Raison pratique et sentiment moral : de quelques métadiscours journalistiques sur l’argumentation par la pitié

Abstract

On the basis of 78 articles borrowed from the French press, this paper examines the metadiscourses on pity, and the latter’s articulation with the notion of reason that paradoxically occupies the front of the stage, although these two notions are generally viewed as incompatible in common sense discourses. The articles display two different critical approaches to the ad misericordiam argument : denunciation of fallacious uses (pure emotional force, instrumentalization, unfairly selective pity, unjustified self-victimization) on the one side ; exploration of a new type of ethical relation merging emotion with reason, on the other side. A figure of speech : the oxymoron, plays the role of common thread thanks to its condensed, forceful and provocative virtues, both in the corpus and in this paper’s structure. The oxymoron provides a link between discourse and argumentation, but also between heart, values and mind. The denunciation of fallacious logical reasonings pertains to the epistemic frame of informal logic ; however, most of the uses of the oxymoron guide the interpretation towards another conception of practical reason defined by Perelman as the “logic of the preferable”.

Keywords

• appeal to pity
• media metadiscourses
• figures of speech and argumentative devices
• “logic of the preferable”
• oxymoron
• practical reason