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Jacques Derrida: a Rhetoric That Deconstructs Common Sense

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

John W. Murphy
John W. Murphy*
Affiliation:
Arkansas State University
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As Perelman suggests, rhetoric has always been concerned with understanding the basic nature of an audience. Considering this view, the perennial question posed by rhetoric might be: How does one discourse properly with an audience? Using the terminology supplied by Bitzer, this query might be rephrased to read: How does one “uncover and make available the public knowledge needed in our time and give body and voice to the universal public”. Of key importance is that the rhetorician must secure a base of knowledge that will allow communication to commence between a speaker and an audience. If discourse is to be successful a speaker must address an audience in a style that can be understood, and therefore must substantiate all social intercourse on knowledge that is “public” or held in common. At first this might sound quite pedestrian, yet throughout the history of rhetoric this assumption has proven to be quite problematic.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 32 , Issue 128 , December 1984 , pp. 125 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 Chaim Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1969, p. 7.

2 Lloyd F. Bitzer "Rhetoric and Public Knowledge", in Rhetoric Philosophy, and Literature: An Exploration, edited by Dom M. Burkes, West Lafayette, Indiana, Purdue University Press, 1978, p. 92.

3 Chaim Perelman, The New Rhetoric and the Humanities, Holland: D. Riedel, 1979, pp. 159-167.

4 George A. Kennedy Classic Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1980, pp. 41ff.

5 Christopher Morris, Western Political Thought, Vol. I, New York, Basic Books, 1967, pp. 125-133.

6 For a more extensive analysis of this trend in rhetorical thinking, see Chaim Perelman, The New Rhetoric and the Humanities, pp. 1-42.

7 Maurice Natanson, "The Acts of Indirection", in Rhetoric, Philosophy and Literature, pp. 35-47.

8 Thomas M. Seebohm, "The Problem of Hermeneutics in Recent Anglo-American Literature: Part I", Philosophy and Rhetoric, 10 (3), 1977, pp. 180-198; Seebohm, "The Problem of Hermeneutics in Recent Anglo-American Literature: Part II", Philosophy and Rhetoric, 10 (4), 1977, pp. 263-275.

9 Ludwig Landgrebe, Major Problems in Contemporary European Philosophy, New York, Frederick Ungar, 1966, pp. 102-122.

10 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1981, pp. 113-138.

11 Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, p. 31.

12 For an example of this type of work, see the essays contained in Interpersonal Communication: Essays in Phenomenology and Hermeneutics, edited by Joseph J. Pilotta, Washington, D.C., University of America Press, 1982.

13 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, Baltimore, Johns Hokpins University Press, 1976, pp. 30ff; p. 99.

14 Ibid., p. 33; p. 48; p. 53; see also, Jacques Derrida, Positions, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1981, p. 19.

15 Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 8; p. 25.

16 Ibid., p. 15.

17 Ibid., p. 17.

18 Ibid., p. 73; See also, Derrida, Writing and Difference, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1978, p. 12.

19 Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1973, p. 36.

20 Ibid., pp. 17-26.

21 Ibid., p. 53.

22 Derrida, Of Grammatology, pp. 290ff; see also, Derrida, Speech and Pheno mena, pp. 13ff.

23 Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 20.

24 Ibid., pp. 286ff.

25 Ibid., pp. 101-140.

26 Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 106.

27 Ibid., p. 103.

28 Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 49.

29 Ibid., p. 237.

30 Ibid., p. 242.

31 Derrida, Dissemination, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1981, p. 79; See also, Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 167.

32 Derrida, Of Grammatology, pp. 50ff.

33 Derrida, Dissemination, p. 69.

34 Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 95.

35 Ibid., p. 69.

36 Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 61.

37 Ibid., p. 66.

38 Ibid., p. 71.

39 Ibid., p. 93.

40 Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 11.

41 Ibid., pp. 289ff.

42 Derrida, Speech and Phenomena, p. 136.

43 Ibid., p. 129.

44 Derrida, Positions, p. 35.

45 Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 29.

46 Perelman, The New Rhetoric and the Humanities, pp. 111-123.

47 Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 141.

48 For a full discussion of this point, see Vincent Descombes, Modern French Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980, pp. 139ff.