Background
Pefelman, Chaim was born in 1912 in Warsaw.
Pefelman, Chaim was born in 1912 in Warsaw.
Perelman's family moved to Brussels
soon after his birth. A student at the University of
Brussels, Perelman was later to be appointed
Professor there.
toaln publications:
11933) De l'arbitraire dans la connaissance.
1*945) De la justice. Brussels: Offices de publicité.
1*952) Rhétorique et Philosophie: pour une théorie de l’argumentation en Philosophie.
Paris: PUF.
1* 958) Traité de /‘argumentation: la nouvelle rhétorique, 2 vols, Paris: PUF.
11963) Justice et raison. Brussels: Presses Universités de Bruxelles.
11964) Cours de logique, seventh edition, Brussels: Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles.
11964) Raisonnement et démarches de l'historien, Brussels: Université libre de Bruxelles.
1*968) Droit, morale, et philosophie, Paris: Librairie générale de droit et de jurisprudence.
1*969) Les Catégories en histoire, Brussels: Univershé libre de Bruxelles.
(1976) Logique jur¡dique. Nouvelle rhétorique. Paris: Dalloz.
(1989) Rhétoriques.
Brussels: Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles.
Undoubtedly the best-known Belgian philosopher of his generation, Chaim Perelman began his career with work on logic, particularly on logical paradoxes and the concept of infinity. Thereafter, he devoted his attention to two main areas: first, the analysis of basic moral and political concepts, notably justice, and second the nature and scope of philosophical argument. His conclusions concerning the former have a close and direct link with his views on the latter. In his analysis of the concept of justice, Perelman distinguishes a formal principle common to all senses of the term, that like persons be treated alike, from principles of application or material principles, which specify the relevant respects of likeness. Of these latter he picks out six: to each person the same thing; to each according to their merits; works; needs; rank, or legal entitlement. In early papers Perelman argues that the choice between these material principles is arbitrary, and cannot be resolved by reasoning. In later papers, he is less pessimistic, and the change follows from his modified conception of what counts as a respectable mode of philosophical argument. Perelman came to believe that, in a number of areas of philosophy, the human sciences and law, the arguments used are not and cannot be reduced to either the reasoning more geométrico advocated by Descartes, or the inductive methods which, he held, are used in the natural sciences. Moreover, the restriction of the term ‘rational’ to these two types of argument has brought about a neglect of the actual processes of our thinking which oversimplifies the facts. Reason can be used not only to weigh evidence but also to induce or increase adherence to beliefs which can in the nature of things only be probable. Perelman devoted a great deal of time to the study of these modes of argument which are neither deductive nor inductive, and this study he called the ‘new rhetoric’.