And Always the Twain Shall Meet

Abstract

In Return to Reason, Stephen Toulmin recently remarked that “in focusing attention on rationality, [...] academic writers have neglected to analyze the complementary concept of reasonableness” (2001, p. 2). We are charmed by the fact that in his endeavor to reconcile the ‘rational’ and the ‘reasonable’ Toulmin (2001, p. 24) refers to the Dutch, who “use the word redelijk to mark the ‘reasonable’ off from the ‘rational’ clearly” (unlike the Germans who seem to use vernünftig and verständig “almost interchangeably”). Nevertheless we do not entirely agree with the simplifying way in which Toulmin associates ‘rationality’ with logic (or dialectic) and ‘reasonableness’ with rhetoric. In expressing his complaint, Toulmin certainly touches upon an issue that is of crucial concern to the study of argumentation, but in our view the situation argumentation theorists are confronted with is more complicated. This is in fact one of the reasons why we thought it useful to publish this volume.