The Promise Reason: Alan G. Gross and Michael Leff

The UO held an international conference on The Promise of Reason to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the influential book The New Rhetoric by Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. In this plenary session held on May 20, 2008, Alan G. Gross (University of Minnesota) extends a concept from The New Rhetoric to visual argumentation in his talk entitled, “Solving the Mystery of Presence: Verbal/Visual Interaction in Darwin’s Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs.” Michael C. Leff (University of Memphis) then speaks on “The Peopling of Argumentation: Ad Hominem, Ethos,” and Perelman’s Relations of Coexistence.” They are introduced by Lawrence D. Green (University of Southern California).