Perelmanian Universal Audience and the Epistemic Aspirations of Argument

Author(s): Scott F. Aikin

Source: Philosophy & Rhetoric, Vol. 41, No. 3 (2008), pp. 238-259
Published by: Penn State University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25655315
Accessed: 06-04-2018 03:00 UTC

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 Perelmanian Universal Audience and the
Epistemic Aspirations of Argument

Scott R Aikin

The notion of universality in argumentation is as fecund as is it is controversial.

Chai'm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tytecas notion of universal audience
(UA), given their requirement that all arguments be evaluated in terms of
their audiences, clearly promises a rich account of argumentative norms. It
equally yields a variety of questions. For the most part, the questions come
in three forms: what, precisely, is the universal audience; whether it is, in
the end, a coherent notion; and how its norms actually constrain argument.
Many objections to the notion claim that it is either incoherent or too empty
to constrain. My objective here is to provide an account of Perelman s notion
of UA that avoids these objections. I will argue that the UA can be clari
fied with a distinction between two functions it plays in argumentation?
one pragmatic and another epistemic. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca do
not explicitly disambiguate these roles themselves, though they do use the
notion in two distinct ways in The New Rhetoric (TNR [1969]), and so it
seems clear that although the view in the end may be Perelmanian, it is argu
ably not Perelmans. No matter. The purpose of this essay is not to exhume
Perelman but to resurrect and exercise his views. That is, historical work in
philosophy must straddle the demands of two distinct goals?fidelity to
the author in question and defensibility of the views developed. My case

Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 41, No. 3, 2008

Copyright ? 2008 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

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 perelmanian universal audience

will jointly depend on the comparative plausibility of my account as an

interpretation of Perelmans universal audience and of the view as correct
regarding argumentative norms in relation to the other competing inter
pretations of Perelmans UA. So if my argument for a divided universal
audience is at least Perelmanian in spirit, and if it survives the objections to
UA that other interpretations do not survive, it should be the philosophi
cally preferable interpretation.

The first principle of Perelmanian rhetoric is that arguments are addressed

to audiences for the purpose of inducing or increasing adherence to a
view (TNR, 14). Consequently, the less reliant arguments are on a specific
audience's idiosyncratic commitments, the more effective the arguments
will be in generating assent and resolving disagreements in wider and
wider groups of people. Perelman describes the universal audience in The
Realm of Rhetoric (RR [1982]) as "itself. . . made up of an infinite variety
of particular audiences" (14). The UA is the regulative ideal of maximal
intersubjective agreement. That is, we see both the relative weakness of
arguments that depend on the commitments of particular audiences and
"the value attached to opinions that enjoy unanimous approval" (TNR,
31). This unanimity is reached at its highest point in the universal audi
ence. As such, UA is an agglomerative notion that functions as a criterion
for how widely an argument may be given credence. Call this trajectory
toward unanimity the pragmatic element of UA.
However, the universal audience's assent is used to define facts for
arguments, and as such, it is a marker of the objectivity of a conclusion,
not just the breadth of the effectiveness of an argument. Perelman and
Olbrechts-Tyteca stipulate that "from the standpoint of argumentation,
we are confronted with a fact only if we can postulate uncontroverted,
universal agreement with respect to it" (TNR, 67). Facts and truths are
defined in terms of the "agreement of the universal audience" (TNR, 67).
This, of course, is not to say that arguments make facts but, instead, that
their universal acceptability is a criterion for whether some purported fact
is or is not the case. Agreement on this level does not play a metaphysical
role of explanation but, rather, a cognitive role of justification for taking a
commitment as a premise for further argument. The agreement in a uni
versal audience, further, must be uncontroverted, which means that this UA
must have some shared commitment that survives scrutiny (or at least is

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 SCOTT F. AI KIN

not defeated): "The agreement of a universal audience is ... a matter, not

of fact, but of right" (TNR, 31). And further, this right has a very power
ful normative element: "Argumentation addressed to a universal audience
must convince the reader that the reasons adduced are of a compelling
character, that they are self-evident, and possess an absolute and timeless
validity, independent of local or historical contingencies" (TNR, 32). Perel
man and Olbrechts-Tyteca then analogize this normative claim of the uni
versal audience to that of Kant's objective validity and Cartesian certitude,
each of which is a program of deriving criteria for knowledge. Whether
Perelman is arguing for a criterion that establishes timeless truths or not
is a matter of some contention.1 Perelman (1984,190) later goes out of his
way to clarify that he never meant to require timeless truths. However, the
nature of the truths established is not important here, for the relevant con
text is one of establishing knowledge. The nature of the truths known is not
material?only that the arguments in favor of them put us in a position to
know them. The fact that one knows as a result explains why one should
follow these arguments. Call this normative dimension the epistemic ele
ment of universal audience.
The pragmatic and epistemic elements of the universal audience
themselves address separate issues for arguments. Pragmatic features of
UA are the sociological facts of cognitive and evaluative overlap between
different people, groups, and societies. The commitments making up this
set are the ones a speaker appeals to when he or she argues ad humani
tatem: "Argumentation aiming at the universal audience, argumenta
tion ad humanitatem, will avoid, as far as possible, the use of arguments
that would be valid only for particular groups" (TNR, 110-11). That is,
arguments appealing to the UA are a particular form of ad hominem
argumentation?only the individuals to whom the argument is addressed
are not of a particular group but, in fact, all of humanity. Speakers con
struct their own conceptions of this UA in terms of "what [they] know
of [their] fellow men, in such a way as to transcend the few oppositions
[they are] aware of" (TNR, 33). Arguments with particular audiences will
have appeal limited to those composing the audience, so arguments with
the universal audience are one with universal appeal. A familiar slogan for
UA is that it is the everybody in anybody.
The primary worry with this pragmatic role of universal audience is
that it does not respect the difference between the de facto and de jure
status of the UAs commitment. The criterion for good argument is not just
whether or not it moves its audience or increases adherence in its audience

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 perelmanian universal audience

(no matter how large the audience is) but also whether it achieves these
goals under the right conditions (cf. Crosswhite 1989,161). That is, universal
appeal in the universal audience may define effective argumentation (a prag
matic aspiration), but it does not yet bear on the validity of the argument.
The UA is a relative criterion for assessing the quality of an argument, and
whether an argument in fact convinces all rational humans still leaves it an
open question as to whether or not it ought to convince all rational humans.2
The universal audience, then, cannot simply be a sociologicalposit of speakers
but, rather, a rationally regulative notion. This, again, is what I have termed
the epistemic role of universal audience.
Without a rational requirement for universality, the normative differ
ence between argument and flattery dissolves. Arguments with particular
audiences are panderings to parochial interests and views, and those with
universal audience are gratifications of cosmopolitan inclinations. Perel
man notes the difference between effective and valid argumentation with
his distinction between persuasive and convincing argumentation, and
UA defines the audience to whom arguments yielding conviction must be
addressed. We are duty bound to respect the difference between effective
and valid argumentation, and in The Realm of Rhetoric, Perelman qualifies
the UA in a fashion that is designed to address the question of the nor
mative purchase of universal appeal in convincing arguments: "Validity is
relative to a competent audience, most often to the universal audience" (140).
This property of competence, then, is the normatively significant difference.
Philosophy is Perelmans exemplar for a discipline devoted to addressing
the universal audience as competent assessors of arguments. The philoso
pher is not bound to address specific audiences but is devoted to address
those "capable of following his reasoning" (RR, 17). This, of course, is not
all of humanity but, in fact, a potentially vanishingly small group: "Instead,
he [the philosopher] searches for facts, truths, and universal values that
even if all the members of the universal audience do not explicitly adhere
to them?an impossibility?are nevertheless supposed to compel assent of
every sufficiently enlightened being" (RR, 17). Two important points hang
here. First note that though facts, truths, and universal values may be con
ceptually distinct from de facto universal adherence, Perelman denies the
possibility of them actually being different. This, I take it, is an expression of
the pragmatic element of universal audience, in that these facts are objects
of ultimate agreement. Second, note that these facts, truths, and univer
sal values, when appealed to in the right circumstances, are supposed to
yield adherence from the competent. They are supposed to compel universal

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 SCOTT F. AI KIN

assent?as such, these have de jure force. This is the epistemic element of
UA. On this point, Alan Gross notes that the term fact, then, has a dis
tinctly epistemic force: "Facts are true assertions about the world, assertions
about which everyone must agree" (1999, 205).
The question now hangs: Are pragmatic and epistemic features of uni
versal audience really different functions of the same notion, or are they
completely different notions altogether? Lisa Ede (1981, 122) and Richard
Long (1983, 108) take it that they are separate notions. They then argue
that Perelmans universal audience is incoherent. This is a non sequitur,
for with the distinction, we have a clearer view. It seems UA cannot sin
gularly fulfill both roles, for there is a gulf between the pragmatic goal of
universal adherence and the epistemic goal of validity. Numbers constitute
the first, and competence constitutes the second. On the basis of these
constitutive elements, it seems clear that they are, in fact, two different
audiences: pragmatically universal and epistemically universal audiences.3
What is necessary now is an articulation of the two notions as independent
from each other. That is, as I take it, the two faces of UA represent the two
separable goals of argumentation?resolving disagreements and produc
ing knowledge. They often go hand in hand, but the two goals are not
internally related. One may resolve disagreements or increase commitment
with false or unjustified claims (which do not count as knowledge), and
one may give arguments that are conducive of knowledge but only deepen
disagreements.
The pragmatic universal audience is clear enough in its regulative con
tent, for it is a' direct consequence of the Perelmanian axiom of rhetoric
that arguments are addressed to audiences as gatherings of those whom
the speaker wants to influence by his or her arguments (RR, 14; TNR, 30).
However, the epistemic UA needs clarification?it serves the purpose of
defining validity, and in turn, it defines facts, truths, and universal values
that may obtain independent of universal adherence. Its purposes are clear
enough, but what is the content of epistemically universal audience?

Ill

We might be tempted to neglect epistemic universal audience

it to the purely pragmatic functions of UA. That is, one may
by definition, UA is exclusively a pragmatic concept and tha
sion, the epistemic norms of the notion are to be explained pr
For example, Nathan Rotenstreich suggests that the epistem

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 perelmanian universal audience

of argument, once the universal audience is understood pragmatically, is

dispensable: "Argumentation is not the procedure of bestowing on state
ments epistemic or logical status or, for that matter, that of innate proposi
tion or idea. It is an activity which takes place within the inter subjective
orbit of attempts to persuade and convince someone of the validity of a
certain position or standpoint" (1972, 20).4
There are two things to note about Rotenstreich's suggestion. First, given
the deflation of argumentations normative purchase, it is unclear what it is
to "convince someone of the validity of a certain position or standpoint,"
unless it amounts to pointing again to the fact of widespread assent. Second,
arguments do not do the work of bestowing an epistemic status on ideas.
Instead, on an epistemic theory of argument, arguments give their listeners
an epistemic status?that of being justified in holding the conclusion true
on the basis of the reasons given. Good arguments put their hearers in a
better position to know their conclusions.
The reason why the evasion of epistemic normativity with argumen
tation is so curious is that it seems an inescapable frame for listeners to
evaluate arguments. That is, for arguers to convince (or even persuade) their
audiences, the arguers must at least pretend to give their listeners epistemi
cally good reasons for believing. Surely, if arguments had no epistemic ele
ment, it would be disastrous for an arguer to proffer his or her case and
then follow it up with the disclaimer that the argument has nothing to do
with whether the listeners are in a better position to know the conclusion or
whether the evidence supports what the arguer is suggesting they believe.
This is because listeners cannot but take themselves as assessing epistemic
reasons for changing their beliefs. It surely would not make sense for an
arguer to say: "I will now present you with an argument composed entirely
of premises designed to appeal to your commitments and preferences, and
I do so in order to persuade you to accept py not to bring you to a position
where you might know or hold that rationally." Nobody would take this
arguer seriously. Similarly, if someone were to change his or her mind on
the basis of an argument, it would surely make no sense for him or her to
say: "I believed that not p, but I changed my mind and now believe that
on the basis of an argument that makes no pretensions to give knowledge
or evidence of the truth of p."5 This is because when we believe, or give
assent to, or adhere to a proposition, we do so because we hold that proposi
tion to be true. We do not hold it to be merely an expression of our identity,
or what we have been manipulated to commit to, or a simple habit of mind.
If we see our beliefs in those lights, they cease to be our beliefs.6

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 SCOTT F. AI KIN

Additionally, when we criticize arguments, we do so on the basis of

their failure to provide the epistemic support they promised. Judgments
of relevance, testimony, and authority are all filtered through epistemic
criteria of reliability and plausibility.7 If premises in an argument fail such
scrutiny by a listener, they cannot provide support. The consequence, then,
is that epistemic normativity is ineliminable from argument evaluation,
for the pragmatic dissolution of the epistemic element of arguments into
audience acceptance itself requires audiences wielding epistemic concepts.
Epistemic assessment is an inescapable element of our cognitive lives, and
to deepen this point, note how professions in which there are no epistemi
cally privileged positions themselves must account for how so many are
ignorant of such a truth.8 The consequence, then, is that the epistemic
function of universal audience is not an aspect of the pragmatic function
of UA, because the concepts wielded in the pragmatic account are inde
pendently epistemic. That is, in order for an argument to reach the point
of acceptability to an audience, the audience must already have wielded
some epistemic criteria.
A question then hangs: If for these reasons, epistemic UA cannot be
a function of pragmatic UA, may the pragmatic UA be a function of the
epistemic? This seems unlikely, if only because the epistemic requirements
of UA may not ever be instantiated in any audience. The pragmatic univer
sal audience's commitments, though they may be implicated in epistemic
judgments, never have to be successful employments of those epistemic con
cepts. That is, just because those in the pragmatic cases use epistemic con
cepts, it does not follow that they properly employ them. And further, simply
because it may be rational for everyone to believe p, it does not follow that
everyone will believe p, even if they are rational. This is precisely why the
size of those making up Perelman's "competent" may be vanishingly small.
As such, neither may the epistemic be reduced to the pragmatic, nor may
the pragmatic be reduced to the epistemic. The lesson, as I take it, is that
one may not pursue the argumentative goal of reducing disagreement or
eliciting assent without additionally pursuing (or at least pretending to pur
sue) the goal of knowledge?so though the different functions of universal
audience are distinct, they are tied in practice.

IV

The distinction between the epistemic universal audience and the p

universal audience additionally resolves two familiar problems

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 perelmanian universal audience

singular notion of UA. I will call them the regress/circularity problem and
the tautology/redundancy problem. I will address them in order.
The basic puzzle of regress/circularity is that if we are giving an argu
ment to a particular audience, some members of that audience must not
have a commitment to the conclusion C we are out to demonstrate. We are
out to elicit assent, so it seems they must not have assented or do not assent.
This is a case of disagreement. Given that there is disagreement about C, it
is not universally adhered to. On a nondisambiguated theory of universal
audience, it does not count as a fact for arguments. Consequently, if reasons
are given for C, those who reject it may instead take C's questionable posi
tion as evidence of the questionable status of the reasons proffered. The
arguments, from the listener's perspective, will beg the question or at least
be as controversial as the conclusion, and the arguer's task will be to give
further and further reasons. It is an old saw in philosophy that one think
er's modus ponens is another's modus fattens, and the implication is that for
every reason given to support an unpopular conclusion, either those reasons
may make the conclusion more acceptable or the conclusion may make
those reasons less popular. Henry Johnstone captures the regress/circular
ity problem for UA in the variety of views regarding almost every premise
for philosophical argument: "To address and argument to people unable
in principle to listen to it is not only frustrating but question-begging. If
the Cosmological Argument addresses the universal audience, it begs the
question ... for it assumes the existence of problems the existence of which
[some] people do not assume. For them, these alleged problems are not
problems at all. If the Cosmological Argument is to avoid bearing the taint
of petition, it must accordingly be addressed to a particular audience rather
than a universal one" (1991, 88). The sociological facts of cognitive diver
sity are against there being enough cognitive overlap for there to be much
constituting the commitments of a universal audience.9 But this problem
arises only for a singular nondisambiguated theory of UA. If we are careful
to distinguish epistemic and pragmatic universal audiences, the problem
may be dissolved. For one, if philosophical argument is addressed to an
epistemic UA, the fact that there may be thinkers who reject some premises
or hold the issue in contempt does not have to problematize the argument.
If the argument adds to our knowledge and addresses the concerns of a
wide enough particular audience, that should be enough. There are always
cognitive outliers and crackpots aplenty, and so long as one could fashion an
argument to address them, given sufficient time and resources, one does not
have to take the failure of universal assent as an indicator of an argument.

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 SCOTT F. AI KIN

Returning to Johnstones case of the Cosmological Argument, not having

addressed those who do not countenance motion is not necessarily a failure
of an instantiation of an argument. Addressing the main or standard criti
cisms (pragmatic and sociological facts) is sufficient. Good arguers are like
good batters in baseball?one does not have to swing at every pitch in the
dirt. Hitting the ones over the plate is more than sufficient.
The problem with Johnstone's regress/circularity problem for universal
audience is that the analysis of universality is purely pragmatic, which is
understandable but correctable. These corrections, of course, are possible
only on the conditions that we accept epistemic and pragmatic universal
audiences as distinct. This returns us to a methodological question for work
in the history of philosophy?whether to delineate the views that most
accurately capture the explicit commitments of some thinker or another
or to delineate the most defensible versions of their views. The distinction
between epistemic and pragmatic UA is philosophically preferable to the
unitary (or nondisambiguated) theory, because it solves these problems and
is capable of accounting for the ineliminability of epistemic concepts in
audience assessment. Again, Perelman never explicitly makes the distinc
tion, but it is also clear that he uses the notion of universal audience in
these two ways. Given this, it is at least plausible to hold that the distinc
tion, though not Perelmans, is nevertheless Perelmanian. On balance, I take
it that this interpretation is preferable, for with it we have a theory that is
still in Perelmans camp but is capable of defense against standard worries
regarding Perelmans theory.
The tautology/redundancy problem is simply that if valid arguments
are defined in terms of what is accepted by a universal audience, it is redun
dant to address an argument to such an audience. If the members of the
UA need the argument to accept p, they must not accept p, as arguments
are designed to promote acceptance. As such, the case for is not going to
be valid, for validity is defined in terms of acceptance by UA. As a conse
quence, the argument is doomed. If the argument already is accepted by the
members of the UA, giving the argument is unnecessary. John Ray captures
the problem as a tautology: "When we say that the universal audience is
always a correct standard because it is the standard of all rational people,
we are simply uttering a tautology by saying that what is rational for all
people is rational for all people" (1978, 374). The problem, Ray points out,
is that the UA is "too formal and abstract to provide standards" for argu
ment (1978,373). Rotenstreich similarly notes that the UA is an "ideal type,"
one that comprises "persons agreeing to the argument and convinced by it"

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 perelmanian universal audience

(1972, 20). This, of course, makes the constraints of the universal audience
empty?for if the audience is defined in terms of the argument, they may
not lay antecedent claims on it.10
However, given that the UA is disambiguated and if we take it that
the normative constraint of epistemic universal audience is defined by the
correct principles of evidence and inference, the tautology disappears. One
addresses an audience of virtuous believers (the competent), namely, those
who operate on the correct epistemic norms. The notion of an epistemic UA
is analogous to what the American philosopher Charles S. Peirce calls the
attitudes of researchers at the end of inquiry: "The real and the unreal . . .
consist of those [cognitions] which, at a time sufficiently future, the com
munity will always continue to re-affirm; and those which, under the same
conditions, will ever after be denied" (1868,154). On the Peircian model, the
community of researchers at the end of inquiry stand in ideal epistemic
conditions?they have all the data, and they themselves are competent to
interpret it. Addressing an argument to such an audience is not designed
to win their adherence (they are smarter and have more data than we do)
but, rather, their approval The question we ask when we consider our argu
ments from such a perspective is whether a community that knows more
and reasons better than we do would nevertheless hold our present rea
soning as correct or appropriate under our conditions. If it turns out that
our argument is what they themselves would believe on the basis of, we
really have done something special. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca invoke
Plato's dream of producing arguments that would be "capable of convinc
ing the gods themselves" (TNR, 7). And such aspirations are not unusual,
though they are regularly put in theological language, instead of epistemic
terms. Mathematicians often use the phrase "proof in the mind of God" to
praise a proof s elegance and simplicity?as though to say that the proof
could not have been done better by an omniscient being.11 The theological
references are stand-ins for epistemic terms, however?namely, that if the
gods are omniscient, they know not only every fact but the best argument
for every proposition. Given the loftiness of this aspiration, we do also need
to bring our arguments down to earth. As such, we might say that we argue
with one eye to our pragmatic and particular audiences in order to gain
their adherence and with the other eye to the epistemic universal audience
in order to gain their approval. We may not give the arguments that would
move the gods or even arguments that they themselves would give, but we
are nevertheless bound to give ones that they would say are good enough
for humans. The point of putting this in terms of UA instead of theology

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 SCOTT F. AI KIN

is that we are grown-ups now, and we do not have to invoke childhood

pictures of judging gods to articulate standards for our conduct, intellectual
or otherwise.
What is required here, then, is some tinkering with Perelmans axiom
that all argumentation is addressed to arguments for the purpose of
increasing or eliciting adherence. With the epistemic universal audience, this
is redundant. So under the current account, we address an epistemic UA
not for the purpose of changing their minds but for the purpose of win
ning their approval. As such, I am willing to concede that this interpreta
tion of UA, given the revision of the axiom of audiences, is not Perelmans,
but I contend that it nevertheless is Perelmanian. With the distinction, the
Perelmanian interpretation survives the argument, and what is arguably
Perelmans version does not. It is Perelmanian because it is something that
Perelman could have agreed to, given the case I have made earlier that the
UA has two uses in the TNR.
It may be objected, further, that the hypostatized unitary audience
here is counter to the spirit of Perelmans historical account of universal
audience?that it varies between individuals, situations, and cultures. This
is the most serious objection to my interpretation.

The question is, Why must the universal audience, if i

mativity for arguments, be a singularly hypostatized n
of Peirce's society of inquirers at the end of inquiry or Er
I will address here the confusions behind the case for the
philosophical consequences of foregoing the unitary epi
The universal audience is a regulative notion. Pragm
abstraction of potential human agreement, and epistemica
ideal. In constructing arguments, speakers themselves
tions of their particular audience and of the UA, and t
turn influence the speaker's actions. In this respect, ta
ences (plural) often itself falls into a relativism of a mult
tions constructed by a multiplicity of speakers or into
concept of UA as a singular thing (perhaps captured by a
along the lines "the universal audience itself").12 Neither
Relativism deflates the normativity of univers
Grootendorst and Frans van Eemeren make this charge
UA?that its use in explaining what speakers have in m

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 perelmanian universal audience

validity for their arguments is conflated with the actual criteria for validity,
which yields "extremely relative" criteria (1995,124). Alternately, Platonism
renders the normative notion of UA independent of the speakers, but in
so doing it cannot explain the actions of speakers. This is probably the fate
of a good deal of the metaphysics of value to be caught between the Scylla
of tying values to functions of valuing subjects and thereby losing their
critical purchase and the Charybdis of tying the values to independent
objects and thereby losing their explanatory power. This dilemma, however,
is unnecessary.
A reasonable solution is to employ the distinction between concepts and
conceptions. The concept of epistemic UA is that audience that instantiates
all the epistemic virtues and which reflects the ideal position from which
to judge the quality of an argument. The criterion for validity is whether an
argument lives up to this standard. Each speaker has his or her own concep
tion of what constitutes such an audience both in its virtues and in its com

mitments, and these conceptions will direct the ways speakers formulate
their arguments with an eye to validity. As a consequence we can make good
sense of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecas claim: "Each speakers universal
audience can from an external viewpoint be regarded as a particular one"
(TNR, 30). In one sense, universal audiences are purely constructions of
speakers, as conceptions of standards of argumentative validity each speaker
uses. But in another sense, epistemic standards are independent of and stand
as corrections to those conceptions as the concept of universal audience. So,
in order to understand some argument, we must also grasp the arguers con
ception of the UA. But in order to criticize the argument, we must do so in
terms of how well that conception lives up to the concept of the UA.
Metaphysics is hard business, and it is beyond the scope of this article
to settle the issue of the ontology of norms. However, there are a few things
to be said regarding what the universal audience, particularly in its epis
temic instantiation, is. It is, in broad outline, a deflationary story. There is
knowledge in the world. We humans are often good at not only attaining it
but transmitting it. Argumentation is our primary means of doing this, and
so arguments that achieve this end are epistemically successful. The epis
temic UA is simply the criterion for whether or not an argument actually
transmits knowledge or the justification that may constitute knowledge.
Additionally, as Crosswhite (1989, 164) has noted, what I call pragmatic
UA can give us meta-evidence about the quality of the evidence in these
arguments. We can test the quality of our reasons by submitting them to
criticism from those who disagree. We can note the significance of overlap

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 SCOTT F. A

of intuitions (e.g., laws of logic, the value of intellectual seriousness), an

shared evaluations of data can strengthen our confidence that our argu
ments are correct. The UA in both its pragmatic and epistemic forms is
useful notion, and though its metaphysics may be curious, it is somethin
we may not do without.
Furthermore, the metaphysical curiosity of the notion may be miti
gated by an analogy. When we say with regard to some political error, "His
tory will judge us harshly," we are not committing to the existence of a
object termed "history" but, instead, to a regulative notion of progress and
enlightenment that instantiates the norms binding us. Such a statemen
is not mysterious, and I take it that commitments to universal audienc
occupy the same semantic terrain.
This deflationary strategy is likely too quick, at least given the curren
state of commentary on Perelman's UA and its grounds. A three-way inter
pretive dispute currently stands among James Crosswhite, Alan Gross, an
Christopher Tindale regarding the construction and the metaphysics o
universal audience(s). Each poses a challenge to the epistemic theory here
To close, I will argue that although all of the interpretations are plausible as
interpretations of Perelman, all suffer from philosophical problems as theo
ries of argumentative normativity that the epistemic theory can answer.
James Crosswhite's (1989, 163) strategy is to take the universal audi
ences employed by individual arguers as construals of particular audiences,
where some local features of those audiences are merely left out of consider
ation. As such, these audiences are idealizations of actual audiences, wher
standards for success are defined negatively. It is no surprise, then, tha
Crosswhite later criticizes Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca for "fail[ing] t
clarify the senses in which universal audiences always adhere to concre
goods" (1996,150). That is, if universal audiences are constructed by negating
concrete commitments of particular audiences, it will of course be empt
when it is called on to speak to concrete commitments of individual aud
ences. Crosswhite s strategy for acceptable grounding of the UA makes the
concept too empty to be of real use. As such, Crosswhite takes it that Perel
mans UA risks being skewered on the first horn of the "obvious dilemm
he poses: "The 'universal audience' is either an empty thought?too vague
and general to be of any use in evaluating arguments?or it is not real
'universal' at all, just another particular disguising its interests as universal
truths. The problem is to develop a criterion for validity that avoids th
dilemma for being either universal but empty or concrete but particula
(1996,141). The UA must be defined with some additive element in order for

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 perelmanian universal audience

it to function, and this element must function normatively.13 Crosswhite

proposes that the UA is best understood against the goods one tries to
achieve in a particular rhetorical situation: "We argue for the purpose of
accomplishing something, making our lives better in some way.... We criti
cize our societies in order to improve them" (1996,150). The goods we try to
achieve in argument (agreement and the things provided by agreement) are
what define universality on Crosswhite's reading, and he proposes that such
a notion of audience is best conceived as a paragon audience, one that is a
"local concept of universality," or a "relative universality," when viewed from
outside (1996,151). Universal audience is most effectively understood as the
ideal of agreement on concrete values in a specific argumentative context.
Crosswhite, then, takes it that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca "are really
thinking of a paragon audience without recognizing it" (1996,151).14
The question returns as to how this notion of universal audience can
function normatively. It is a truism that everyone tries to accomplish some
thing with arguments, but we must maintain the distinction between cor
rect and incorrect means of accomplishing those goals. We reflect on the
range of conceptions of UA in use in the variety of cases and judge them
appropriate or inappropriate. And so, Perelman notes that when we employ
a conception of UA, we do so with the thought that it would survive such
scrutiny. He terms this second-order audience the undefined universal
audience, "invoked to pass judgment on what is the concept of the universal
audience" (TNR, 35). Crosswhite, here, takes it that this notion is crucial for
the normative element of argument: "It cannot be just a particular audience
which passes such judgment, or there cannot be just a particular audience
which passes such a judgment, or there would be no difference between the
particular and universal audience. Rather, the undefined universal audience
is the audience for our construction of a universal audience" (1996,152). We,
in the employment of our various, situated conceptions of UA, implicitly are
aware that they must be judged appropriate or inappropriate by another
audience and as such, acknowledge that our own conceptions of the uni
versal audience are not the universal audience. Again, Crosswhite notes a
problem arises in conceiving what defines this meta-audience, the unde
fined universal audience: "The difficulty one faces in trying to conceive of
such an audience is that it is defined as undefined_However, although the
undefined universal audience is unknown, it is never absolutely unknown.
Rather, it is a determinate unknown in the sense that the move from a
concrete audience to a universal audience sets in a particular direction and
thus begins to articulate an ideal" (1996,152). Crosswhite's solution, which

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 SCOTT F. A

is different from his solution to the first content problem, is not to take i
that this meta-audience is to be conceived as a further paragon audience
but, rather, as a native sense of correct reasoning that is made concrete as w
assess new arguments: "The preconceptual sense we have of the undefine
universal audience is determinate enough so that we know this audienc
when we encounter it; we know it when it does become determinate, whe
it does come to appearance" (1996,152). That is, Crosswhite holds that w
have a tacit familiarity with the undefined universal audience, one that i
activated as our dispositions to respond appropriately to its presentation
But the normativity question still is not answered?Why take it that thes
native dispositions are justificatory? What is the nature of this justification
beyond our natural inclination to assent? Unless we have an account as t
why these cognitive tendencies are reliable indicators of good argument
valid reasoning, or knowledge-conferring warrant, the undefined universal
audience not only will remain undefined but will be rendered impotent.
In stark contrast to Crosswhite's, Alan Gross's interpretation of the
grounding for universal audience is to grasp the other horn of Crosswhite s
dilemma for content, in that Gross's project is to rehabilitate the worrie
of particularized universal audiences. Gross notes that the main featur
of arguments addressed to the UA is their distinct content, in that the
"aim at the transformation or reinforcements in the areas of fact, truth
and presumption" (Gross and Dearin 2003, 36). The UA is still a construc
tion for Gross, as with Crosswhite, but this construction is not arrived a
by stripping and reforming existing audiences; it is, instead, "the imagined
community of all rational beings" (Gross and Dearin 2003,40). Then Gros
notes that all conceptions, as constructed from imagination, cannot achieve
their goal because they are always implicated in the values of the speaker
In the case of Lincoln's portions of his debate with Douglas, Gross argues
"As wide as this audience may have been in Lincoln's time, however, as wide
as it may be over time, nevertheless it does not represent every rationa
human being" (Gross and Dearin 2003,40). Lincoln, when addressing val
ues, addressed a particular audience. When any speaker addresses value, o
Gross's interpretation, that speaker addresses a particular audience (Gros
and Dearin 2003, 36). This interpretation seems contrary to Perelman's
expressed conception of universality in The Realm of Rhetoric: "Universa
values play an important role in argumentation because they allow us to
present specific values" (27). The point is that such presentations of univer
sal values would be for a particular audience, and though this is clear, th
presentation of a universal value is possible only insofar as the UA woul

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 perelmanian universal audience

assent to the value. That one addresses values to particular audiences can be
conceded without conceding that ones case may not also be judged against
universal standards. Gross is certainly right that addresses, speeches, and
calls for change are addressed to, as in spoken to, a particular audience, but
that does not determine the standards implicated in those accounts?the
demands of some values are that they be judged by the universal audience.
Christopher Tindale's rhetorical model of argument is expressly Perel
manian in the sense of being a reconstructed version of Perelmans UA,
and Tindale takes it that the grounding of his notion of universal audience
arises from the norms of rhetoric. "I don't propose a thorough adoption of
his [Perelmans] ideas, but a development and adaptation of them within
a rhetorical model of argumentation" (1999,16). The question that divides
Tindale and me is whether epistemic norms are required for the UA to be
defensible or whether the notion may be exclusively rhetorical. My ear
lier argument in section III that epistemic concepts are ineliminable from
audience acceptance places a serious onus on the rhetorical program, but it
seems that Tindale's model may be able to accommodate a good deal of the
argument, in that Tindale notes that audiences are not passive but active
in weighing and responding to arguments. The standards I call epistemic
presumably Tindale would say are "contextually reasonable" (1999, 92). As
such, Tindale holds that the logical models confuse the aspirations of audi
ence response and the overall goal of argument: "The aim of argumentation
is not the uncovering of Truth ... but the eliciting or strengthening of an
audience's adherence" (1999, 96). The construction of a UA is a contextual
matter?one that appeals to the present standards of reasonableness for the
audience and situation in question. Universality is refigured, on Tindale's
(1999,119) model, as fitting properly with a context?universalizable prem
ises are ones that do not raise questions in the context they are proposed.
A worry with the rhetorical-contextual account here is that it destroys
the very purpose of universal audience?that of providing a criterion for
validity. If an argument is appropriate for a context and is successful in
eliciting agreement in its audience, it is nevertheless an open question as to
whether it is valid. The fact that Tindale additionally claims that arguments
are not after "Truth" causes further difficulties, for it is not clear why audi
ences' objections bear on what seem clearly to be cases of logical support
or soundness in arguments. The result, as I take it, is that purely rhetorical
conceptions of UA run headlong into the relativism charge earlier posed
by Rob Grootendorst and Frans van Eemeren (1995, 124) for Perelmans
universal audience?if the norms of argument become indexed exclusively

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 SCOTT F. AI KIN

to situations, arguers, and audiences, then there will be no criteria for

legitimacy, only effectiveness.
Tindale anticipates the relativism objection to his view. He argues that
van Eemeren and Grootendorsts demand of noncontextual assessments
"overlook[s] the uniqueness of cases" and further that the notion of "Truth"
behind the objections "demands the cessation of argument" (1999, 96). But
it is unclear how universal standards for validity must (though some may)
ignore the details of cases. If some detail of a case makes a conclusion more
likely, more plausible, or epistemically preferable, then surely it would be
a failure of the theory if the premises were not allowed. But no universal
theory must demand that we ignore the details. Even stark non-monotonic
or inductive logics are posited on the thought that there are defeaters for
inferences and that we must be on the lookout for them. Tindale has set up
a straw man here.
The question again returns: Where is the normativity? Why does audi
ence acceptability play a legitimating role? What is it about acceptability to
the universal audience so described that makes an argument valid, one that
should move an audience? In a later essay, Tindale (2006) directly address
es this question, and he holds that the justification for holding audience
acceptability as a criterion for legitimate argument is an ethical-political
point for Perelman. When an audience is moved by commitments it takes
as acceptable, they have moved themselves freely and have invested them
selves in the argument. As a consequence, this rhetorical element of valid
ity is one that respects and promotes autonomy: "Self-persuasion, insofar
as it is being encouraged here, indicates further the non-exploitative sense
of rhetoric that governs proceedings. . . . This is a model that values the
audience and presents the arguer and audience as co-operating in a shared
community of mutual regard" (Tindale 2006,344). The commitment here is
one to, as Perelman puts it, "the rule of justice"?whether what was capable
of convincing some in a specific situation will appear convincing to others
in similar situations?and such comparisons must be ongoing (TNR, 464).
These situations and contexts are historical concretions, practices, intel
lectual cultures, and disciplines with their own standards and precedents.
Tindale then argues that the rule of justice requires that because we address
these historically situated people in their intellectual traditions, arguments
are to be judged against those traditions: "The rule of justice points to the
pattern [of argument] itself as having been drawn from cases that define
it. It is part of a community's grounded understanding of what count as
conditions of reasonableness" (2006,351). This contextualist account avoids

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 perelmanian universal audience

the "extreme relativism" worries of Grootendorst and van Eemeren because

the standards are not arbitrary. Audiences are not free to accept arguments
on whatever standards they like but, rather, must "operate in a field of rea
soning that provides established judgments and the patterns on which they
have been judged as reasonable" (Tindale 2006, 352). Given these ethical
political demands, arguments must be judged as addressed to audiences in
history, and they may be related to wider and wider audiences in similar sit
uations, but their validity depends on appropriately addressing audiences.
The point here is well taken, namely, that as arguers, we have an obli
gation to address the people to whom we give the arguments. Arguments
that fail in this regard accordingly fail as arguments. But this is not to say
that fitting an audience s standards is the criterion for correctness. That is,
the fact that arguments failing to address their audiences fail as arguments
does not imply that addressing audiences in these terms is the source of
the argument s validity. Audience acceptability is a necessary condition for
the quality of an argument, but that does not mean that acceptability is the
essence of quality. Essences are composed of necessary conditions, but not
all necessary conditions are essences. For example, we would agree that a
necessary condition for a nice stroll is not being roughed up by toughs, but
we would not agree that this is the essence of a nice walk.
The same goes here for these historical audiences, and Perelman cor
rectly qualifies the rule of justice, by noting: "The strength of an argument
depends considerably on a traditional context" (TNR, 465; emphasis added).
But the rhetorical account is one that requires that strength be entirely
assessed on these contexts of acceptance. But surely, again, the question of
quality returns. This is precisely why Perelman requires that the audiences
that may confer validity with the universal audience not be anthropological
posits but, in fact, an audience determined entirely on the basis of compe
tence (RR, 140). Surely it is intelligible that an argument may be given with
all the ethical-political desiderata of the rhetorical theory here, and it may
live up to the norms of intersubjective regard, respect for the autonomy of
others, and acknowledgment of standards within a context, and yet be a bad
argument. Being respectful of others and their commitments is a require
ment of good arguments, but the quality of the argument is not composed
of that but, rather, of whether the argument puts its audience in a genuinely
better position with regard to the issue at hand.
Again, on an epistemic account, the normativity of the arguments
arises from their transmission of knowledge, and our criterion for that
is the universal audience. Perelmans requirements of respect for the

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 SCOTT F. AI KIN

perspectives of audiences with the rule of justice is intrinsic to the notion

of transmission of epistemic justification with arguments. We can see this
clearly in section II above?audiences cannot avoid assessing arguments
in terms of how they function for them epistemically. Insofar as believers
are justified when they believe on the basis of good reasons they them
selves see as good, an argument s rhetorical element is that which elicits
assent regarding the quality of the reason. In order to know fully, believers
must be able to give an argument they endorse. In order to put listeners in
this situation, they must be addressed in terms with which they are famil
iar against a backdrop of commitments they share. Arguments that fail
in this regard fail to transmit knowledge in the requisite sense and hence
fail as arguments. But, again, fitting a subject s background commitments
is a necessary condition for a good argument, but this does not bear in
any way on the justification the argument transmits. This is why the uni
versal audience, if it is to provide such a criterion, must be considered an
epistemic notion.
The conclusion, then, is that the epistemic theory of Perelman s univer
sal audience is philosophically preferable to its competitors. The theory is, I
have argued, plausible to attribute to Perelman as one he could have accepted
(hence Perelmanian), and it avoids the numerous philosophical problems
that plague other interpretations.

Vanderbilt University
Western Kentucky University

NOTES

1.1 thank the anonymous reviewer for this challenge. See Jorgensen forthcom
a contrasting interpretation of this passage.
2. For articulations of this concern, see the following: Boger 2005,189; Crossw
1989,161; Golden 1986, 300; Grootendorst and van Eemeren 1995,123; Tindale 1991
Richard Feldman (1999,95) notes that under such conditions, the function of assen
in normative contexts, universal or otherwise.

3. A version of this point has been made by Alan Gross (2005, 18), in that
is an equivocation about how The New Rhetoric is a treatise on argumentation?th
argumentation in the sense of the evaluation of arguments or argumentation as the s
people arguing.
4. Others who have endorsed this strategy or one of folding epistemic norms bac
the pragmatic elements of universal assent are Burke (1984, 22-23), Goodwin (199

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 perelmanian universal audience

Gross (1999,206,2000,332), and one of the anonymous reviewers for this article, who sug
gested that this is right "by definition."
5. For further work on the epistemic constraints on listener acceptance, see Heysse 1998.
6. On this feature of belief assessment, see Adler 2002, 29; Aikin 2006,329.
7. See Freeman 2005,334, for an argument with regard to recognizing warrant.
8. Without detectable irony or awareness of the intellectual banana peel, Lisa Ede
positively takes on such a task in her criticism of Perelman s universal audience and con
cludes that Perelman was "unable entirely to free himself from the conventional rationalist
model of argumentation" (1981,118).
9. Similar skepticism about arguments addressed to a universal audience (or the pos
sibility of there being any commitments that could be shared by all in such an audience)
has been expressed by Ray (1978, 372), Crosswhite (1989, 165), Tindale (1991, 295), and
Goodwin (1995, 222).
10. Scult (1976,179), Gross (1999,208), and Crosswhite (1989,164) express similar con
cerns that such a definition of universal audience makes room for speakers to rationalize
their standards once they give their arguments.
11. The mathematician Paul Erd?s often used the phrase "the book" to invoke the
image of a book of God's own proofs for all mathematical and geometric truths. One does
not have to believe in God to do mathematics, Erd?s quipped, but one must believe in the
book (Devlin 2000,140-41).
12. Gross's emphasis is on the constructedness of all audiences, universal and par
ticular. As a consequence, I take him to have grasped the relativism horn of the dilemma
(see Gross 1999, 203, 2000, 332). Additionally, Ray (1978, 363) is careful to analogize the
universal audience with conceptualist metaphysics (as opposed to Platonism) in the likes
of Rousseau and Kant, but the question still dogs the conceptualist tradition as to whether
it amounts to psychologistic relativism.
13. See Crosswhite, Fox, Reed, Scaltsas, and Stumpf 2004,190, for an account of other
additive elements of universal audience, most importantly, memory, intelligence, and "due
consideration," all of which are normatively significant, I hold, because of their epistemic
roles. This discussion, however, would take us beyond the scope of this project.
14. Note, importantly, that Crosswhite's interpretation will also count more as
another species of Perelmanian universal audiences, for his reading is revisionary in the
same sense that mine (and Tindale's to come) is. Crosswhite interprets UA as really a
form of paragon audience; Tindale, as rhetorical success; and I, as an epistemically ideal
community.

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