Reframing the Question of Philosophical Argumentation from Heidegger

ABSTRACT

In this article, the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric is studied from Martin Heidegger’s argumentation. Indeed, at work in his thought is a particular kind of argumentative procedure that grounds the possibility of capturing the reader within a complex web of questions. To show how this is not exclusive to Heidegger, this type of argumentation is analyzed here in its formal structure, which consists of a plot capable of directing philosophical inquiry into problems otherwise foreclosed to thought. To allow oneself to be captured by this plot is to let philosophical discourse impose its own field and its own rules, so as to keep inquiry open where it seems to be closed instead. This is the task of philosophical argumentation.