The new rhetoric, Judaism, and post‐enlightenment thought: The cultural origins of Perelmanian philosophy

In search of justice, Chaim Perelman rediscovered the rhetorical tradition and reclaimed his Jewish identity after World War II. As an attempt to correct misreadings of Perelmanian thought and to situate the New Rhetoric as a response to post‐Enlightenment and postmodern culture, I advance two arguments in this essay. First, Perelman's philosophy and the New Rhetoric project reflect his Jewish heritage and Talmudic habits of argument. Second, because Perelmanian philosophy enacts Jewish and Talmudic thought, the New Rhetoric charts a “third way” between Enlightenment metaphysics and the dangers of the more extreme expressions of postmodernism. The New Rhetoric is much more than a relativist taxonomy of argument, for it aspires to replace violence, to create human community, and most important, to discover and craft justice with a Talmudically influenced system of rhetoric.

Key words:

• Perelman
• argument
• Jewish thought
• Talmudic tradition
• post‐Enlightenment