Choice is Not True or False: The Domain of Rhetorical Argumentation

Abstract

Leading contemporary argumentation theories such as those of Ralph Johnson, van Eemeren and Houtlosser, and Tindale, in their
attempt to address rhetoric, tend to define rhetorical argumentation with reference to (a) the rhetorical arguer’s goal (to
persuade effectively), and (b) the means he employs to do so. However, a central strand in the rhetorical tradition itself,
led by Aristotle, and arguably the dominant view, sees rhetorical argumentation as defined with reference to the domain of
issues discussed. On that view, the domain of rhetorical argumentation is centered on choice of action in the civic sphere,
and the distinctive nature of issues in this domain is considered crucial. Hence, argumentation theories such as those discussed,
insofar as they do not see rhetoric as defined by its distinctive domain, apply an understanding of rhetoric that is historically
inadequate. It is further suggested that theories adopting this understanding of rhetoric risk ignoring important distinctive
features of argumentation about action.

Full text

Choice is Not True or False: The Domain of Rhetorical
Argumentation
Christian Kock
Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008
Abstract Leading contemporary argumentation theories such as those of Ralph
Johnson, van Eemeren and Houtlosser, and Tindale, in their attempt to address
rhetoric, tend to define rhetorical argumentation with reference to (a) the rhetorical
arguer’s goal (to persuade effectively), and (b) the means he employs to do so.
However, a central strand in the rhetorical tradition itself, led by Aristotle, and
arguably the dominant view, sees rhetorical argumentation as defined with reference
to the domain of issues discussed. On that view, the domain of rhetorical argu-
mentation is centered on choice of action in the civic sphere, and the distinctive
nature of issues in this domain is considered crucial. Hence, argumentation theories
such as those discussed, insofar as they do not see rhetoric as defined by its dis-
tinctive domain, apply an understanding of rhetoric that is historically inadequate. It
is further suggested that theories adopting this understanding of rhetoric risk
ignoring important distinctive features of argumentation about action.
Keywords Argumentation Rhetoric Aristotle Rhetoric Nicomachean ethics 
Eudemian ethics Deliberative Choice Argumentation theory 
Ralph Johnson Frans van Eemeren Peter Houtlosser Christopher Tindale 
Domain of issues Rhetorical argumentation
Since around the century’s turn, leading argumentation theorists have been keen to
address, even to integrate rhetoric—cf. Johnson (2000), van Eemeren and
Houtlosser (1999,2000,2001,2002), and Tindale (1999,2004). These scholars
are performing an important task. However, I aim to show that if they would pay
C. Kock (&)
University of Copenhagen, Njalsgade 80, 2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark
e-mail: kock@hum.ku.dk
123
Argumentation
DOI 10.1007/s10503-008-9115-x

attention to the way rhetoric has been defined by a lineage of important thinkers in
the rhetorical tradition itself, they could enrich their understanding of the
relationship between rhetoric and other approaches to argumentation, and important
new insights about argumentation might ensue, in particular with regard to
distinctive features of action-related argumentation.
First we should acknowledge the fact that rhetorical thinking is about much
more than argumentation. To George Campbell (1776,1969), rhetoric is about
‘‘[t]hat art or talent by which the discourse is adapted to its end.’’ Campbell goes
on to explain that ‘‘[a]ll the ends of speaking are reducible to four; every speech
being intended to enlighten the understanding, to please the imagination, to move
the passions, or to influence the will.’’ So the ends of discourse are multiple, and
not all the discourse that Campbell would call rhetorical is argumentation, by any
definition of that term; for example, poetry, in so far as it aims to ‘‘please the
imagination’’, would not belong to the subject matter of argumentation theory.
Clearly, then, argumentation theory does not cover the entire discipline that
rhetoricians cultivate; argumentation and rhetoric intersect but are not co-
extensive. Not all of rhetoric is about argumentation; more importantly, not all
argumentation is rhetorical.
The feature that several of the most important thinkers in the rhetorical tradition
itself tend to emphasize in setting some argumentation apart as ‘‘rhetorical’’ is its
subject matter. They see rhetorical argumentation as centered around a certain
domain of issues—those concerning choice of action, typically in the civic sphere.
However, many contemporary argumentation theorists who address the rhetorical
tradition neglect this fact and instead apply a view of rhetorical argumentation based
on its aims and means.
I shall support these claims by first looking at three important argumentation
theories in our time which explicitly address rhetoric, but which define rhetorical
argumentation without any reference to a domain of issues. Then I will show, by
contrast, how a strong lineage of rhetorical thinking since Aristotle asserts a
definition of rhetorical argumentation based on its domain: that of civic issues.
Finally, I will discuss special characteristics of argumentation within this domain
that remain undertheorized in modern argumentation theories as a result of this
neglect.
I will comment on the three theories in ascending order of their ‘‘friendliness’’
towards rhetoric.
Ralph Johnson, whose theory is most coherently set forth in Manifest Rationality
(2000), is one of the founders of the ‘‘Informal Logic’’ movement. Insisting on the
dialectical nature of argumentation, he has proposed the notion of a ‘‘dialectical
tier’’ in argumentation as separate from its ‘‘illative core’’ (1996,2000,2002), the
dialectical tier being that level in argumentation where the arguer addresses
argumentation presented by opponent(s). In general, Informal Logic has much in
common with rhetorical thinking, in particular skepticism towards formalization
and deductivism in argument description and evaluation. But Johnson lists three
features that, in his view, distinguish the rhetorical view of argumentation from the
conception he advocates.
C. Kock
123

First, rhetoric emphasizes ‘‘the need to take into account the role of Ethos and
Pathos. To be effectively rational, rhetoric will insist that the argument takes
account of the human environment and that it, as well, connects with human
sentiment. Logic, on the other hand, sees the telos of rational persuasion as
governed especially by Logos’’ (p. 269). Secondly, ‘‘Rhetoric will not generally
require a dialectical tier in the argument’’ (p. 270). Thirdly, regarding the evaluation
of argument, Johnson states: ‘‘Informal Logic should tend to favor the truth
requirement over the acceptability requirement, whereas rhetoric will, I believe,
take the reverse view’’ (p. 271). Rhetoricians might or might not embrace this
formulation, depending on how it is read. The more likely reading is that, according
to Johnson, rhetorical argumentation involves a willingness to set aside truth for the
sake of acceptance by the audience, i.e., persuasive efficiency. On this view,
rhetorical argumentation is defined by the arguer’s attitude and is not seen as rooted
in a distinctive domain.
Much the same is true of the second theoretical effort we will consider: the
pragma-dialectical school. With a background in ‘‘speech act’’ philosophy, Popper’s
rationalism and a belief in the reasonable resolution of disputes that has much in
common with Habermas, representatives of this school have taken an increasingly
friendly and integrative stance towards rhetoric (van Eemeren and Houtlosser 1999,
2000,2001,2002). But essentially they represent the same view as in Johnson’s
third point, seeing rhetoric as persuasive efforts aimed at winning, i.e., at resolving a
difference of opinion in one’s own favor. As a result, rhetorical argumentation, in
their view, involves ‘‘Strategic Manoeuvring’’, which manifests itself in three
respects: (1) topical selectivity, (2) audience adaptation, and (3) presentational
devices.
These three points undeniably capture important aspects of rhetoric. But in
equating rhetorical argumentation with Strategic Manoeuvring, driven by a wish
to win, van Eemeren and Houtlosser neglect the strong tradition in rhetorical
thinking defines rhetorical argumentation not only in terms of the arguer’s
attitude or resources, but also in terms of the issues discussed, i.e., in terms of its
domain.
Defining rhetoric as they do, van Eemeren and Houtlosser risk to be caught on
the horns of a dilemma. What they envisage is, I contend, the peaceful
coexistence of two ultimately irreconcilable motives. On the one hand, there is the
dialectical assumption, built into their theory, that the purpose of argumentation is
to resolve a difference of opinion, which may entail, among other things, the
obligation for at least one of the debaters, possibly for both, to retract or modify
their original standpoint. On the other hand, there is the motive, in the rhetorical
arguer as defined by their theory, to resolve the difference of opinion in his own
favor. It is obvious that if both parties in a discussion bring a rhetorical attitude,
as thus defined, to their common enterprise, then in at least one of them the
dialectical motive and the rhetorical motive will eventually clash; they cannot
both ‘‘meet their dialectical obligations without sacrificing their rhetorical aims’’
(van Eemeren and Houtlosser 1999, p. 481). If, however, we define rhetorical
The Domain of Rhetorical Argumentation
123

argumentation with reference to a certain domain of issues, then we shall see this
dilemma dissolve.
1
The third of the argumentation theories we shall consider, and the one that most
wholeheartedly embraces rhetoric, is that of Christopher Tindale (1999,2004).
Indeed, ‘‘Rhetorical Argumentation’’ is the title of a recent book of his. Yet, like
Johnson and van Eemeren and Houtlosser, Tindale neglects many rhetoricians’
domain-based definition of rhetorical argumentation; his view is that students of
argumentation should approach the entirety of argumentation from a rhetorical point
of view, incorporating logical and dialectical approaches in it. While Johnson and
the pragma-dialecticians broadly agree to see argumentation in its entirety as a
dialectical enterprise, Tindale sees argumentation, in its entirety, as a rhetorical
pursuit: ‘‘as a central human activity, argumentation is essentially rhetorical in ways
that far exceed methodology alone’’ (p. 19). Only a rhetorical theory of
argumentation, then, can be adequate. Central to what Tindale understands by a
rhetorical theory is ‘‘addressivity’’, i.e., the notion that argumentation essentially
relates to its audience; it is always ‘‘in audience’’, and similarly, it is always ‘‘in
language’’, addressing and anticipating its audience in its every linguistic choice.
This amounts to saying that all argumentation necessarily has (some of) the
properties that van Eemeren and Houtlosser subsume under ‘‘Strategic Manoeu-
vring’’. Further, while the logical approach to argumentation, according to Tindale,
sees argumentation as product, and the dialectical approach is concerned with
procedure, the rhetorical approach that he favors sees it as a process in which arguer,
audience, and argument are inextricably involved.
2
To be sure, nearly everything in Tindale’s approach recommends itself to
rhetoricians. The features he highlights are indeed significant aspects of rhetorical
argumentation which deserve illumination, and his work is full of valuable insight.
1
Undoubtedly, van Eemeren and Houtlosser would deny that there is such a dilemma. Indeed, some of
their formulations of how debaters could be rhetorical and dialectical at the same time are such that
rhetoricians ought to give them their wholehearted endorsement, for example when they speak of
‘‘maintaining certain standards of reasonableness and expecting others to comply with the same critical
standards’’, after which they go on to say that this commitment need not prevent debaters from
‘‘attempting to resolve the difference of opinion in their own favour’’ (2001, p. 151). This sounds like the
position often articulated by the late Wayne Booth, and I agree with it completely. However, obeying
standards of reasonableness is not the same as being committed to resolving the difference of opinion. It
may be true that if debaters in politics and other spheres did obey such standards, they would reach
consensus more often; but even with the severest standards upheld they often would not. Why? Some of
the authentic debate examples that van Eemeren and Houtlosser have analyzed are actually about the kind
of issues where consensus may never ensue, no matter how much reasonable discussion the discussants
would have engaged in; this is also the kind of issue where rhetorical argumentation typically occurs. For
instance, in the British debate about fox-hunting clearly no resolution of the difference occurs. Yet in
most of the strategic manoeuvres on the two sides that van Eemeren and Houtlosser have discussed there
is no unreasonableness, no ‘‘derailment’’ of strategic manoeuvring; but there is no consensus either. The
pragma-dialectical theory, based on the ideal of the critical discussion and aiming at a resolution of the
difference, predicts that if the rules are obeyed, consensus will occur. So why doesn’t it? My answer is
that legislation on fox-hunting is a typical example of an issue belonging to the rhetorical domain of
issues—those ultimately concerned with choice of action, not truth.
2
This division of labour was first suggested by Wenzel (1990).
C. Kock
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Johnson sees some argumentation as rhetorical by virtue of the strategic attitude
held by the arguer; the pragma-dialecticians, we might perhaps say, see
argumentation as rhetorical in varying degrees, depending on the amount and
nature of the strategic manoeuvring present in it; Tindale sees all argumentation as
essentially rhetorical.
Part of what this approach implies is seen in Tindale’s view that truth should be
replaced with acceptability in the assessment of premisses. This move, in which
Tindale chooses Johnson as his opponent, becomes less convincing for being
completely general. Tindale questions the use of ‘‘truth’’ in argument evaluation
across the entire front, regardless of what issues are being discussed. But this
obscures the fact that even if his general objections against truth-based argument
evaluation fall, there is still a domain of issues where truth would be a misplaced
concept; to use a homespun formulation, there are some issues where the concept of
‘‘truth’’ is even more misplaced than in others. This domain is that of practical
issues, as distinct from epistemic ones—that is, issues regarding choice of action
rather than knowledge. Johnson and the pragma-dialecticians offer no indication
that a theory of argumentation in the practical domain would have to be in any way
different from the general theory they present, for instance with regard to the
availability of consensus or the possibility of determining the validity of arguments
independently of audiences; neither does Tindale, despite his wholesale espousal of
a rhetorical perspective.
Tindale does not distinguish between rhetorical argumentation and other types of
argumentation that are not rhetorical. Johnson, as we saw, does makes this
distinction by claiming, among other things, that rhetorical argumentation favors
acceptability over truth. The pragma-dialecticians also make the distinction in the
sense that argumentation using ‘‘Strategic Manoeuvring’’ is seen by them as
rhetorical. However, the criteria we actually need to make the distinction do not
have to do primarily with the arguers’ attitude (as in Johnson), or with the strategies
used by the arguers (as in the pragma-dialecticians). Instead, the rhetorical attitude
that arguers sometimes take, and the rhetorical strategies they employ, are
corollaries of the domain of issues about which they argue. As stated at the outset,
the rhetorical nature of an argument or an argumentative exchange has to do with
the domain to which the issue in question belongs.
So what is this domain? The domain of rhetorical argumentation centrally
includes decisions about specific actions. The action may be a political one, e.g.,
laying down a law or declaring a war; or it may be a forensic action, i.e., one that
responds under the law to a past act. Traditionally,rhetoric also includes epideictic,
which is not directly tied to action; however, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969)
see the main function of epideictic as underpinning the social values invoked in
argumentation over actions.
This domain-based view of rhetorical argumentation, which sees it as centrally
concerned with choice of action, rather than with any issue at all, can also help us
realize that argumentation about actions has characteristics that differ significantly
from argumentation over the other main type of issues: those concerned with how
something ‘‘is’’.
The Domain of Rhetorical Argumentation
123

Another way of marking the same distinction would be to recall the distinction
between, on the one hand, ‘‘Directive’’ and ‘‘Commissive’’ speech act types and,
on the other, ‘‘Assertive’’ speech act types in regard to ‘‘direction of fit’’. As Searle
has it, ‘‘the Assertive class has the word-to-world direction of fit and the
Commissive and Directive classes have the world-to-word direction of fit’’ (1979a,
p. 76; see also Searle 1979b,1983). The term ‘‘direction of fit’’ originates in Austin
(1953) and was explored in Anscombe (1957). What it pinpoints is that what
matters in assertives is that the word (statement) should fit the world; what matters
in commissives and directives is that the world should be made to fit the word. The
issue in public argumentation over choice of action is a commissive, not an
assertive.
It is crucial to realize that in argumentation about actions, such as political
debates, the issue cannot necessarily be dialectically or philosophically resolved.
About some issues arguers may legitimately entertain, and uphold, divergent
standpoints.
The claim that some issues are like that superficially resembles the ‘‘Protag-
orean’’ position in epistemology. To put it simply, Protagoras believed all issues
were like that, while Plato’s believed that no issues were like that. Since Aristotle,
however, a long line of rhetorical thinkers have realized that some issues are
essentially like that, namely those concerning choice of action; here, reasonable
and legitimate disagreement is common, so a difference of opinion between
debaters may not be resolvable, no matter how much reasonable discussion they
engage in.
The distinction between those issues that are essentially resolvable and those
that are not, together with the very existence of these latter issues, is often
bypassed, or explicitly denied, in philosophical thinking. However, to understand
rhetoric, and to understand practical argumentation in the political sphere and
elsewhere, one must accept this distinction. Further, to understand the distinction
one must understand that issues relating to specific actions, or to the evaluation of
them, are essentially non-resolvable. In discussing essentially non-resolvable issues
arguers may legitimately wish to win and persist in this wish, resorting to
‘‘Strategic Manoeuvring’’ all the way. No amount of reasonable dialectical
discussion will necessarily compel an arguer to retract or modify his standpoint
(although he is sometimes persuaded to do so). Instead, ethos and pathos will often
be involved in debates over such issues. The existence of this kind of issues
underlies Perelman’s insistence on the distinction between ‘‘demonstration’’ and
‘‘argumentation’’, where argumentation, unlike demonstration, is inevitably
audience-relative.
In the following section, I take a closer look at how an important tradition in
rhetoric itself has seen rhetorical argumentation as defined by a distinctive domain:
issues of civic action. The first and foremost representative of this view, I contend,
is Aristotle, but the view of rhetorical argumentation as crucially concerned with
civic action dominates rhetorical thinking throughout antiquity. In later epochs too it
remains continually present, sometimes dominant, sometimes standing alongside
other views which see ‘‘rhetoric’’ as primarily defined by the rhetor’s aim: to
persuade. Yet the original conception of rhetoric as a discipline that deals with
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argumentation, as hammered out by ancient theorists from Aristotle onwards, is
centered around the notion of rhetoric as argumentation about civic action.
3
Consequently, an argumentation theory that defines ‘‘rhetoric’’ (and its derivatives)
primarily with reference to the arguer’s aim to persuade has a seriously truncated
view of what rhetoric means in the rhetorical tradition itself. Further, I argue that
theorists who accept this aim-based, truncated view of rhetoric do so at a cost, since
the domain-based conception of rhetorical argumentation as concerned with civic
action could have helped them understand crucial features of argumentation in this
domain that otherwise tend to be overlooked.
The focus on civic issues as central to the classical conception of rhetoric is well
expressed in George Kennedy’s unequivocal statement: ‘‘Rhetoric in Greece was
specifically the civic art of public speaking as it developed under constitutional
government, especially in Athenian democracy of the fifth and fourth centuries’’
(1999, p. 1). The emphasis on civic issues was there from the beginning.
Aristotle has a twofold definition of rhetoric: an intensional and an extensional.
As for the intensional approach, the locus classicus is this: ‘‘Let rhetoric be [defined
as] an ability, in each [particular] case, to see the available means of persuasion’’
(1355b; Kennedy’s translation). This statement, when read in isolation, does not in
itself imply that rhetoric has a particular domain of its own, but Aristotle has more
to say. Other arts, such as medicine and geometry, have their particular domains; the
doubt that this raises is whether rhetorical argumentation may then deal with these
domains (since no demarcation as to domain has so far been implied), or whether
they are off limits to rhetorical argumentation. But a few pages later, in the
discussion of the function of rhetoric, Aristotle effectively cancels out the idea that
rhetorical argumentation may be about any subject whatever: ‘‘Its function is
concerned with the sort of thing we debate [bouleuometha] and for which we do not
have [other] arts’’ (1357a).
4
Here the domain of rhetorical argumentation is
expressly limited to things about which we ‘‘bouleuometha’’, that is, ‘‘deliberate,
take counsel or make a decision’’ (Liddell and Scott’s counterparts for bouleuein/
bouleuesthai). The stem of this verb (of which bouleuometha is the middle voice,
3
Jeffrey Walker seems to make a strong case against such a claim. He sees rhetoric as rooted in the
poetic/epideictic kind of discourse performed by ‘‘singers’’, aiodoi, according to Hesiod (c. 700 BC.); the
‘‘pragmatic discourse’’ of later age is, to Walker, a ‘‘’secondary’ projection of that rhetoric into the
particular forums and dispute occasions of civic life’’ (2000, p. 10). I have no need to contradict Walker’s
genealogy; as I noted initially, rhetoric is a wider concept than rhetorical argumentation. Yet it remains
true that most ancient theorists of rhetorical argumentation from Aristotle onwards see it as rooted in
civic issues. And in fact, there is a reason why poetic and epideictic features of the discourse of the aiodoi
may be ‘‘projected’’ into the domain of civic debate. As will be discussed below, such debate is about
choosing action, not about the truth of propositions. In debate about choice of action, two opposite
standpoints may both be legitimate and reasonable; it is not the case that one is ‘‘true’’ while the other is
‘‘false’’. Hence neither debater may be compelled by dialectical argument to retract his standpoint and
agree with the other. Instead, debaters must seek to win the free adherence of their opponents and
audience by including, among other arguments and appeals, features known poetic and epideictic
discourse.
4
This follows Kennedy’s translation (1991). The translation in the complete English edition of
Aristotle’s works, by J.H. Freese (Aristotle 1926), consistently uses ‘‘deliberate’’, as does Kennedy some
of the time; it is a word which, like the Greek bouleuein, is tied more closely than ‘‘debate’’ to discussions
of what we will.
The Domain of Rhetorical Argumentation
123

first person plural) is boule
ˆ: will, determination, plan, design, decree; it is
genetically related to words in later languages such as volontas or, indeed, will.So
bouleuometha means that we resolve with ourselves (hence the middle voice) what
is our will on an issue.
5
Hence rhetoric is not a generic name for any kind of
argument that aims to persuade, regardless of what it is about.
The next phrase further limits the range of rhetorical argumentation: ‘‘…and
among such listeners as are not able to see many things all together or to reason
from a distant starting point’’. This may imply that arguing is only rhetoric when it
occurs before such an audience; but another plausible reading is that this specifies
the usual context of rhetorical argumentation, rather than an essential feature. The
following passage adds a further limitation: ‘‘And we debate [bouleuometha] about
things that seem to be capable of admitting two possibilities’’. This implies that
bouleuein/bouleuesthai only makes sense in relation to certain issues—on my
interpretation those where we may decide to effectuate either one or the other
possibility. Aristotle could not here, I suggest, be referring to all those issues on
which people may have different views, for that would hardly imply any limitation
at all, thus making the statement vacuous. For example, the question of whether
matter is composed of atoms was never an issue on which it would be meaningful to
bouleuein.
6
To be sure, generations of physicists argued over the existence of atoms;
but (to set up a pointed contrast) atoms cannot be ‘‘willed’’ into existence (or out of
it), so one cannot bouleuein about their existence. An atomic bomb, on the other
hand, can be willed into existence, so there is every reason to bouleuein about doing
just that. By contrast, Aristotle’s next sentence again insists that some issues are
unsuitable for rhetorical argument: ‘‘no one debates [bouleuetai] things incapable of
being different either in past or future or present, at least not if they suppose that to
be the case’’ (1359a makes an almost identical stipulation).
5
Long notes that Aristotle uses the middle voice of bouleuein throughout the Ethics, giving the word the
self-reflexive meaning ‘‘to take council with oneself’’, and thereby underlining the importance of this self-
reflexivity to his concept of phrone
ˆsis (2002, p. 52).
6
This example will probably raise objections to the effect that, as Alan Gross (1990), Jeanne Fahnestock
(2003) and others have shown, argumentation in the natural sciences is full of rhetoric. However, while
features of rhetorical argumentation may, unavoidably, show up even in domains like science, there
remains a difference of principle between arguments over truth and arguments over action. To be sure, a
scientist may have been influenced in part by the rhetoric of, e.g., Einstein’s writing, to opt for atomic
theory in the sense that he chooses to believe in the existence of atoms and to propagate this belief in his
teaching, etc.; but he may not decide to bring about the existence of atoms, any more than he may decide
to bring about anything else in the fundamental constitution of nature. He may, however, as any other
human being, decide to bring about any number of changes or events in his own life, e.g., to marry, to quit
smoking, to eat a hamburger, to kill himself; or he may decide to help bring about events and changes in
the social world he inhabits, e.g., by voting for a given presidential candidate. Similarly, he may argue for
the truth of atomic theory, but not for atoms coming into existence; conversely, he may argue for the
election of the candidate of his choice, but that argument is not an argument for the ‘‘truth’’ of that choice.
Of course, an argument for someone’s election may be (and usually is) supported by assertions whose
truth the arguer argues for, e.g., that the candidate is well qualified, that his policies are wise, etc. But
what we argue for in deliberation, such a the election of a given candidate, is not a proposition that may
have a truth value; by contrast, what we argue for in science is precisely a proposition that may have a
truth value, even though the philosophy of science tells us that we will never be able conclusively to
determine that truth value.
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So much for Aristotle’s attempt to define rhetorical argumentation intensionally,
i.e., with reference to its essential properties; we see that his definition crucially
involves domain, i.e., the type of issues discussed. Aristotle ‘‘extensional’’ definition
of rhetoric enumerates its three constituting genres: the deliberative, the forensic
and the epideictic. This too clearly restricts the domain of rhetoric. Eugene Garver,
in a commentary on van Eemeren and Houtlosser, has put it simply enough:
‘‘rhetoric is restricted to the subjects of deliberation, judicial disputes and epideictic
situations’’ (2000, p. 311).
Some would ask whether (and how) the epideictic genre shares all the features
Aristotle saw as essential to rhetoric. It clearly shares some features with he other
two genres, including their context (speeches in front of a public audience) and all
their linguistic resources; but it is not immediately clear that what we do in
epideictic speeches is bouleuein in the sense just discussed. In the other two genres
we clearly do that: in the deliberative genre we argue about a future action in order
to reach a decision together (hence genos SUM-bouleutikon); this does not imply
that what we all agree on that decision, but, to apply a distinction suggested by
Rescher (1993), those who do not agree with it acquiesce to it. In the forensic genre,
we argue in order to decide on our action in response to a fact in the past (a crime or
other legal issue, to which we may decide to respond with a certain punishment or
other legal action). So both these genres fit the description of the domain of
rhetorical argumentation given above: we argue about what action it is our will to
take. The epideictic only fits that description more indirectly; as noted above,
Perelman (1969) see epideictic speeches as consolidating the values on which all
debate about of actions and judgments must rest (for a related view, see Hauser
1999). Arguably, however, Aristotle’s intensional definition of rhetoric (based on
the nature of its domain) is not completely coextensive with his extensional
definition; but both agree on defining rhetoric and rhetorical argumentation with
reference not to a motive or a set of resources, but to a certain domain.
In Chapters 4–8 of the Rhetoric, Book I, Aristotle goes on to discuss what he
clearly sees as the first and foremost of the three genres: the deliberative. He uses
the same words (primarily bouleuein/bouleuesthai) and makes many of the same
stipulations as he did about rhetoric in general in the first chapters, thus in effect
elevating the deliberative to the quintessence of rhetoric, and reiterating how
deliberation is restricted to a certain domain of issues, i.e., things that we may
decide to do:
As to whatever necessarily exists or will exist or is impossible to be or to have
come about, on these matters there is no deliberation…the subjects of
deliberation [peri hoso
ˆn estin to bouleuesthai] are clear; and these are
whatever, by their nature, are within our power and of which the inception lies
with us (1359a).
This domain-based notion of rhetorical argumentation is also manifest in the
following reproach: ‘‘much more than its proper area of consideration has currently
been assigned to rhetoric’’ (1359b). There could hardly be a ‘‘proper area’’ if
rhetorical argumentation is persuasive argument on anything. But who is the target
The Domain of Rhetorical Argumentation
123

of criticism here? A likely answer is: sophists who have taught that all issues belong
to the domain of rhetoric.
The remarks in the Rhetoric on the restricted domain of bouleuein do not stand
alone. Again and again in Aristotle’s other writings on ethics, politics, and related
subjects, we find similar, emphatic stipulations. The Nicomachean Ethics is quite
insistent:
nobody deliberates about things eternal, such as the order of the universe, or
the incommensurability of the diagonal and the side, of a square. Nor yet about
things that change but follow a regular process, whether from necessity or by
nature or through some other cause: such phenomena for instance as the
solstices and the sunrise. Nor about irregular occurrences, such as droughts
and rains. Nor about the results of chance, such as finding a hidden treasure.
The reason why we do not deliberate about these things is that none of them
can be effected by our agency. We deliberate about things that are in our
control and are attainable by action…we do not deliberate about all human
affairs without exception either: for example, no Lacedaemonian deliberates
about the best form of government for Scythia; but any particular set of men
deliberates about the things attainable by their own actions (1112a; this is
Rackham’s translation, which, unlike Kennedy’s translation of the Rhetoric,is
consistent in translating bouleuein as ‘‘deliberate’’).
Likewise, the Eudemian Ethics has several pointed formulations insisting that we
can only bouleuein about things we may choose to do because they ‘‘rest with us’’:
‘‘we do not deliberate about affairs in India, or about how to square the circle; for
affairs in India do not rest with us, whereas the objects of choice and things
practicable are among things resting with us’’ (1226a).
To sum up, bouleuein/bouleuesthai is what we do in rhetorical argumentation;
moreover, it is a central concept in Aristotle’s ethical and political thinking, as is
witnessed by the dozens of occurrences of it, many with careful discussion, not only
in the Rhetoric, but also in the ethical books, the Politics, the Athenian Constitution,
the Virtues and Vices, the Metaphysics, and others. These passages embody a notion
of bouleuein as applicable only to debate over actions within the debaters’ agency.
In brief, the domain of rhetorical argumentation is, for Aristotle, civic action, that is,
issues concerning how a body of humans will choose to act.
This exegesis of course comes with the qualification that Aristotle’s text is
complex and often appears to contradict itself. The scope of Aristotle’s theory of
rhetoric remains contested—see, for example, the variety of positions in Gross and
Walzer’s volume (2000). Even so, the point that ‘‘deliberation’’ is about actions
within our own agency stands out so strongly in the Aristotelian corpus that
commentators should pay more attention too it than they have.
Certainly the notion that rhetorical argumentation is about civic action is asserted
again and again by later Hellenistic rhetoricians. According to Kennedy (1994,p.
97, citing Sextus Empiricus’ Against the Professors, 2.62), Hermagoras of Temnos
defined the duty of the orator as ‘‘to treat the proposed political question (politikon
ze
ˆte
ˆma) as persuasively as possible’’. Although his writings are lost, we know from
the many references to him in Cicero, Quintilian, and others, that for Hermagoras
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rhetoric was rooted in civic life (this is the meaning of ‘‘political’’); forensic and
deliberative debate were its two pillars.
Much of the Hermagorean thinking is reproduced in the earliest Latin book of
rhetoric, the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium, and in Cicero’s De inventione.
The Rhetorica ad Herennium (Anon 1964; c. 90 BC) defines the function of the
orator as follows (in Caplan’s translation): ‘‘The task of the public speaker is to
discuss capably those matters which law and custom have fixed for the uses of
citizenship [ad usum civilem], and to secure as far as possible the agreement of his
hearers’’ (I.II.2). Notice how the definition of the domain of rhetoric given here goes
hand in hand with the understanding that the object sought in rhetoric is the
agreement [adsensio] of hearers (or as Perelman would say: their adherence);
further, that the adherence of one’s hearers is a matter of degree in the sense that
one should seek to secure it as far as possible—a phrase echoing Aristotle’s
endechomenon.
Cicero’s youthful work De inventione (Cicero 1968; c. 85 BC) endorses
Aristotle’s extensional circumscription of rhetoric to the three genres, and agrees
that the domain of rhetorical argumentation is indeed circumscribed; he proposes to
classify ‘‘oratorical ability as a part of political science’’ (I, vi, 6). Accordingly,
Hermagoras is criticized for including too much in the ‘‘material of the orator’’,
namely both ‘‘special cases’’ [causae] and ‘‘general questions’’ [quaestiones] like
‘‘Is there any good except honor?’’ This dichotomy appears also under the names
definite vs. infinite questions. Rhetorical argumentation has no business dealing
with the latter, whereas the former constitute its distinctive domain: ‘‘It seems the
height of folly to assign to an orator as if they were trifles these subjects in which we
know that the sublime genius of philosophers has spent so much labour’’ (I, vi, 8).
Cicero may later have felt that he limited the domain of rhetorical argumentation
unduly by assigning only the finite issues to its domain. Some of his later writings
on rhetoric further dichotomize the ‘‘infinite’’ issues into questions about cognition
and questions about action. De partitione oratoria (c. 45 BC) distinguishes between
a ‘‘propositum cognitionis’’, whose object is a scientia, and a ‘‘propositum actionis,
quod refertur ad faciendum quid’’. While the former, we may assume, is still the
domain of philosophers and ‘‘far removed from the business of an orator’’, it is
debatable whether the latter category of issues should be seen as philosophical,
rhetorical, or something in between, a ‘‘rhetoric of the philosophers’’, as it were—a
term actually used by Cicero in De finibus 2.6.17, as discussed by Remer (1999,p.
46). (Today many would call such thinking ‘‘practical philosophy’’.) What remains
clear is that rhetorical argumentation is still defined by the social and practical
nature of the issues discussed. A statement to that effect from Cicero’s fullest work
of rhetorical thinking is these words of the statesman and lawyer Antonius in De
oratore (Cicero 1967; c. 55 BC):
to return to our starting point, let us take the orator to be someone who, as
Crassus described him, is able to speak in a manner that is suited to
persuasion. Moreover, let his sphere be restricted to the ordinary practice of
public life in communities; let him put aside all other pursuits, however
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magnificent and splendid they may be, and, so to speak, be hard pressed day
and night in performing this one labor (Book I, p. 260).
Here the broader, motive-based definition (‘‘to speak in a manner that is suited to
persuasion’’) is narrowed and thus becomes the ‘‘classical’’, domain-based definition
of rhetoric as speaking about ‘‘the ordinary practice of public life in communities’’.
Cicero lets Scaevola take a similar view (Book I, pp. 35–44). It is true that
Crassus—whose views are usually taken to coincide with Cicero’s own mature
position—represents the more expansive conception of rhetoric, where rhetors are in
effect defined as practical philosophers; this is most clearly seen in his famous
eulogy of oratory as the founder and upholder of human societies. The others object
to the breadth of the scope of rhetoric as Crassus sees it, or rather, they question the
comprehensiveness of the wisdom and knowledge attributed to the rhetor. The fact
remains that all three interlocutors, including Crassus, firmly link the function of
rhetoric to the practical and social sphere; in the words of Crassus, rhetoric pertains
to the ‘‘humanum cultum civilem’’ and the establishment of ‘‘leges iudicia iura’’
(Book I, p. 33).
In some of the rhetorical thinkers who build on Aristotle and Cicero we see a
broad, ‘‘general’’ definition and a narrow, ‘‘civic’’ definition either alternate or co-
exist. Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria (Quintilian 2001; c. 90 AD), conceived in a
time of absolute imperial power where citizens had little room for debate and less
for decision on the practice of public life, leans toward the broad view, making
rhetoric the centerpiece of the education of the ‘‘good man’’; yet Quintilian too,
echoing Isocrates and Cicero’s Crassus, emphasizes the indispensability of rhetoric
in the domain of civic action: ‘‘I cannot imagine how the founders of cities would
have made a homeless multitude come together to form a people, had they not
moved them by their skilful speech, or how legislators would have succeeded in
restraining mankind in the servitude of the law had they not had the highest gifts of
oratory’’ (II.xvi.9). So even if, to Quintilian, rhetoric does not necessarily concern
communal civic action, the intimate bond between the two still holds in the sense
that communal civic action necessarily involves rhetoric; and despite the broadness
of his definition, action is still at its center: ‘‘in the main, rhetoric is concerned with
action; for in action it accomplishes that which it is its duty to do…it is with action
that its practice is chiefly and most frequently concerned’’ (II.xviii.2).
To Greek rhetoricians in the following centuries, the domain of rhetoric was even
more sharply defined, as Malcolm Heath makes clear: ‘‘The premise that rhetoric was
concerned with speech on civic questions is something on which Zeno, Minucianus,
and Hermogenes still agreed in the second century AD’’ (2004, p. 299). Hermogenes
(c. 150 AD), who was to become for centuries the authoritative rhetorician in the
Byzantine world, gives no explicit definition of rhetoric, but in the opening of his
treatise on staseis simply declares: ‘‘The present discussion deals with the division of
political questions into what are known as heads’’; he goes on to stipulate that a
political question (politikon ze
ˆte
ˆma) is ‘‘a rational dispute on a particular matter,
based on the established laws or customs of any given people, concerned with what is
considered just, honourable, advantageous, or all or some of all these things together.
It is not the function of rhetoric to investigate what is really and universally just,
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honourable, etc.’’ (Quoted from Heath 1995, p. 14). A similar assumption that rhetoric
is argumentation about political issues is evident in the two Greek treatises of the third
century edited by Dilts and Kennedy (1997), the ‘‘Art of Political Speech’’ by
Anonymous Seguerianus and the ‘‘Art of Rhetoric’’ by Apsines of Gadara.
A string of rhetoricians writing in Latin under Christian emperors continue to
assert the civic/political definition. In the De rhetorica formerly attributed to St.
Augustine the rhetor undertakes his task ‘‘proposita quaestione civili’’ (Halm 1863,
p. 137). Sulpicius Victor (c. 400 AD) expressly rejects the broad ‘‘bene dicendi
scientia’’ as his definition of rhetoric in favor of ‘‘bene dicendi scientia in quaestione
civili’’, noting that in such questions it is asked ‘‘whether something should be done
or not done, whether it is just or unjust, expedient or inexpedient’’ (Halm 1863,p.
313). To C. Chirius Fortunatianus (c. 450 AD) the function of the orator is ‘‘[t]o
speak well on civil questions. To what end? In order to persuade, insofar as the state
of affairs and the attitude of the audience permits, in civil questions’’ (Halm 1863,p.
81; translated in Miller et al. 1973, p. 25). Boethius (c. 457–526), in De topicis
differentiis (Boethius 1978), aims to effect a grand synthesis of argumentative topics
into a single art. While the dialectical discipline ‘‘examines the thesis only’’
(1205C), the subject matter of rhetoric is ‘‘the political question’’ (1207C); it is
concerned with ‘‘hypotheses, that is, questions hedged in a multitude of
circumstances’’ (1205D). He notes another difference not often attended to by
modern argumentation theorists, namely that the rhetorician ‘‘has as judge someone
other than his opponent, someone who decides between them’’ (1206C). So,
according to Boethius, rhetorical argumentation addresses audiences, not opponents,
and is defined by its domain: that of civic/political issues. It may be said of Boethius
as of many of the other thinkers we are enumerating here: All the distinctive
properties of rhetorical argumentation, including its general aim, persuasiveness,
and its specific topics and resources, follow as corollaries of its domain. As I shall
discuss in more detail shortly, when a debate is about choosing action, not about the
truth of propositions, two opposite standpoints may both be legitimate and
reasonable; it is not the case that one is ‘‘true’’ while the other is ‘‘false’’. Hence
neither debater may be dialectically compelled to retract his standpoint and agree
with the other. Debaters must instead try to persuade their opponents (or audiences)
to give their adherence freely; this they do by employing a broader range of (non-
compelling) topics and resources than the limited range of resources through which,
in dialectics, agreement may be compelled.
The domain-based definition is upheld throughout the Middle Ages even by
thinkers aiming to apply ancient teachings to the purposes of the church, such as
Isidore of Seville (c. 630): ‘‘Rhetoric is the science of speaking well: it is a flow of
eloquence on civil questions whose purpose is to persuade men to do what is just
and good’’ (Miller et al. 1973, p. 80); and Rabanus Maurus (c. 820): ‘‘Rhetoric is, as
the ancients have told us, skill in speaking well concerning secular matters in civil
cases’’ (Miller et al., p. 125). Honorius of Autin (12th Century) in his De animae
exsilio describes rhetoric as ‘‘the second city through which the road toward home
passes’’ and declares: ‘‘The gate of the city is civil responsibility, and the highway is
the three ways of exercising that responsibility: demonstrative oratory, deliberative,
and judicial’’ (Miller et al., p. 201). For encyclopedists of the 13th Century such as
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123

Vincent de Beauvais and Brunetto Latini rhetoric is indisputably the science of
speaking well on civil questions; for the latter, it ‘‘is under the science of governing
the city just as the art of making bits and saddles is included under the art of
cavalry’’ (Robert 1960, p. 110).
Renaissance culture in Italy sees a resurgence of rhetorical thinking with a
decisive emphasis on the civic definition. Fumaroli states that ‘‘rhetoric appears as
the connective tissue peculiar to civil society and to its proper finalities, happiness
and political peace hic et nunc’’ ( 1983, pp. 253–254). According to Cox (2003),
rhetoric in Quattrocento Italy ‘‘positioned itself, as it had done in Cicero’s Rome, as
an essential component of the science of government, teaching as it did the skills of
rational persuasion through which collective decisions were reached…Practical
utility, and specifically utility to civic life, is patently the governing criterion of the
genre’’ (p. 671). The first and perhaps the most comprehensive renaissance textbook
of rhetoric, George of Trebizond’s Rhetoricorum libri quinque (c. 1430), drawing
on the Rhetorica ad Herennium and other classical sources, consistently affirms the
domain-based view of rhetoric as ‘‘a science of civic life in which, with the
agreement of the audience insofar as possible, we speak on civil questions’’ (quoted
from Kennedy 1999, p. 235). Thomas Wilson’s Art of Rhetoric, as one of many
Renaissance rhetoric texts in the vernacular, squarely identifies the ‘‘Matter
Whereupon an Orator Must Speak’’ as civic issues, i.e., as ‘‘all those questions
which by law and man’s ordinance are enacted and appointed for the use and profit
of man’’ (1994 [1560], p. 45)—a close paraphrase of the Rhetorica ad Herennium.
While the lineage of politically-based definitions of rhetoric thus remains
unbroken from antiquity until the Renaissance, it is true that there are also, most of
that time, thinkers asserting the broader, persuasion-based definition. In fact, this
tradition gains strength in the following centuries—an epoch where rhetoric falls into
academic and philosophical disrepute, branded as verbal trickery by leading thinkers
such as Locke and, a century later, Kant.
7
Giambattista Vico’s is a lonely voice
speaking up for rhetoric; characteristically, his Institutiones oratoriae (1711–1741)
reasserts the action-centred definition: ‘‘The task of rhetoric is to persuade or bend
the will of others. The will is the arbiter of what is to be done and what is to be
avoided. Therefore, the subject matter of rhetoric is whatever is that which falls
under deliberation of whether it is to be done or not to be done’’ (1996, p. 9). Perhaps
the most influential 18th Century rhetorician, Hugh Blair (1783), leans towards the
broader definition but, like Quintilian, maintains that ‘‘the most important subject of
discourse is Action, or Conduct, the power of Eloquence chiefly appears when it is
employed to influence Conduct, and persuade to Action’’ (2004, p. 265).
The 20th and 21st Centuries have seen the gradual return of rhetoric to academic
respectability. It is true that the term itself has meant a variety of things to different
modern thinkers, but the notion that rhetoric is defined primarily by its domain of
issues is common to a series of the most important ones. To Perelman and
Olbrechts-Tyteca that domain is generally defined as those issues where arguers
7
To Locke, in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, rhetoric is a ‘‘powerful instrument of error
and deceit’’ (1959 [1690], II, p. 146; Book III, X, p. 34); to Kant, in Kritik der Urteilskraft, it is ‘‘gar
keiner Achtung wu
¨rdig’’ (1914 [1790], p. 404; Sect. 53, footnote).
C. Kock
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seek the adherence of audiences rather than the demonstration of truths; but from
the start they treat ‘‘deliberation and argumentation’’ as synonyms (1969, p. 1) and
describe their aim as ‘‘a theory of argumentation that will acknowledge the use of
reason in directing our own actions and influencing those of others’’ (3). The view of
rhetorical argumentation as crucially concerned with action seems to become
clearer in later writings by Perelman, such as the long article which summarizes his
theory (1970), significantly titled ‘‘The New Rhetoric: A Theory of Practical
Reasoning’’. Other seminal thinkers on rhetoric in our time who have maintained
the same connection include Lloyd Bitzer: ‘‘a work of rhetoric is pragmatic; it
comes into existence for the sake of something beyond itself; it functions ultimately
to produce action or change in the world’’ (1968, p. 4) and Gerard Hauser:
‘‘rhetorical communication, at least implicitly and often explicitly, attempts to
coordinate social action’’ (2002, p. 3).
To sum up, it seems fair on this background to say that when contemporary
argumentation theorists such as those discussed in the first section, in their attempt
to address or integrate rhetoric, adopt a view of it as defined primarily by a motive
to persuade, without considering the domain-based view of rhetoric as deliberation
about civic action, then they neglect what is arguably the dominant notion in the
rhetorical tradition itself of its identity.
But what makes this oversight important? Why does an argumentation theory
guilty of this oversight—even a theory that integrates rhetoric or professes to be
rhetorical—run the risk of seriously underestimating important insights and
distinctions?
The answer is that argumentation which is concerned with proposals for action has
distinctive properties setting it apart from argumentation over propositions; these are
the properties that are easily overlooked by argumentation theories, such as the three
we have discussed, which see argumentation as concerned with the truth or falsity of
propositions and inferences. Whenever a debater argues for a certain action and/or an
opponent argues against it, neither of these two standpoints can ever be predicated to
be ‘‘true’’. As Aristotle points out in the Eudemian Ethics, in deliberation we argue
about choice; and a choice is not a proposition that can be true or false:
it is manifest that purposive choice is not opinion either, nor something that
one simply thinks; for we saw that a thing chosen is something in one’s own
power, but we have opinions as to many things that do not depend on us, for
instance that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with the side; and
again, choice is not true or false (1226a).
One way to explain why this is so is the following. When a human (or a collective
of humans, such as a legislative body) deliberates about a choice, several values may
be invoked both pro and con, and several desirable ‘‘ends’’ will be variously affected
by whatever choice is eventually made. Friends, wealth, health, honor, security are
some of them (Aristotle has enumerated these in Book I, Chapter 5 of the Rhetoric).
Normally, a given proposal cannot serve all these ends equally; if it is designed to
serve one of them, the consideration of one at least of the other ends may speak
against it. For example, the introduction in public hospitals of a new treatment which
can help some patients may be so costly that it hinders the attainment of other worthy
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ends; any decision that has a cost by the same token precludes the use of the same
financial means for some other proposal. However, there is no generally agreed and
intersubjective way to calculate and balance benefits in one area against costs in
another; for example, most people would agree that not all the important
considerations relevant to political actions can (or should) be converted into
economic terms. In addition to economic cost there are all sorts of other accounts on
which a proposal may be either recommended or opposed. For example, national
security considerations that may arguably be served by, e.g., the indefinite
detainment of suspected terrorists might be contradicted by counterconsiderations
of ethics, legality, honor, or the friendship of other countries. In such situations, some
individuals in the governing body and the electorate usually judge that the
considerations speaking for the proposal or policy outweigh those against, while
other individuals judge just as decisively that those speaking against it are weightier.
So in principle, deliberation will always have to recognize the relevance of
several ends, several kinds of considerations, and several dimensions to the choice
that has to be made. Moreover, individuals will differ in regard to the relative
weight they assign to them. It may be that for each consideration in itself—such as
the economic cost of a war, or its cost in human lives—debaters may have views
that may be more or less true (or at least probable). But the fact remains that the
relevant considerations in such a case belong to different dimensions, so that none
of these considerations, e.g., cost in human lives, can be reduced or converted to one
of the others, or to a ‘‘common denominator’’ or ‘‘covering’’ unit for all the relevant
considerations. What lacks is, in a phrase from Stuart Mill, a ‘‘common umpire’’
(1969, p. 226) to which all the considerations may be referred, yielding an objective
calculation of how to balance the pros and the cons.
This is where we may see the importance of insisting that the central domain of
rhetoric is debate over proposals for action, and of setting this domain apart from
that of propositions. Proposals and choices cannot be ‘‘true’’, and do not aspire to it.
The problem is not that it is hard to assess the truth value of a political proposal, or
that ‘‘probability’’ will have to do; more radically, it is a categorical mistake to
speak of truth (or probability, for that matter) in regard to a proposal as such. It may
be supported by propositions that can be true (or probable); but in principle, none of
the opposing standpoints in a deliberative can ever possess truth. Hence debaters
representing opposite courses of action may legitimately do so, and continue to do
so. Because of the inherent multi-dimensional structure of deliberation over
proposals (i.e., the fact that several competing ends or considerations may be
invoked), debaters may assess the aggregate weight of the pros and the cons
differently, and continue to do so; the same holds for the individuals who listen to
them and whose adherence they seek.
Looking back, we may now see why it is that the dilemma faced by van Eemeren
and Houtlosser dissolves when we realize that rhetorical argumentation is rooted in
the domain of proposals and action, not in that of propositions and truth. The
dilemma was that arguers cannot ‘‘meet their dialectical obligations without
sacrificing their rhetorical aims’’ (1999, p. 481), where the arguers’ ‘‘rhetorical
aims’’ refer to their intention to ‘‘win’’ (have the difference of opinion resolved in
their own favor). There is no dilemma because arguers debating proposals are not
C. Kock
123

dialectically obliged to resolve their difference of opinion. In debating choice of
action there is no truth to be attained, and unlike what happens in Socratic dialectic,
or in pragma-dialectical ‘‘critical discussion’’, opponents arguing reasonably will
not necessarily move towards consensus. The opposing standpoints represented by
the two debaters are not contradictory propositions that cannot both be true, and of
which at least one has accordingly to be retracted or modified; they are about choice,
and, in the words of Aristotle, ‘‘choice is not true or false’’. Arguing for a given
choice and arguing against it are in principle equally legitimate standpoints, and it is
not the case that, as a result of reasonable discussion between the two arguers, one
of the standpoints must necessarily be retracted. So it is not unreasonable for both
arguers, when the issue is choice of action, to wish to win (and hence to resort to
‘‘Strategic Manoeuvring’’): it would only be unreasonable for an arguer to persist in
his wish to win if his standpoint had to be retracted as a result of the discussion—
which is not necessarily the case.
The fact that, in matters of choice, none of the arguers will necessarily be forced
to retract his standpoint, and, conversely, that none can conclusively ‘‘prove’’ his
standpoint, is also the reason why all the resources of rhetorical argumentation:
ethos and pathos, topical selectivity, audience adaptation, presentational devices,
and more, will usually be mustered. Even if arguers cannot demonstrate the ‘‘truth’’
of their standpoints, they may try to win the adherence of the individuals in the
audience, or even of their opponent, for them. The pros and the cons in a given issue
of choice cannot be aggregated or balanced in an intersubjective manner, since no
common measure exists; individuals must assess the relative weights of the pros and
cons by their own lights, but arguers have all the resources of rhetoric at their
disposal to win their adherence.
As we have seen, a strong and unbroken tradition of rhetorical thinking from
Aristotle until the present sees rhetoric as defined by its domain: issues of choice in
the civic sphere, where the adherence of other individuals may be worked upon and
perhaps gained. But doing just that is also an important concern for arguers
discoursing on issues outside the circumscribed domain of civic action; most
proponents of, e.g., scientific or philosophical theories naturally wish to be
persuasive. So the resources of rhetorical argumentation also play a part outside its
central domain; indeed, many thinkers in the rhetorical tradition itself lean towards
the ‘‘broad’’ definition. Nevertheless it is problematic when theorists of argumen-
tation see rhetoric as primarily or even exclusively defined by the arguer’s wish to
persuade. Such a truncated definition allows theorists to forget what a most
rhetorical thinkers have always known, namely that argumentation concerning
choice of action is a distinct domain with distinctive features.
To reiterate, some of these distinctive features are the following: in argumen-
tation about choice of action reasonable disagreement may exist and persist
indefinitely
8
; in that domain it is not the case that one of two opposed arguers may
conclusively prove his standpoint, or be forced to retract it; but it is a domain rich in
8
The notion of reasonable disagreement and its inevitability on political, ethical and other practical
issues there is a large body of thinking by contemporary philosophers that argumentation theory might do
well to address; see, e.g., Rawls (1989,1993), Larmore (1996); Kock (2007).
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resources by which arguers may influence other individuals’ adherence. When an
issue is truly a matter of choice, as in political deliberation and the civic sphere
generally, rhetorical argumentation plays a central and indispensable part, precisely
because ‘‘choice is not true or false’’. Every individual, legislator or voter regularly
has choices to face; rhetoric is a social practice that helps us choose. In the words of
the Nicomachean Ethics (1112b), quoted by Garver (2000, p. 310): ‘‘On any
important decision we deliberate together because we do not trust ourselves’’.
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