The human being is an imitative animal. This statement, or description, resonates across time and cultures. Its familiarity derives from its repetition. It has, in terms appropriate to this discussion, a memetic quality. What Aristotle says is that "imitation is natural to man from childhood, one of his advantages over the lower animals being this, that he is the most imitative creature in the world, and learns first by imitation". The proof for this, Aristotle goes on to explain, lies in (...) the pleasure derived from imitation. And if pleasurable, it is natural; we are naturally imitative creatures.Among our imitative practices is the social practice of argumentation with all its rhetorical... (shrink)

In classical logic and rhetoric the strategies of argumentation known as topoi played a crucial role. Yet, topoi refer there to different kinds of strategies that this study intends to explain synoptically. Main focus will be on passages from Aristotle and Cicero. Indeed, these sources contain examples and theoretical considerations, which provide the basis for a general investigation of the complex phenomenon of topoi in the ancient world. Four main types of topoi will be juxtaposed and discusses comparatively as a (...) way to inspire historical reconstructions of the system of topoi, as well as modern theory formation on argumentation where topoi still receive much attention. (shrink)

This paper aims to single out and to highlight the fundamental tenets of Agricola’s De inuentione dialectica. After the structure of the volume, its theoretical perspective and its educational concern are illustrated, Agricola’s understanding of the fundamental notion of locus is expounded. In this relation his particular use of the medieval term habitudo and the exclusion of maxims, which had been the main concern of the Medieval doctrine of loci, show a certain distance from the Medieval tradition. Several innovative and (...) constructive contributions of Agricola’s work are stressed, in particular the elaboration of a new taxonomy of loci and the discovery of the relevant role played by loci not only in argumentation but also in exposition and in explanation. In this way, loci acquire the status of intentiones secundae, i.e. of meta-categorical concepts which govern the connections ensuring textual congruity. A reading of this text in the light of contemporary argumentation theory reveals a surprising topicality and richness of concrete contributions in some dialectical and rhetorical domains, like argument schemes, topical potential, and presentational techniques. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the inferential configuration of arguments, generally referred to as argument scheme. After outlining our approach, denominated Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT, see Rigotti and Greco Morasso 2006, 2009; Rigotti 2006, 2008, 2009), we compare it to other modern and contemporary approaches, to eventually illustrate some advantages offered by it. In spite of the evident connection with the tradition of topics, emerging also from AMT’s denomination, its involvement in the contemporary dialogue on argument schemes should not be (...) overlooked. The model builds in particular on the theoretical and methodological perspective of pragma-dialectics in its extended version, reconciling dialectic and rhetoric; nevertheless, it also takes into account numerous other contributions to the study of argument schemes. Aiming at a representation of argument schemes able to monitor the inferential cohesion and completeness of arguments, AMT focuses on two components of argument scheme that could be distinguished, readapting pragma-dialectical terms, as procedural and material respectively. The procedural component is based on the semantic-ontological structure, which generates the inferential connection from which the logical form of the argument is derived. The material component integrates into the argument scheme the implicit and explicit premises bound to the contextual common ground (Rigotti 2006). In this paper, the comparison of the AMT to other approaches focuses on the inferential configuration of arguments and not on the typologies of argument schemes and on the principles they are based on, which the authors intend to tackle in a further paper. (shrink)

In this paper, I investígate a question in the Rhetoric surrounding the metaphorical sense of Aristotle’s topos: one can look to a location for “available means of persuasion,” evoking an image of seeing ; or topoi are viewed as “general lines of argument.” Are they places we go for arguments, or actual lines of arguments? The difference matters, given a propensity to view topoi as forerunners of argument schemes.

In Rhetoric 1360b05-1365b21, Aristotle naturally assumes the debatable, exceptionable and multidimensional character of the kind of allegations, adduced as reasons for the proposals which act as conclusions of the practical arguments typical of political debate. This is a problem which has been currently addressed in terms of the prima facie incommensurability caused by the multi-dimensionality of value-based argumentation, an approach that seems to lead us to an evaluative and dialectical dead-end. But in the Aristotelian text, we find a different tactic. (...) Aristotle analyses in very explicit and revealing terms how the “continuum between argument and argument criticism” and the meta-argumentative scaling takes place in deliberative discourse. Starting with a rather simple practical means-ends scheme, just effective in very exceptional situations, the text of the Rhetoric advances progressively towards the examination of additional arguments defending the suitability of different ends, in case there is no agreement about them, and then towards the even more clearly meta-argumentative means of weighing and ordering different suitable ends. Aristotle shows us, thus, how we manage when facing prima facie incommensurability: we keep arguing and meta-arguing. (shrink)