Cinta de Moebio: Revista de Epistemología de Ciencias Sociales

Alvarez, I. (2016) La retórica hoy: Holzapfel y Perelman. Cinta moebio 57: 296-304. doi: 10.4067/S0717-554X2016000300005

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Rhetoric today: Holzapfel and Perelman

Íñigo Álvarez (ialvarezg@uchile.cl), Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades, Universidad de Chile (Santiago, Chile) ORCID: 0000-0002-0001-1493

Abstract

From the analysis of Perelman by the philosopher Cristobal Holzapfel about the new rhetoric and on rhetoric itself, we can help but ask where lives the usefulness of rhetoric today. One sensible answer connects us with the sophists and the humanists’ period, for whom language was a powerful tool to change the world. Nevertheless, Holzapfel calls about the importance of rhetoric today in the construction of the world, in more or less the same way we saw in the sophists and the humanists’ period. The main argument of this essay is that it makes sense to talk about rhetoric today, as Holzapfel does, because it is a medium to make a projection of the world and because it may be a good moment to propose a projection of a different world; a projection where need to have a full audience to change and take down what exists today and what we don’t like as such.

Key words: rhetoric, argumentation, Perelman, Holzapfel, sophists, humanist.