Chaim Perelman

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Chaïm Perelman (born May 20, 1912 in Warsaw , Generalgouvernement Warsaw , Russian Empire ; † January 22, 1984 in Uccle near Brussels , Belgium ) was a Polish-Belgian lawyer , moral and legal philosopher of Jewish origin.

The thinker also worked on argumentation and rhetoric theory and is considered a co-founder of the academic field of so-called New Rhetoric . He was professor of logic , ethics and metaphysics at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and founded the Center Perelman de Philosophie du Droit there in 1967 with Henri Buch and Paul Foriers , which has been affiliated with the Faculty of Law since 1982 and as a visiting professor for one academic year Chaire Perelman awards.

Life

Perelman emigrated with his family from Warsaw to Antwerp in Belgium in 1925 . He studied at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Brussels and has remained loyal to it throughout his working life. During the Second World War he was part of the leadership of the CDJ resistance group , while at the same time he led part of the AJB , which organized Jewish public life during the German occupation of Belgium and cooperated with the Nazi authorities. The academic receptionists, such as Alan G. Gross and Ray D. Dearin , see the AJB collaboration as a "camouflage" for pro-Jewish activities and deny the status of a collaborator . He turned down all of the awards that were offered to him for his bravery after the war.

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Until 1944/45 Perelman represented a positivist conception of philosophy and developed a. a. a controversial attempt to refute Gödel's incompleteness theorems , and towards the end of the Second World War a clarification of the concept of justice. In his treatise “De la justice” (1945) Perelman differentiates between the following criteria of justice : “Everyone the same”, “Everyone according to his merits”, “Everyone according to his works”, “Everyone according to his needs”, “Everyone according to his rank” and “To each according to what is assigned to him by law”. By summarizing these individual principles, Perelman arrives at the abstract, general maxim of justice: "Actions by beings of the same category must be treated in the same way."

Since in practice each individual can be assigned to several categories (e.g. marital status, earnings, level of education, descent, etc.), Perelman denies the possibility of being able to reliably create law through general positive law . In these cases there are so-called antinomies of justice; fair treatment according to marital status sees z. B. different than fair treatment, which is based on the merits of the person treated. Rather, it therefore calls for decisions in individual cases in which the " fairness " of a procedure is asked ("Can such a procedure be justified / approved?"). But since both these "fairness" than the so-called justice itself rational virtues, they are by Perelman in discourse to discuss and negotiate.

After the end of the Second World War, the thinker broke with positivism and developed a new approach to philosophy, the so-called regressive philosophy . The approach rejects the foundation of philosophical systems on the basis of axioms and emphasizes the ability to revise philosophical positions in argumentative processes. Perelman's main philosophical work is the Traité de l'argumentation: La nouvelle rhétorique (1958), which he wrote together with his academic partner Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca . In this post-logicistic treatise Perelman developed a non-relativistic theory of argumentation, the practical dimension of which he sought to concretize in ethics, legal philosophy and rhetoric. The work often stands for a branch of argumentation theory known as Nouvelle Rhétorique ( New Rhetoric, New Rhetoric ), the theoretical content and practicability of which is assessed inconsistently in the argumentation-theoretical specialist debate. Perelman's theory of argumentation, which the philosopher expanded and modified in numerous publications up to 1983, was particularly influential in French-speaking countries and in the USA since the 1970s.

Leo Apostel is one of his students .

Awards

Perelman has been awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Florence and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . In 1962, Perelman received the Francqui Prize and in 1983 was made a baron for his scientific services to the Belgian state.

Fonts

  • De la justice. 1945. German translation: About justice. Beck, Munich 1967.
  • Rhétorique et philosophie: Pour une théorie de l'argumentation en philosophie. 1952.
  • with Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca: Rhétorique et philosophie. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1952.
  • with Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca: Traité de l'argumentation: La nouvelle rhétorique. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1958.
  • Justice et raison. Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles, Bruxelles, 1963.
  • Logique et argumentation. 1968.
    • German translation: Logic and Argumentation. Athenaeum, Königstein / Ts., 1979 a. 2nd edition Beltz, Weinheim ISBN 3-89547-008-2
  • Droit, morale et philosophy. Librairie Générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, Paris, 1968.
  • Le champ de l'argumentation. Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles, Bruxelles, 1969.
  • Logique juridique. Dalloz, Paris, 1976.
    • German translation: Legal logic as argumentation theory. Alber, Freiburg and Munich, 1979.
  • L'Empire rhetorique. Vrin, Paris, 1977.
    • German translation: The realm of rhetoric. From the French by Ernst Wittig. Beck, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-406-06012-9
  • Le raisonnable et le déraisonnable en droit. Librairie Générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, Paris, 1984.
  • Ethique et droit. Éditions de l'Université de Bruxelles, Bruxelles, 1990.

literature

  • Alan G. Gross , Ray D. Dearin: Chaim Perelman. SUNY Press, 2003, ISBN 0-7914-5559-9 . Google books .
  • Ray Dearin: The Philosophical Basis of Chaim Perelman's Theory of Rhetoric. In: Quarterly Journal of Speech. Vol. 55, 1969, pp. 213-224.
  • Richard Long: The Role of Audience in Chaim Perelman's New Rhetoric. In: JAC. 4, 1983 [1]
  • Manfred Kienpointner: Nouvelle Rhétorique. In: Gert Ueding (Hrsg.): Historical dictionary of rhetoric . Volume 6. Max Niemeyer, Tübingen 2003. Online version
  • Josef Kopperschmidt (ed.): The new rhetoric. Studies on Chaim Perelman. Fink, Paderborn / Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-7705-4225-3
  • David Frank : The New Rhetoric, Judaism, and Post-Enlightenment thought: The Cultural Origins of Perelmanian Philosophy. In: Quarterly Journal of Speech. Vol. 83, 1997, pp. 311-331.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Alan G. Gross, Ray D. Dearin: Chaim Perelman , SUNY Press, 2003, p. 3.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Perelman, Chaim
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Perelman, Chaim
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish-Belgian lawyer, moral and legal philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Warsaw
DATE OF DEATH January 22nd 1984
Place of death Brussels