On the excerpt from The New Rhetoric

Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca in The New Rhetoric assert as their starting point that “men and groups of men adhere to opinions of all sorts with a variable intensity, which we can only know by putting it to the test.” (1376) This assertion is supposed to the form the basis of their own position, which they mark as distinct from a position based on “definitive, unquestionable truths.” Since Olbrechts-Tyteca and Perelman do not (at least in this section of the text) identify in more detail—by linking it to some particular theorist—the opposing view supposedly based on definitive and unquestionable truths, it is difficult to determine exactly what their own position is, inasmuch as they provide an outline by pointing to what their view is not. Nevertheless, the main focus from this passage, at least, would seem to be the practice of putting the intensity of belief-holding to the test. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca note that the beliefs they are interested in may be implicit and unformulated until the occasion for a disagreement prompts these individuals to articulate the basis of their disagreement. The question I want to raise here hangs on the significance of this belief strength testing for Olbrechts-Tyteca and Perelman’s position. Later in The New Rhetoric, the authors claim that they see their position as offering a way around the dualistic aporia presented by a foundation of “definitive, unquestionable truths.” They write: “It is because of the possibility of argumentation which provides reasons, but not compelling reasons, that it is possible to escape the dilemma,” (1378). What should we make of this claim? The suggestion seems to be that the practice of argumentation—of practicing a disagreement that forces one to formulate one’s implicitly held beliefs and immediately test their strength—offers a viable method to provide “the justification of the possibility of a human community.” Now my question becomes: What about all the theorists whose models for justifying the possibility of a human community are not captured by the schematic drawn of the opposing position based on “definitive, unquestionable truths,” of which there are certainly some worth taking seriously (Hegel, Rawls, etc). And, furthermore, insofar as Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca must have a starting point of some kind, how would they answer the charge that their own starting point is functionally indistinct from a “definitive, unquestionable truth?”