While the formal treatment of arguments in the late medieval modi arguendi owes much to dialectic, this does not remove the substance and function of the argumentative modes discussed from the realm of rhetoric. These works, designed to teach law students skills in legal argumentation, remain importantly focused on persuasive features of argumentation which have traditionally been strongly associated with a rhetorical approach, particularly in efforts to differentiate from it dialectic as a more strictly scientific and logical form of reasoning. (...) This also sheds some light on the relative roles logic and rhetoric play in the legal discourse of our own time. In their approach to persuasive legal discourse, the modi arguendi stand between the argumentative rhetorics of Antiquity and the rhetoricized dialectics of the Renaissance, and by linking the minute technicalities of professionalized law with broad general considerations of justice, utility, nature, and emotion, they mediate between the modem trend towards atomized field-specific rhetorics and the classical idea of a unified civic rhetoric. (shrink)

The thesis is defended that rhetoric is not, as is often said, a discipline which is hierarchically subordinate to dialectic. It is argued that the modalities of the links between rhetoric and dialectic must be seen in a somewhat different light: rhetoric and dialectic should be viewed as two complementary disciplines. On the basis of a historical survey of the views of various authors on the links between rhetoric and dialectic, it is concluded that efforts to establish clear boundaries or (...) unequivocal conceptual or moral hierarchical relationships between the two disciplines have failed and that therefore, they must be conceived as being mutually dependent. (shrink)