VALUES (1) as the founding concept of THE NEW RHETORIC
1. Values as a unified field
The philosophical tradition holds that questions about
the good, the ends, the right, obligation, virtue, moral judgment, aesthetic judgment, the beautiful, truth, and validity (Frankena 1967, p. 229),
belong to separate domains: morality, law, aesthetics, logic, economics, politics, epistemology.
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, these questions have been taken up globally, within the framework of a general theory of values, of distant Platonic ancestry. This “wide-ranging discussion in terms of ‘value’, ‘values’, and ‘valuation’ [then] spread to psychology, the social sciences, the humanities and even to ordinary speech” (ibid.).
The concept of value was introduced into the contemporary field of argumentation by Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca’s New Rhetoric [1958], in the philosophical line of Dupréel (1939) (Dominicy n. d.). It constitutes its permanent foundation, as the introductory chapter of Perelman’s « Legal Logic » [Logique juridique] (1979) entitled « The New Rhetoric and Values » shows.
Perelman’s research on value is a perfect example of what a « general theory of values » (Frankena, supra) can be.
The status of value and the role of values in the New Rhetoric is extensively discussed and illustrated in detail Guerrini 2019, 2022. [1]
1. Perelman’s research program on the logic of values
Perelman presents his discovery of argumentation theory as a step beyond a research program on the “logic of value judgments” (Perelman 1979, §50, p. 101; 1980, p. 457). This latter research led him to the following conclusions:
- « There is no logic of value judgments » (ibid.) that would allow their rational organization. This conclusion that is said to be « unexpected » (ibid.).
- Contrary to the project of classical philosophy, it is impossible to construct an ontology that would allow a “calculus of values” that would regulate their hierarchy.
- Logical positivism’s treatment of values leads to a dead end. It maintains a gap between the values and the facts from which they cannot be derived. The consequence of this separation is that any recourse to values is rejected as irrational.
Perelman argues that the view that value-based action is irrational is self-defeating, because it implies that practical reasoning and the entire field of law, both of which are based on values, should be considered irrational, which is absurd because unacceptable.
Perelman’s conclusion is that, because science and logic deal with judgments of truth, they cannot provide the rules for practical reason, which deals with judgments of value. This is the basis of Perelman’s claim, which reasserts the gap between the rational and the reasonable, between “the two cultures”, science and the humanities, see demonstration; proof.
Continuing his research program on values, Perelman, in search of other methods capable of accounting for the rational aspect of the use of values, sought other perspectives better suited to this particular subject. He found them in Aristotles Rhetoric and Topics, which provide techniques for the empirical study of how individuals justify their reasonable choices. Perelman was then able to redefine his theoretical goal no longer as a logic, but as a (New) Rhetoric (ibid.). The argumentative-rhetorical method seems to be the solution to the failure of the logical and philosophical treatments of values. Perelman consistently rejects the project of classical philosophy to develop a calculus of values, since it is not possible to derive a hierarchy of values from an ontology of values. In particular, Perelman disagrees with Bentham on the possibility of a calculus of pleasures and pains.
2. The opposition fact/value
The New Rhetoric is thus structured around two questions concerning values. The first one has a logical origin. It concerns value judgments, made about a being or a concrete situation. The second one has a philosophical origin. It concerns substantial values such as the true, the beautiful and the good, which are the most general of all values.
In the TA, values are defined by the following distinctions and operations, which actually retain much of their positivist origin.
– Facts are necessary and compel the mind, whereas values require an adherence of the mind, see argumentation 1.
– But in practice, value judgments and reality judgments are difficult to distinguish. Contextual considerations may be necessary to characterize a judgment as a value judgment: « This is a car » may be a factual judgment or a value judgment; « this is a real car » is only a value judgment (see Dominicy, n. d., p. 14-17).
– In science, if two truth judgments about a reality are contradictory, one of them is necessarily false (principle of the excluded middle), while two contradictory value judgments, “this is beautiful! vs. this is ugly!”, can both be justified by value-based arguments, developed independently of any appeal to reality.
– Values and facts exist in separate worlds. Value judgments cannot be derived from nor can they be opposed to factual judgments. Group values are acquired through education and language, and they are specifically reinforced in the epidictic genre.
– Values are currently in conflict. Legitimate contradictions between value judgments cannot be resolved by eliminating one of the conflicting values, as one eliminates a false proposition. One can only rank the values (ibid., p. 107).
3. Types of values
The specific treatment of values in the New Rhetoric is based on two assumptions
– A distinction is made between two types of substantive values, “abstract values such as justice or truth, and concrete values such as France or the Church” (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, [1958], p. 77).
– It follows that substantive values and value judgments are « objects of agreement that cannot make a claim to the adherence of the universal audience » (ibid., p. 76), but only the adherence of particular audiences, see to persuade – to convince.
The so-called universal values, “such things as the True, the Good, the Beautiful, and the Absolute” can be considered “as valid for the universal audience only on the condition that their content not be specified” (ibid.). They are the “empty frames” suitable for all audiences, and as such are pure instruments of persuasion (ibid.). Natural law theorists would probably not agree with this conclusion.
4. Values, emotions and the epidictic genre
The Treatise maintains the link between values and emotions, that is of positivist origin.
The following passage on emotions is perhaps the key to understanding the role of values in Perelman’s philosophy. In a clever dissociation, the New Rhetoric pushes « passions » out of the picture in favor of values:
Note that passions, as obstacles, are not to be confused with passions that serve as support for positive argumentation, and which will usually be qualified with a less pejorative term, such as value, for example. (Ibid., p. 630; emphasis added)
See also the quote above (§2.4): the role of values is to « move » the audience. But, on the other hand, if values are opposed to facts (§2.2), and emotions are facts, then values should be opposed to them.
The notion of value refers to issues of subjectivity, emotion, and, semantically, to all the orientations (or biases) constitutive of ordinary speech. The words expressing values are words carrying argumentative orientations, constituted in antonymic pairs.
4.1 Has the epidictic genre a special status in relation to values?
According to the TA, values and truth are acquired via different processes, group values are acquired through education and language. In this per, the epidictic genre specifically deals with values; it does not admit contradiction. Its specific social function is to strengthen the adherence of the group to its common founding values, “without which the discourses aimed at action could not find leverage to move and rouse their listeners” (1977, p. 33)
Perpetually reconstructed in epidictic encounters, where they are subject to a quasi-axiomatic treatment, values find their application in the two argumentative genres properly called, the deliberative and the judicial.
The deliberative and judicial genres are argumentative genres, aimed at collective decision making in situations of conflicting positions. According to Perelman, the epidictic genre has a very different status, it does not admit contradiction; its object is the reinforcement of adherence to group values in order to trigger action, V. Emotion:
Without [values] discourses aimed at action could not find leverage to move and stir their listeners (1977, p. 33).
4.2 The epidictic discourse on values is not unanimous
While insisting on the irreducible contradictions that prevail in the field of values, Perelman thus removes values from actual social contradiction by making the epidictic genre inherently unanimous.
The epidictic genre can be let exclude blame and restrict itself to praise, through literary and social conventions aligning the homage to living and dead men and women with the hagiography of saints. These conventions are not different from those that want a group to erect statues to its heroes and saints and not to its scoundrels and demons.
It is the social framework of the discourses of homage and veneration that, if anything, precludes counter discourse in the case of epidictic, not the nature of eulogy with has a perfect counterpart, blame. The devil’s advocate always has a role to play, even in canonization cases. If the eulogy of the deceased is unanimous, it is not because there are no opponents or because the opponents have nothing to say, but because, by convention of mourning, they keep silent; the new generation can be trusted to turn into villain the great men and values of older generations.
Epidictic praise of virtue ceases to be unanimous as soon as it is given a precise content
Exception being made of the specific conventional practice of mourning, the epidictic genre is defined by the two antagonistic acts of language, praise and blame. These acts define not so much a genre as a position (footing) that can be taken in both political and judicial discourse.
5. Fact, Value and Agreement
For Perelman, the functioning as an argument of value claims as well as truth and reality claims presupposes the agreement of the participants. The whole of these « preliminary agreements » to the argumentation itself creates an atmosphere of « communion » (p. 74) which allows the harmonious development of the argumentative-rhetorical situation itself.
Still according to the Treatise, argumentation can be based on two classes of objects, an object being defined as anything about which one can agree or disagree:
We will ask which objects of agreement play a different role in the argumentative process. We think it will be useful, from this point of view, to group these objects into two categories, one relative to the real, which would include facts, truths and presumptions, the other relative to the preferable, which would contain values, hierarchies and places of the preferable (Id., p. 88; emphasis in the text).
The Treatise goes on to say that
The notion of « fact » is characterized only by the idea that one has of a certain kind of agreement about certain data, those which refer to an objective reality. (Id. p. 89)
In other words, with the agreement of the participants, statements about values and reality can be used as arguments. In rhetorical argumentation, the speaker proceeds on the basis of values shared with the audience, or presented as such, see ex datis. In an adversarial debate, the speech of the proponent and the opponent may be based on radically incompatible values. In such cases, the role of third parties (judges, voters, members of a jury…) becomes essential to mediate the conflict of values, rather than to resolve it definitively.
— The Treatise, maintains the opposition between value judgments and factual judgments only as the result of “precarious agreements” (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca [1958], p. 513), and for special debates.
— The fact/value dichotomy underlies the Perelmanian construction of argument. It absolutizes the gap between the two kinds of rationality, the reasonable [raisonnable] of current practice and law, and the rational [rationnel] of logic and science. This decision widens the gap between « the two cultures », the culture of facts (sciences) and the culture of values (humanities), see demonstration; proof.
6. Does Argument Schemes applies specifically to facts and Topics (loci, places) to values?
According to the Treatise, the opposition of values and facts corresponds to the opposition of the argumentative principles that govern them. Values are governed by topics (loci, topoi, places):
When it is a question of founding values or hierarchies or reinforcing the intensity of the adhesion they arouse, we can link them to other values or other hierarchies to consolidate them, but we can also have recourse to premises of a very general order, which we’ll call loci, the [tópoi] from which the Topics, or treatises devoted to dialectical reasoning, derive (p. 112)
The Treatise is formal on this point:
We will call places [Fr. lieux] only premises of a general order allowing to found values and hierarchies, and which Aristotle studies among the places of the accident (p. 113)
6.1 An Unnecessary Distinction
Given the preceding definition, of the word “place”, we understand that the principles that found, i.e. justify, the factual conclusions will not be called places (loci, tópoi).
This is what we actually see in the 3rd part of the Treatise. This part, which forms the main part of the work, is entitled « argumentative techniques« , techniques which are also called « argumentative schemes« (p. 251).
But it is obvious that the schemes, the techniques of association, correspond closely to what the tradition calls « argumentative commonplaces »; and, incidentally the Treatise ratifies this label:
these schemes [can also be considered] as places of argumentation (p. 255).
6.2 The so-called “loci of value”are not specific to values
Following the previous decision, we therefore give up reserving the name of “place” exclusively for the rules of values. It remains to be seen what the consequences of this terminological reorientation has for the conceptual opposition fact/value. Just as agreement can be reached about facts and values, the same kind of argumentative rules apply to fact and value.
The following loci are considered the « most common » (ibid., p. 95):
- Quantity: « one thing is better than another for quantitative reasons” (id., 85/115): “the more, the better ».
- Quality is used to challenge quantity, that is « the strength of numbers » (id., p. 89/119): « the rarer it is, the more precious it is ».
- Order: « The loci of order affirm the superiority of that which is earlier over that which is later » (id., p. 93/125).
- Existence: « The loci relating to the existent affirm the superiority of that which exists, of the real, over the possible, the contingent, or the impossible » (id., p. 94/126).
- Essence ascribes « a higher value to individuals to the extent that they embody [the] essence” (id., p. 95/126), which materializes as the topos “the closer to the origin, to life, to the prototype, the better it is. »
These so-called loci of values correspond to the topoi of the accident in Aristotle’s Topics (ibid., p. 113), V. Topics of the Preferable. The category of accident is not especially bound to values, one can assume that the topoi of the accident are not either.
The places of the accident, by definition, operate on facts and objects as well as on the field of values. Thus, in keeping with tradition, topic (locus, place) and (argument) scheme can be safely interchanged.
The accident is a kind of predication about an object. Such gradual links can be represented on correlated argumentative scales, see scale; topos in semantics.