(The Religious Communication Association, 2003) Frank, David A.
Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts- Tyteca's New Rhetoric Project
(NRP) helped revive the study of rhetoric in the twentieth century. Although
some believe their work is largely a reiteration of Aristotle's rhetoric and
that Perelman owes a significant debt to Aristotle, I present evidence in this
paper that Perelman was quite critical of the Western tradition of philosophy
and of Aristotle's logic and rhetoric. Perelman turned to Jewish thinking
and Talmudic argumentation as a countermodel. Jewish metaphysics,
ontology, epistemology, and argument are the central touchstones of the NRP.
