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s entire project has resisted this kind 



Perelman, Informal Logic and the Historicity of Reason     351 

of thinking), there can be no doubt that a distinction is made between weak and 
strong arguments, and so they write: 

Our hypothesis is that this strength is appraised by application of the rule of 
justice: that which was capable of convincing in a specific situation will 
appear to be convincing in a similar or analogous situation. The comparison 
of situations will be the subject of constant study and refinement in each 
particular discipline. (p.464) 

We might reasonably ask how this will work, how would the norms of 
reasonableness that guarantee validity be recognized through the rule of justice? A 
fitting answer to this is suggested through their treatment of the Red Herring, 
which they understand in terms familiar to informal logicians as a problem of 
shifting a discussion to another subject that is considered irrelevant (p.484). If 
there was agreement as to the irrelevance of diversions, this device would 
characterize weak arguments: 

But there seldom is. The charge of diversion and the charge of fallacy are 
alike in that they both assume that the introduction of the irrelevant or 
fallacious argument was deliberate. Now the charge can be sustained only in 
cases where there is a substantial departure from what is usual. It is indeed 
theoretically possible to deny that such parts of a discourse as the exordium 
and peroration have any argumentative value, and to treat them as diversions. 
It is the application of the rule of justice that enables one to arrive at an 
opinion in this matter. (p.485) 

The answer suggested here is that we look to similar, established cases to determine 
what should count as relevant in this case. If there is a precedent set or a 
presumption in favour of treating the exordium and peroration as parts of the 
argument, then they are not diversions. The conditions of the Red Herring brought 
to bear on the case and framing the matter raise exactly this kind of question and 
serve as an example of reasonable criteria that transcend particular cases and 
determine validity by means of what is generally accepted. 

More particularly, there are implications here for the authority of the Red Herring 
itself as such a set of conditions.18 The Red Herring is a pattern or regularized 
typology of argument. But where do its conditions come from? To say that we can 
detect them already in Aristotle’s remarks on diversions (Topics, 111b31-112a11) 
is not an answer. From where does Aristotle get his understanding for dealing with 
it? After all, some fallacies have fallen by the wayside over the course of the 
tradition, and for others we allow both reasonable and unreasonable versions of 
the arguments. 

The rule of justice points to the pattern itself as having been drawn from cases 
that define it. It is part of a community’s grounded understanding of what count as 
conditions of reasonableness. This commonality challenges the extreme relativism 
identified above. Arguers belong to communities of reasoners, communities that 
they have in common with their audiences. In this sense, they share the common 
patterns of what is reasonable. Simply put, the rule of justice provides a constraint 



352     Christopher W. Tindale 

on mere acceptance. Audiences are not free to accept whatever they would like. 
They operate in a field of reasoning that provides established judgments and the 
patterns on which they have been judged reasonable. Whatever we accept has to 
fit with what has been accepted in other, similar instances. This is what gives 
coherence to our judgments and a sense of our belonging to a community of 
reasoners. We can challenge the standards we inherit, argue that they do not transfer 
to our case, argue that they are misapplied, but we cannot ignore them. Arguers 
appreciate this; such standards are part of the cognitive environment of the audiences 
they interact with, at a level at which we all interact. 

Another of the later sections of the New Rhetoric explores the concept of 
dissociation (one, along with association, that had been introduced earlier). The 
strategy of dissociation involves taking an established concept and dividing it along 
particular lines, with one of the separated elements promoted as having a value 
over its more traditional counterpart.19 An incompatibility in the way a concept 
appears gives rise to the break among the original unity of elements within the 
single concept. A contemporary example is suggested in the way ‘cloning’ is 
separated into therapeutic and reproductive varieties, with value attached to the 
first. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca suggest that this strategy is characteristic of 
how new concepts emerge in the history of philosophy, and they provide a wealth 
of examples to illustrate their proposal (1969, pp.415-38). Once this strategy has 
been introduced and has been understood, the reader is able to look back at the 
terrain of the New Rhetoric and the wider expanse of Perelman’s work generally 
and appreciate it as a series of dissociations, most clearly of ‘reason’ itself. 
Elsewhere (1963, p.158), Perelman contrasts historic reason (with the rule of 
justice as its constituent principle) with an eternal reason (principles of identity and 
non-contradiction). I think we can assign these places within the respective columns 
of argumentation and demonstration. What makes one reason “historic” rather 
than eternal is that it exhibits what we might call an “historicity.” It allows us to 
conceive of reason not as ahistorical and fixed, but something that arises in history 
and moves and changes through history, like the pattern ‘Red Herring’. Crosswhite 
captures something of what is at stake here when he writes: “The measure of 
reasoning is not some timeless logical standard located in the essential nature of 
constantly present things” (1996, p.36). The measure of reasoning is always an 
audience in history, drawing off of audiences in contiguous times and locations, 
but able to change and modify its standards as experience and the argumentation 
presented to it warrants. “The historicity of reason,” writes Perelman, “is always 
closely connected with it becoming part of a tradition” (1963, p.157). The power 
of inertia is a strong force stabilizing our reasoning and resisting the spectre of 
extreme relativism. But reason remains historical, albeit an almost-tradition, open 
to the justifications for changing standards. A graphic illustration of this, I would 
suggest, are the emerging standards of informal logic, like those for argument 
evaluation and the criteria for identifying and assessing fallacies. 



Perelman, Informal Logic and the Historicity of Reason     353 

The fitting comparator to reason’s historicity is that of science. Since at least 
Kuhn (1962) we have been apprised of the ways in which science, like reason, is 
historical, reflected in the collective achievement of the group. Kuhn recognizes 
the group (admittedly, the “uniquely competent professional group”) as the exclusive 
arbiter of achievement (1962, p.168). But, importantly, the standard lies solely 
within this community, never outside it. The inertia exhibited by normal science 
and the shifts of change in extraordinary science both exhibit progress.20 The 
parallel is compelling. 

When we construct arguments aimed at a generalized audience, and when we 
evaluate the same, it seems implausible that we confront the vague and unresponsive 
anonymity that Govier imagines as her noninteractive audience. There is always 
something there at which we direct our ideas, even if it is only at first an expanded 
mirror of ourselves. In the ongoing interaction, that audience takes shape and the 
dialogue becomes more meaningful. But when we assess the reasonableness of 
that audience’s actual and expected responses, we assess them according to 
standards that are alive in that audience and shared between arguer and audience. 
We may fall back on ‘audience-independent’ criteria like common knowledge, 
testimony, etc. But those measures of what is reasonable only work because they 
are shared by the audiences concerned. Because, Perelman is suggesting, those 
criteria do not drop fully made into the logician’s tool box. They work because 
they are shared and have been passed through history from audience to audience. 

5. Conclusion 

“Every systematic treatment of argumentation has two branches, one 
concerned with invention of arguments and the other with judgement of their 
validity.” (Cicero, Topics II6) 

On balance, there is much to look for in any blending of the two approaches. After 
all, I have yet to ask what Perelman meant by informal logic in the remark taken 
from his late work. Given the general distinction he and Olbrechts-Tyteca drew 
between demonstration with its self-evident truths compelling assent from all rational 
minds and eschewing the need for argumentation, and argumentation itself, that 
sphere which eludes certainty and concerns the credible, plausible and probable, it 
seems uncontroversial that Perelman would take informal logic to be the logic of 
such argumentation. And while Perelman’s project, as set out in the New Rhetoric, 
does not share all the goals of informal logic, as theories of argument, they cannot 
help but have interests in common matters and ideals. This comes to the fore in the 
question of evaluation, on which a fruitful exchange between the two approaches 
to argumentation might ensue. In particular, the clarity of schemes and more detailed 
criteria of evaluation that have emerged in informal logic would help tighten the 
looser ideas of the New Rhetoric; while the latter’s greater sensitivity to the 
importance of audience promises to enrich the work of informal logic.21 



354     Christopher W. Tindale 

Notes 
1 Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca offer the same explanation for choosing to call their approach 
rhetorical rather than dialectical (1969, p.5; p.54). 
2 He had been invited to join the editorial board of Informal Logic, but declined because of what 
he took to be its purely pedagogical focus, perhaps basing his judgment on the earlier Informal 
Logic Newsletter. 
3 While in the Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Informal Logic, Johnson and 
Blair identify The New Rhetoric as one of only three monographs of significance to informal logic, 
still the program set out there distinguishes informal logic and rhetoric as separate disciplines 
whose relationship is unclear (1980, p.26). 
4 See, for example, the article by Groarke (2007) in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http:/ 
/plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-informal/#Rhe. 
5 This is the phrase I will use to refer to the perspective or account we associate with Perelman. 
When explicit reference is made to the central work he co-authored with Olbrechts-Tyteca, then 
the title will be italicized. 
6 Nor does all argumentation aimed at adherence involve persuasion. Some techniques, like 
illustration (1969, p.357), are designed to strengthen an adherence that is already present. 
7 Nor should the construction of a universal audience (for each particular one) be seen to counter 
this concern for real interlocutors. In a discussion that includes consideration of Perelman and 
Olbrechts-Tyteca’s universal audience, Ricoeur (2000, p.118) observes that the universality at 
stake would not seem to be the inner monologue often associated with Kant’s universal, but the 
dialogical connection to an audience grounded in others. 
8 To take observations from this admittedly selective group: Johnson & Blair (2000) suggest that 
leading practitioners of informal logic, like Trudy Govier, Douglas Walton, and themselves see its 
mandate as “the study of norms of argument” and construe a definition of informal logic that fits 
the practices of all those they have identified: “Informal logic designates that branch of logic 
whose task is to develop non-formal standards, criteria, procedures for the analysis, interpretation, 
evaluation, critique and construction of argumentation in everyday discourse” (2000, p.94). 
Freeman identifies the interests of informal logic with the “issues of argument evaluation,” 
specifically whether the premises are justified and the conclusion is then justified by the premises 
(2005, p.x). Finally, Finocchiaro provides the most comprehensive definition by presenting 
informal logic as the theory of reasoning (2005, p.22) and later the theory of argument (p.93). By 
this in turn he means “the attempt to formulate, to test, to clarify, and to systematize concepts 
and principles for the interpretation, the evaluation, and the sound practice of reasoning” (p.22). 
While construction is not absent from the sights of informal logicians, the concern has been first 
and foremost to develop standards of evaluation. But as exceptions to this we should note Vorobej 
(2006, pp.4-5), Pinto (2001, p.119) and Govier (1999, p.185). 
9 Moreover, the judgment that premises are relevant to the conclusion they support assumes that 
connection can be recognized, and whether a premise-set meets a sufficiency requirement may 
depend on the context in which it is being assessed. 
10 An excellent discussion of inertia in the New Rhetoric is provided by James Crosswhite (2000). 
11 I have tackled the notion of the universal audience and tried to develop Perelman and Olbrechts- 
Tyteca’s account in several places: see Tindale, 1999, chapters 3&4; 2004, chapter 6, and 
forthcoming. 
12 See Walton (1988). 
13 Consider the strategy of argument popularized by George W. Bush: 
‘We have invested enormous resources of money and lives in the reconstruction of Iraq. To 
withdraw now would be a tremendous waste of those commitments. Thus we should stay the 
course and finish the job.’ 



Perelman, Informal Logic and the Historicity of Reason     355 

14 Their analysis involves a relationship of structures (A is to B as C is to D) belonging to different 
spheres, along the lines of what Aristotle provides in De Anima: The soul is to the body [A to B] 
as sight is to the eye [C to D]. No one expects sight to survive the death of the eye. And so (A is 
to B as C is to D)—no one expects the soul to survive the death of the body. 
15 As a rhetorical model of argumentation, Perelman’s promotes the Aristotelian triad of logos, 
ethos and pathos. In the limited space available here, and with respect to its particular relevance, 
I have focused on the logos. But the New Rhetoric also gives ample attention to questions of 
ethos, particularly as this concerns the prestige of the arguer and question of the act-person 
relationship (1969, p.303). It is a more contentious issue as to whether the expected attention to 
pathos is present. Gross and Dearin (2003) criticize this as a serious omission. But we might see 
some questions of pathos raised indirectly in, for example, the technique of appealing to symbols. 
The image of a malnourished HIV sufferer in Africa is a pathotic appeal because of what that 
image represents as a symbol. 
16 Van Eemeren and Grootendorst charge that soundness will vary from case to case depending on 
the criteria employed by the audience: “This means that the standard of reasonableness is extremely 
relative” (1995, p.124). On this reading, there can be as many definitions of reasonableness as 
audiences and, if attention is shifted to the universal audience constructed by arguers, as many 
definitions of reasonableness as there are arguers. 
17 Nothing they say here suggests they mean the validity associated with formal demonstrations. 
What they have in mind seems closer the kind of inductive validity advocated by C.L. Hamblin 
(1970, p.225; p.245ff.). 
18 And here, of course, informal logicians provide a welcome advance on such thinking with several 
considered treatments of criteria for this and other argument types. 
19 The concept of dissociation has been extensively explored and developed in the work of van 
Rees (2002; 2005). 
20 As Kuhn also points out (pp.171-72), marking the absence of “truth” from his account, the fact 
that we progress from a primitive point does not mean we move toward a goal. Likewise, no 
teleological account of reason is assumed here. I am grateful to James Crosswhite for drawing the 
relevance of Kuhn’s history to my attention. 
21 An earlier version of this paper was discussed by the members of the Centre for Research in 
Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric (CRRAR) at the University of Windsor. I am grateful to 
all those involved for their discussion and particularly to Ralph Johnson and David Godden for 
their detailed comments. I am also grateful for the comments of James Crosswhite and a further, 
anonymous, referee. 

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Christopher W. Tindale 
Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric 

Department of Philosophy 
University of Windsor 

Windsor, ON, N9B 3P4 

ctindale@uwindsor.ca