Frank, David A.
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Item Open Access An Introduction to and Translation of Chaïm Perelman’s 1933 De l’arbitraire dans la connaissance [On the Arbitrary in Knowledge](Advances in the History of Rhetoric, 2019) Bolduc, Michelle K.This is an introduction to and translation of Chaïm Perelman’s “De l’arbitraire dans la connaissance” published in 1933 by Maurice Lambertin publishing house. De l’arbitraire dans la connaissance has important implications for an understanding of Perelman’s intellectual development generally and specifically for an understanding the evolution of his New Rhetoric ProjectItem Open Access BARACK OBAMA’S ADDRESS TO THE 2004 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION: TRAUMA, COMPROMISE, CONSILIENCE, AND THE (IM)POSSIBILITY OF RACIAL RECONCILIATION(Michigan State University Press, 2005) Frank, David A.; McPhail, Mark LawrenceThe two authors of this article offer alternative readings of Barack Obama’s July 27, 2004, address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention (DNC) as an experiment in interracial collaborative rhetorical criticism, one in which they “write together separately.” David A. Frank judges Obama’s speech a prophetic effort advancing the cause of racial healing. Mark Lawrence McPhail finds Obama’s speech, particularly when it is compared to Reverend Al Sharpton’s DNC speech of July 28, 2004, an old vision of racelessness. Despite their different readings of Obama’s address, both authors conclude that rhetorical scholars have an important role to play in cultivating a climate of racial reconciliation.Item Open Access THE PROPHETIC VOICE AND THE FACE OF THE OTHER IN BARACK OBAMA’S “A MORE PERFECT UNION” ADDRESS, MARCH 18, 2008(Michigan State University, 2009) Frank, David A.Barack Obama’s address of March 18, 2008, sought to quell the controversy sparked by YouTube clips of his pastor, Jeremiah Wright of the Trinity United Church of Christ, condemning values and actions of the United States government. In this address, Obama crosses over the color line with a rhetorical strategy designed to preserve his viability as a presidential candidate and in so doing, delivered a rhetorical masterpiece that advances the cause of racial dialogue and rapprochement. Because of his mixed racial heritage, he could bring perceptions and misperceptions in black and white “hush harbors” into the light of critical reason. The address succeeds, I argue, because Obama sounds the prophetic voice of Africentric theology that merges the Hebrew and Jewish faith traditions with African American experience, assumes theological consilience (that different religious traditions share a commitment to caring for others), and enacts the rhetorical counterpart to Lévinas’s philosophy featuring the “face of the other.”Item Open Access ARGUMENTATION STUDIES IN THE WAKE OF THE NEW RHETORIC(American Forensic Association, 2004) Frank, David A.Item Open Access FROM VITA CONTEMPLATIVA TO VITA ACTIVA: CHAÏM PERELMAN AND LUCIE OLBRECHTS-TYTECA'S RHETORICAL TURN(American Society for the History of Rhetoric, 2004) Frank, David A.; Bolduc, Michelle K.Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca's Traité de l'argumentation: la nouvelle rhétorique marked a revolution in twentieth-century rhetorical theory. In this essay, we trace Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca‟s turn from logical positivism and the accepted belief that reason‟s domain was the vita contemplativa to rhetoric and its use as a reason designed for the vita activa. Our effort to tell the story of their rhetorical turn, which took place between 1944 and 1950, is informed by an account of the context in which they considered questions of reason, responsibility, and action in the wake of World War II.Item Open Access The Jewish Countermodel: Talmudic Argumentation, the New Rhetoric Project, and the Classical Tradition of Rhetoric(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.Item Open Access The New Rhetoric, Judaism, and Post-Enlightenment Thought: The Cultural Origins of Perelmanian Philosophy.(Routledge: Taylor and Francis Group, 1997) Frank, David A.In search of justice, Chaim Perelman rediscovered the rhetorical tradition and reclaimed his Jewish identity after World War II. As an attempt to correct misreadings of Perelmanian thought and to situate the New Rhetoric as a response to post-Enlightenment and postmodern culture, I advance two arguments in this essay. First, Perelman's philosophy and the New Rhetoric project reflect his Jewish heritage and Talmudic habits of argument. Second, because Perelmanian philosophy enacts Jewish and Talmudic thought, the New Rhetoric charts a “third way” between Enlightenment metaphysics and the dangers of the more extreme expressions of postmodernism. The New Rhetoric is much more than a relativist taxonomy of argument, for it aspires to replace violence, to create human community, and most important, to discover and craft justice with a Talmudically influenced system of rhetoric.Item Open Access Jerusalem and the Riparian Simile(Elsevier Science Ltd., 2002) Cohen, Shaul; Frank, David A.Many see the city of Jerusalem as an intractable religious political issue, beyond the pale of negotiation and problem solving. This view reflects a set of problematic assumptions, including beliefs that Jerusalem produces a contest between maximalist claims that only power can resolve. In this article, we conduct a conceptual exercise designed to rethink Jerusalem as an issue of political geography open to needs-based bargaining. Drawing from evidence in the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database, we suggest that riparian negotiations offer an analogue that might be used to restructure the discourse used in the negotiations about Jerusalem. We propose the use of a riparian simile in which negotiators begin with the assumption that “the conflict over Jerusalem is like international water disputes.” Riparian negotiations encourage movement from sovereign rights to functional needs, the use of time as a flexible variable, a focus on beneficial uses, and the creation of language recognizing local contingencies.Item Open Access The Mutability of Rhetoric: Haydar 'Abd al-Shafi's Madrid Speech and Vision of Palestinian-Israeli Rapprochement(Routledge, 2000-08) Frank, David A.This essay draws from Edwin Black's Rhetorical Questions to illuminate the role of mutability in rhetoric, consciousness, and social idiom as it is displayed in Haydar 'Abd al-Shaji's speech delivered at the Madrid conference on October 31, 1991. Shafi's speech represents a significant mutation in Palestinian discourse. In this speech, the symbolic mold and the hereditarian social idioms that had controlled the Palestinian narrative until the intifada, yielded to a mixed idiom that retained the hereditarian values essential for Palestinian identity but opened up spare for the convictional values necessary for negotiation and rapprochement with Israel. This essay demonstrates that rhetorical critical theory could benefit from a close reading and application of the themes in Rhetorical Questions.Item Open Access Chaïm Perelman’s “First Philosophies and Regressive Philosophy”: Commentary and Translation(Penn State University Press, 2003) Frank, David A.; Bolduc, Michelle K.; Perelman, ChaimItem Open Access After the New Rhetoric [Review Essay](Taylor and Francis, 2003) Frank, David A.Item Open Access The Pedagogy and Politics of Solipsism(Cross Examination Debate Association, 2003) Frank, David A.Item Open Access Argumentation Studies in the Wake of The New Rhetoric(American Forensic Association, 2004) Frank, David A.Item Open Access Arguing With God, Talmudic Discourse, and the Jewish Countermodel: Implications for the Study of Argumentation(American Forensic Association, 2004) Frank, David A.Item Open Access Barack Obama's Address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention: Trauma, Compromise, Consilience, and the (Im)possibility of Racial Reconciliation(Michigan State University Press, 2005) Frank, David A.; McPhail, Mark LawrenceThe two authors of this article offer alternative readings of Barack Obama’s July 27, 2004, address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention (DNC) as an experiment in interracial collaborative rhetorical criticism, one in which they “write together separately.” David A. Frank judges Obama’s speech a prophetic effort advancing the cause of racial healing. Mark Lawrence McPhail finds Obama’s speech, particularly when it is compared to Reverend Al Sharpton’s DNC speech of July 28, 2004, an old vision of racelessness. Despite their different readings of Obama’s address, both authors conclude that rhetorical scholars have an important role to play in cultivating a climate of racial reconciliation.