Retorsion

Retorsion (from the Latin PPP retorquere retortum of the verb, to turn back ', so literally " turned back " ) refers to a philosophy of argumentation, applies the various statements of an argument against their explicit conclusions. The term is borrowed from the international law principle of retorsion, can be answered by similar action after certain actions against a State of the same or an outdated legal concept, could be directly answered by the insults.

Explanation

In a Retorsionsargument speech acts, statements or arguments of a speaker can be used to refute statements which explicitly wanted to meet the speaker. The Retorsionsargument does not serve to justify certain statements directly, but rather to refute certain statements, or at least to weaken their reasons. In the simplest case, therefore, the grounds relied an assertion is used to prove the negated assertion.

Performative retorsion

In a particular case, this reversal of the direction of impact by utilizing a contradiction between statement and content of the statement Implikaten enforcement happens. This is a special form of contradiction, a so-called performative contradiction. The Retorsionsargument is in this case of a "double communication function of language " from: Any statement not only shares a statement of facts ( a so-called propositional content ) with, but also Implikate that brings the Voice of the statement as a speech act with him. If these Implikate explicated ( brought to language ), possibly between propositional and performative content of a contradiction to be found.

A classic example of the performative retorsion concerns the global- skeptical thesis " There are no true statements." This statement can be refuted retorsiv by referring to the fact that with the utterance of this statement itself a claim is connected to truth.

The Retorsionsargument proves in the above example, not that there is truth, but that can not sensibly be denied that there is truth. This special case of Retorsionsarguments is therefore also counted among the transcendental arguments: It is based in the mentioned case on implied in law enforcement general conditions of the possibility of truly robust conclusions. In modified form, see Retorsionsargumente about the transcendental by Karl- Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas application.

Such reasoning can be found according to the structure, but also with an explicit reference to truth, already in Aristotle, and then often in the epistemological tradition. Explicitly discussed and then also referred to as such, the Retorsionsargument especially in neo-Thomism, for example, in Joseph Maréchal, Hans Jürgen Verweyen or Béla Weissmahr.