Fernando Leal Carretero (coord.): Argumentación y Pragma-Dialéctica: Estudios en Honor a Frans van Eemeren

Excerpt

In his valediction speech, In reasonableness, given at the Lutherse Kerk on 13 May 2011, Professor Frans H. van Eemeren, revised almost 30 years of advances and expansions within the pragma-dialectical program since the publication of his and Rob Grootendorst’s seminal work Speech acts in argumentative discussions (1984). The main idea suggested by this public speech—part of the commemorative acts solemnizing his access to the category of Emeritus Professor—was the equilibrium between the deliberate ambition to construe an all-encompassing theory of argumentation that would take in account diverse aspects and levels of analysis regarding both real and ideal arguing practices, and the consciousness about the open character of the enterprise, which is and will always inevitably be a work in progress venture. The mentions and citations made during the speech, the references and the list of academic activities, publications and advised dissertations included in its printed edition (Rozenberg and Sic Sat 2011), bear witness moreover to the collective and thoroughly institutionalized nature of the project. Under the relentless direction of Frans H. van Eemeren, a highly gifted international and always interrelated group of scholars have come to constitute a real and identifiable academic school. …