''Universal rhetoric'' is a central concept in
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American scientist, mathematician, logician, and philosopher who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism". According to philosopher Paul Weiss (philosopher), Paul ...
's philosophy. According to Peirce, the main purpose of universal rhetoric is to consider questions of
inquiry
An inquiry (also spelled as enquiry in British English) is any process that has the aim of augmenting knowledge, resolving doubt, or solving a problem. A theory of inquiry is an account of the various types of inquiry and a treatment of the ...
in the context of
community
A community is a social unit (a group of people) with a shared socially-significant characteristic, such as place, set of norms, culture, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given g ...
,
[Liszka (1996]
p.99
/ref> and "the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception ultimately involves a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge."[Lang, P. (2002]
''The semiotics of fate, death, and the soul in Germanic culture''
p.11, quoting from ''Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce'', ''Volume 5, Pragmatism and Pragmaticism'' p.311
Peirce alternatively called it speculative rhetoric,[Houser, Nathan (2002]
PRAGMATISM AND ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY: SOME CONTINUITIES''
27 AGORA (2002), Vol. 21, n° 2; 11-32 general rhetoric, formal rhetoric, objective logic, or methodeutic.[Liszka (1996]
p.80
/ref> It constitutes the third and last branch of his general theory of signs.
See also
*Universal pragmatics
Universal pragmatics (UP), also formal pragmatics, is the philosophical study of the necessary conditions for reaching an understanding through communication. The philosopher Jürgen Habermas coined the term in his essay "What is Universal Pragmat ...
Notes
References
*Liszka, James Jakób (1996)
A general introduction to the semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce
' pp.79-80, 99
Charles Sanders Peirce
Inquiry
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