L’insostenibile irregolarità dell’essere. Argomentazione e “razionalità frattale”

According to C. Tindale (2020) some theories of argumentation fail to catch persuasion because they presume to face argumentative contexts with a “linear rationality” which excludes cognitive factors like the emotional or ethical ones. Such kind of rationality cannot fit with the “irregularities” of life in the real world. Starting from Tindale‟s definition, I propose an account on “fractal” rationality as an expression of a classic view on argumentation dating back basically from Plato‟s doctrine about being and not-being, whereas the preference for “linear” rationality (which after Descartes has characterized the whole modern era) developed mainly with Neoplatonism. In the central sections of the article I provide a short overview on the philosophical-historical confrontation between these two kinds of rationality, and I finally focus on the relation between persuasion and truth in argumentative commitments.