Abstract

The paper focuses on Chaïm Perelman's theory of argumentation and on his notion of persuasion, providing a comparison with Ar¬istotle's Rhetoric. Some critics argue that Perelman's approach to rhetoric is more sophistic than Aristotle's, because of the centrality of the audience's role and the emphasis on non-deductive argumen¬tation schemes. Many of these critics adopt a dialectical version of argumentation theory and a dialectical interpretation of Aristotle'as Rhetoric. The paper argues that Perelman does not choose between a genuine rhetorical and a dialectical approach to argumentation theory, and that this ambiguity can also be found in the Aristote¬lian tradition.