•  4
    What Makes an Argument Strong?
    Informal Logic 44 (1): 19-43. 2024.
    It is widely believed that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s theory of argumentation is vulnerable to the charge of relativism. This paper provides a more charitable interpretation of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s normative views, one that properly considers the historical trajectory of their work and a wider range of texts than existing interpretations. It is argued that their views are better characterized as a form of “contrastivism about arguments” than any kind relativism. This more accurat…Read more
  •  24
    Norms of Public Argumentation and the Ideals of Correctness and Participation
    with Frank Zenker, Jan Albert van Laar, B. Cepollaro, A. Gâţă, M. Hinton, C. G. King, B. Larson, M. Lewiński, C. Lumer, S. Oswald, M. Pichlak, M. Urbański, and J. H. M. Wagemans
    Argumentation 38 (1): 7-40. 2024.
    Argumentation as the public exchange of reasons is widely thought to enhance deliberative interactions that generate and justify reasonable public policies. Adopting an argumentation-theoretic perspective, we survey the norms that should govern public argumentation and address some of the complexities that scholarly treatments have identified. Our focus is on norms associated with the ideals of correctness and participation as sources of a politically legitimate deliberative outcome. In principl…Read more
  •  5
    Ideology, Utopia, and Phronetic Judgment in Paul Ricoeur
    Analecta Hermeneutica 13 135-157. 2021.
    In this paper I trace Ricoeur’s reflections on ideology and utopia from his Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, first delivered in 1975, to his later writings on selfhood and the just from the 1990s. The thread that I follow begins from the closing lines of Ricoeur’s Lectures, wherein he suggests that “practical wisdom” (or phronesis) may provide an answer to the paradox of ideology. Taking this suggestion as my point of departure, I reread Ricoeur’s earlier solution to this problem back from the v…Read more
  •  2
    This paper argues that Ricœur’s philosophy operates on the basis of a more expansive conception of rhetoric than it first appears. To show this, I reread The Rule of Metaphor through the “new rhetoric” of Chaïm Perelman. First, I survey Ricœur’s understanding of rhetoric in the 1950s and 60s. Second, I examine Ricœur’s relation to Perelman within the context of the broader “rhetorical turn” of the 1970s. After examining their respective positions, I argue that Ricœur fails to appreciate the full…Read more
  •  26
    Central to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s philosophical revival of rhetoric and dialectic is the importance given to the temporal character of argumentation. Unlike demonstration, situated within the “empty time” of a single instant, the authors of The New Rhetoric understand argumentation as an action that unfolds within the “full time” of meaningful human life. By taking a broader view of his work beyond The New Rhetoric, I first outline Perelman’s understanding of time and temporality and th…Read more
  •  21
    From Perception to Action
    Sartre Studies International 26 (2): 51-62. 2020.
    This paper re-examines the well-known problem of how it is possible to have an “intuition of absences” in Sartre’s example of Pierre. I argue that this problem is symptomatic of an overly theoretical interpretation of Sartre’s use of intentionality. First, I review Husserl’s notion of evidence within his phenomenology. Next, I introduce Sartre’s Pierre example and highlight some difficulties with interpreting it as a problem of perception. By focusing on Sartre’s notion of the project, I argue i…Read more
  •  34
    Rethinking Rhetorical Theory, Criticism, and Pedagogy: The Living Art of Michael C. Leff (review)
    with Curtis Hyra and Christopher W. Tindale
    Informal Logic 37 (2): 152-160. 2017.
    Book Review.