Argumentation, Communication, and Fallacies.

• Author: Klinger, Geoffrey D.

This book continues and refines the "pragma-dialectical perspective" that Dutch scholars van Eemeren and Grootendorst advance as an intellectual approach to the study of argumentation. That tradition has often been a troublesome one to navigate, but these authors press forward without hesitation. Indeed, when we realize that van Eemeren and Grootendorst's theory of argumentation is an attempt at intellectually bridging the division forged between rhetoric and philosophy, we are immediately awed by the magnitude of the effort. Rhetoric and philosophy have been in a constant struggle for intellectual hegemony almost from their inception. Indeed, not since the "pre-Platonic" practice of the respected Protagoras, the first "teacher" in the Western Tradition, and Gorgias of Leotini, the sophist who reminded us of the importance of orality and experience in advancing his theory of philosophy, have rhetoric and philosophy rested comfortably with one another. John Dewey, Richard Rorty, Stephen Toulmin, Stanley Fish, and others, too numerous to list, remind us of this contested history.

Ed Schiappa compellingly demonstrates that the wedge between rhetoric and philosophy was driven early by Plato when he "invents" the word rhetorike to denigrate the contemporary sophistic enterprise (1-3). A similar blow was dealt to an understanding of rhetoric as practical philosophy by the criticisms of Hobbes, Ramus, Pascal, and Descartes. It is a blow, Stephen Toulmin argues in Cosmopolis, from which the modern study of rhetoric has never fully recovered.

This is precisely why rhetoricians, philosophers, and argument theorists should watch with a keen eye the friendly gestures of van Eemeren and Grootendorst. While some may argue that their most recent book tends to be overly prescriptive and methodological, to read this tendency in isolation is to completely misunderstand the intellectual spirit in which this book is written. They will be the first to admit that their pragma-dialectical model for critical discussions is a contingent schema rather than a timeless formula guaranteeing valid results in all situations. Indeed, the larger intellectual framework in which these authors operate assure us of this conclusion. Their work provides, first and foremost, a space for sustainable conversation between rhetoricians and philosophers. It is most certainly not "Neo-Ramistic in attitude and Neo-Platonic in function," nor does it "revive the agenda of Pascal and...