| In his New Rhetoric, Chaim Perelman has attempted to revive classical rhetorical theory, especially that of Aristotle, as a framework for rational discourse about values within a modern epistemological setting uniquely challenging to moral discourse. Perelman has ably explained the power of the classical rhetorical strategies. But in detaching them from their original epistemological moorings and founding them upon a new epistemology lacking internal coherence, he severs the connection of rhetoric to ethics and undermines the stated goal of the New Rhetoric, thereby rendering his entire synthesis incoherent. But Perelman's New Rhetoric was synthesized from a thorough inductive study of modern discourse, and the incoherence present in it reflects the incoherence of modern discourse about values. |
