by M.Manzin
F.Cavalla has recently issued an article on rhetoric in legal methodology (see Retorica, processo verità, Padova, Cedam, 2005, 1-100) which summarizes and completes many of his prior work. Partly a short treatise about argumentation, partly a handbook for legal practitioners, Cavalla’s article demonstrates the logical basis of rhetoric, showing why rhetoric cannot be reduced to a mere technique of persuasion.
Cavalla’s main purpose is to demonstrate that in addition to the formal sciences’ typical way of organizing artificial language (which must warrant a logic connection between premises and conclusions) it is also possible to organize ordinary language in order to fulfill a reasoning characterized by unique logical evidence.This is precisely the aim of the rhetorical method espoused mainly by Aristotle and described by F.Cavalla according to a perspective grounded in epistemology and jurisprudence – distinctly different from Perelman’s and others’.
Rhetorical method, conventionally understood, uses premises whose structure is different from those of formal sciences. In this case, indeed, they are neither hypothesis nor axioms, but “commonplaces”, that is to say ordinary language’s propositions characterized by the frequency of their use in discourses and by their probability (so calling the provisional condition of plausible sentences waiting to be ascertained).
The first step in rhetorical activity (once called “topics”) is the selection of suitable “commonplaces”, or “arguments”, good for both circumstances and audience. These “arguments” must also be tested from a logical point of view, so that every other different and even opposite meaning can be excluded.
For this reason the topic phase of rhetoric implies a logic check (once called “dyalectics”) based essentially upon the identity and non-contradiction principles. The dyalectic chek ensures that the arguments’ persuasive strength results from a rational procedure and not from mere psychological suasion.
Using “vague” (i.e., not univocal) linguistic terms, through the “properties’ accumulating” technique, rhetorical argumentation can establish definitions which are semantically univocal.
At this point of the procedure the rhetorician is ready to face his interlocutors’ diverging opinions (because this is the real nature of rhetoric: its enduring state of comparison with other, always possible and seemely plausible definitions). His next obstacles can be listed in four categories: 1. the audience’s disregard for his speech; 2. the lack of knowledge for understanding it; 3. its inadequate argumentative strength against opposing opinions; 4. the absence of their confutation.
Rhetorical method has a response for all of these eventualities, being divided (according to Cicero) into four complementary genera: the “aesthetic” (for impressing the audience), the “didascalic” (for teaching what’s necessary to know), the “motivating” (for showing how good are one’s arguments), the confutatory or “elenctic” (for showing how bad are others’ arguments: this case especially involves use of the “dyalectical syllogisms”).
After thereby building his premises, the rhetorician can eventually deduce his conclusions according to the formula: If A, then b. This phase is named “enthimematic”.
Once deduced, the rhetorical conclusions are true (having been logically tested and resulting unconfuted). In other words, the rhetorician has demonstrated that conclusions which were different from b would be contradictory with the premises of A.
This kind of truth is called “instantaneous” for the reason that rhetorical conclusions are true only “here-and-now”. Changing the circumstances, it will always be possible to face new oppositions, that will force the rhetorician to “re-examine” his argumentation (finding new A and so deducing new b). But it would be “certainly wrong to deny a rhetorical conclusion upon the fact that ‘anyway, it could be in another way’; until this ‘other way’ has become an articulated opposition, you cannot refuse a motivated speech without being arbitrary and wrong” (Cavalla).
Rhetorical conclusions consist of a truth that, being concrete, stands constantly “at the door” between past and future, while the rigid and abstract truth of formalized discourses (such as geometric demonstrations) can be repeated in the same way indefinitely. This kind of repeatibility is typical of all things that, being abstract (like triangles or circles), never properly “occurs”.
The rhetorical method, on the contrary, is deeply rooted in the concrete occuring of human experience: it’s “practical rationality” capable of giving discourse persuasion based upon logic.
Download the short version of Cavalla’s article on legal rhetoric (below)