Rhetoric versus philosophy: The role of the universal audience in Chaim Perelman's The New Rhetoric

This paper is divided into three sections. The first describes how Perelman's general approach in The New Rhetoric, particularly his emphasis on the role of audience and the epistemological claims he makes for his treatise, cause him to become an uneasy participant in the age old debate between philosophy and rhetoric. Perelman's attempt to resolve this dilemma via the universal audience is described in the second section, which argues for the general failure of this construct to fulfill the role Perelman assigns it. Finally, the third section addresses the implications of this failure for the work as a whole, particularly the question of whether the problematic status of the universal audience invalidates Perelman's claims that The New Rhetoric articulates a truly audience‐based theory of argumentation.