The article develops and justifies, on the basis of the epistemological argumentation theory, two central pieces of the theory of evaluative argumentation interpretation: 1. criteria for recognizing argument types and 2. rules for adding reasons to create ideal arguments. Ad 1: The criteria for identifying argument types are a selection of essential elements from the definitions of the respective argument types. Ad 2: After presenting the general principles for adding reasons (benevolence, authenticity, immanence, optimization), heuristics are proposed for finding missing (...) reasons, for deductive arguments, e.g., semantic tableaux are suggested. (shrink)

My claim is that rhetorical training is required to develop citizenship skills. I illustrate this claim by focussing on dissociation of notions, that is, a rhetorical technique that citizens might have to use in their civic life. After distinguishing a rhetorical and a normative approach to dissociation, I argue that dissoi logoi, as an exercise invented by the Sophists, offer a relevant training to master this technique.

We intend to examine ways that emotions may be intertwined within argumentative legal discourses. From the transcript of a brief trial in a Court of Appeal in Brazil we have the opportunity to observe how the emotional and rational reasoning live together in a deliberation among magistrates. “The leg broken case” allow us to examine how judges define the value of compensation to be paid in cases of moral damage. We show that not only technical arguments are the compounds of (...) one decision; subjectivity is also important in that legal context. We would yet confirm what jurists and philosophers of the argumentation fields, such as G. Cornu, E. Feteris, A. Garapon, J. J. Robrieux, C. Perelman, C. M. Stamakis, among others, had already emphasized: judges are not cold machines in the moments of a judging. The analysis may show that a sentence is a mix of legal rules and magistrates’ personal experience, in some extent. (shrink)