1Michel Meyer does not attempt to situate his work with regard to his contemporaries. We can see this well in his theory of language. In this aspect of his thought, as well others, the author of Problematology has established several encompassing principles which aim to construct a system of strong hypotheses capable of providing explanations for a vast realm of phenomena, including how language functions. The angle of Meyer’s thinking since then is original for this very reason. The strength of his hypothesis does not arise from discussion with his peers but, on the contrary, from its theoretical rupture.

2This is also why Meyer’s thought is a philosophy, in the traditional sense of the term. As a metaphysics of questioning, it tackles a large number of philosophical questions from the perspective of what constitutes our very humanity : the capacity to question. This is also how one should understand his theory of argumentation, essentially founded on the idea that philosophy is first with respect to rhetoric : philosophy is the discipline of radical questioning. And questioning is first for us : it is the anthropological criterion of humanity. Therefore, Meyer’s philosophy offers itself as a metaphysical anthropology in which rhetoric should be understood as the universal manifestation of that which constitutes humanity, questioning.

3A student of Chaïm Perelman, for whom he always maintained esteem and friendship, Meyer nonetheless asserted his autonomy with regard to his mentor from the very start. Problematology thus arose neither for nor against the New Rhetoric, but simply elsewhere. The very concept of questioning, the keystone of problematology, is essentially non-Perelmanian. We shall see why it is by understanding this concept that one may enter into problematological thought.

Language as an expression of questioning

4According to Meyer, we speak because we have a question in mind. This fundamental observation is the starting point for the problematological theory of language. But, in order to arrive at this assertion, we should first take a critical look at the traditional theory of signification. Classically founded on the idea that the meaning of a phrase is an expression which one can substitute for it salva veritate, the problematological critique has christened this theory the ‘Xerox’ theory of signification. Meyer’s critique is essentially based on the observation that such a theory generalizes the criteria of signification of an utterance to the whole of language, to the text and the discourse of fiction : ‘If to know the meaning of a sentence is to be capable of producing another sentence, are we ready to say that the understanding of any book, let alone a literary text, means being able to rewrite it ?’ [1] Taking the text or the discourse for a sentence prevents us from perceiving its contextual and pragmatic dimension, and yet this is essential to the theory of questioning. Meyer offers a meta-Fregean response to this difficulty, by considering the theory of reference as a specific case in a general theory of signification, which is rooted, as we know, in the fundamental relationship between question and answer. And yet, it is perhaps precisely the encompassing character of such a theory that may lead our contemporaries to see it as an overly simple approach, whose very obviousness would stop us from grasping its pertinence. Meyer is perfectly conscious of this risk and uses it as the driving force behind his theory of language :

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Although nothing more fundamental can be said of language, one does not find many traces of this characterization in the literature on language, not even in opposition to it. It evokes rather a tacit agreement which does not raise further implications, as if the above characterization were too general and too imprecise to be useful, and permitted no systematization. Though recognized as true, it is nonetheless dispensed with. [2]

6Consequently, it is upon this inadequacy of existing theoretical responses that the problematological theory of language is constructed, at the heart of which meaning must be conceived of as a specific case of a more fundamental linguistic relationship between questions and answers.

Questions and answers

7As I have already pointed out, the theory of questioning is a philosophy that aims to encompass the anthropological question and the linguistic question at the same time. This is the perspective from which we can understand the distinction between the concepts problem, question, and interrogative phrase. If the first two can be substituted for each other on a conceptual level—this is what the theory postulates—the latter two cannot be substituted in linguistic usage. It follows from here that if every problem can in principle be formulated in terms of a question, every linguistically explicit reference to the concept of question does not necessarily imply the usage of an interrogative phrase. So, if one says, ‘it is a question of life and death,’ this expression clearly reflects the fact that there is a problem, but it does not, for all that, give rise to an interrogative expression. This distinction allows one to show that language is more deeply problematological than it appears on the surface of linguistic expressions.

8Such a vision of language essentially offers a means of distinguishing the order of questions from the order of answers, and does so in relative autonomy from the strict linguistic formulation of these questions. If this is confused with linguistic usage, the task of philosophy consists precisely in distinguishing them.

What distinguishes a question from an answer ?

9The problematological distinction between question and answer reveals a fundamental asymmetry between these two sides of the problematic. This asymmetry appears in the technical lexicon of the theory of questioning. Indeed, the expression of a problem is a problematological answer, while the step which responds to a question is an apocritical answer, in other words, an answer which aims to provide a solution to the problem. Through the lexicon given as such, we understand that the intervention of language in fundamental questioning tends to reverse the primacy the question has over the answer in that every question, once formulated, contains a manner of answering within itself, even when it remains problematological.

10Speaking responds to something and instead of referring to intention, Meyer simply states that there is a question, that it is a question of something. Language would thus be what reveals the deepest anthropological fact that in every question is the potentiality of an answer and a different answer to the question. Problematology can thus be understood as a philosophy of discursive action. Questioning as potential answer essentially inscribes the relationship to the other and to the world as possibilities outside of enunciation. But the asymmetry of the relationship between the problem and its response is understood more specifically through the notion of problematological difference. I have claimed that the philosophy of questioning is a philosophy of discursive action. According to this perspective, the question, under the linguistic species of the problem, potentially contains its answer, that is, its solution. But what separates the question from the problem and the answer from the solution is wholly contained in the notion of problematological difference, such that this notion covers the entire possible space of that which separates the world from language.

11Discursive action as an alternative to violence can still adopt a number of guises : reason, seduction, moral pressure, or natural authority. Clearly, all these different guises of discursive action, which offer themselves as alternatives to physical violence, occupy the territory of rhetoric. This is why problematology is also essentially a philosophy of rhetoric. As we shall see, language games that enable us to clarify answers or, on the contrary, which consist in presenting questions as answers in order to deny the problem, intervene in the core of this rhetorical space.

The rhetoric of textuality : interrogativity at the heart of affirmative language

12But beforehand, it is important to show how problematology uses questioning to explain the theory of reference from which it will build a theory of textual interpretation, a rhetoric of textuality. From the outset, Meyer sought to show how linguistic responses—always problematological—permit replies to an interrogative expansion to make prominent in a linguistic proposition one aspect or another of that which is in question. Whether we say ‘Napoleon is the one who lost the battle at Waterloo,’ ‘Waterloo was where Napoleon lost an important battle,’ or ‘It is a battle which Napoleon lost at Waterloo,’ in each instance the proposition shows, through the problematological difference, what is put in question at a given moment. [3] The reference is given by the interrogatives who, what, where, etc., but the interrogativity adds a meaning which is not just referential. It is from this articulation between the place of questions and the place of answers, moreover, that problematology provides a definition of meaning. Meaning is not the product of science, no more than it is the product of our reflections as exact copies of the real : meaning is the product of the relationship between question and answer. This idea already exists in Collingwood’s and in Gadamer’s thought, but Meyer generalizes it to language as a whole.

13From this critical perspective on notions of meaning and reference, we can approach the question of the interpretation of a text’s meaning from the framework of problematology. To this end, it is worth recalling that the theory of substitution fails to transfer its explanatory model to units greater than propositions. Well then, we might ask, what hypotheses make themselves available to the interpretation of a text ? Theories that attempt to use the author’s intentions to reconstruct the meaning of a text do not appear to satisfy Meyer because they look for meaning outside of the text, which eventually leads to an infinite regression. Indeed, at what point shall we decide that we authentically grasp the intentions of an author whose intimate thoughts we do not share ? Once again, it is clear, the solution will be problematological.

14The philosophy of questioning will assert that the meaning of a text, according to this perspective, can be reconstructed by determining what in discourse is of the order of problematological answers or the order of apocritical answers. It is important to truly grasp the originality of this position vis-à-vis other, traditional theories of interpretation. With Meyer, in a way that might appear counter-intuitive but which, we shall see, reveals itself to be perfectly coherent in the framework of the theory of questioning, the literary text appears as a primary object of reflection with regard to a non-literary text because it is the ultimate test to which all theories of interpretation and signification—usually traced from the model of referential, quotidian language—must, or should, be confronted. First of all, the literary text must be seen as a system of significations that builds itself out of literal meaning and derived meaning. From this perspective, every literary text is rhetorical in the widest sense of the term. As for everyday discourse, while it can contain argumentation, it also sometimes uses literal meaning to explain, in the most banal way, what’s what. So, the problematological conception of language incites us first to observe the most complex in order to be able, from there, to derive the simplest observations from it. For even when the response is immediate—we will then call it apocritical—it always results from the relationship between a question and an answer. Indeed, it is upon the recognition of this relationship that every interpretation of a text is founded. From there, we understand that the rhetorical relationship is also inherent in the text, whether it is literary or not.

15But then, one might reply, is everything rhetorical argumentative ? For example, is the literary argumentative in the same way as the judicial plea ? To respond to this, one must split up that which appears as argument within the rhetorical process—one might therefore say, as a problematological response—from that which appears as a solution or a conclusion, that is, an apocritical response.

Rhetoric and problematology

16At this stage, we can introduce problematology’s overall treatment of rhetoric :

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rhetoric is the meeting of people and language in the exposure of their differences and their identities. We affirm ourselves to find ourselves, to repel one another, or simply to find a moment of communion. Or, on the contrary, to evoke the impossibility thereof and to confirm the existence of the wall separating us. The rhetorical relationship inevitably confirms a contingent and circumstantial social, psychological or intellectual distance, but which is structural in terms of what it manifests through its arguments or simply through seduction. Hence our definition : rhetoric is the negotiation of the distance between subjects. [4]

18Here, Meyer is referring directly to Aristotle, who had long ago underscored the fact that we only deliberate on subjects that present a question or a problem.

19Where Meyer breaks with tradition is when he specifies that the ‘distance negotiated between individuals’ is always determined according to the distance in regard to the question. Aristotle considered arguments that resolve problems to be insufficiently rational on their own to cause adhesion and diminish the distance between individuals. This is not the case with Meyer, who sees nothing rational inherent in the process itself. But, naturally, persuasion will be even more effective when it erases the problematic contours of the question in order to offer an answer the audience perceives as necessary. This is the source of the ambiguity, or rather the confusion, with regard to logos that is already present in Aristotle. Indeed, if logos is the site of the problematic, it is nonetheless used to eradicate all problematicity in view of persuasion. So, it serves simultaneously, and paradoxically, to express problems and to veil them.

20In order to overcome this difficulty, Meyer stresses the fact that while the Aristotelian triad of ethos, pathos and logos is essential, authors generally cut it into sections. However, bringing the rhetorical exchange to bear upon only one of these three instances does not allow us to understand the complexity of a situation in which an individual seeks to justify a position (through logos), while continuously adjusting the right distance between ethos and pathos, where he must simultaneously please the audience and construct a representation of himself, ultimately through a masquerade intended to please the audience. As a consequence thereof, Meyer puts manipulation in the category of ethos.

21Whatever the case, and whatever rhetorical situation is at stake, one must always consider the interaction between the three rhetorical instances : logos, ethos and pathos, rather than construct hypotheses which explain one of the aspects by subordinating the two others. Such hypotheses could only provide a truncated model of rhetorical reality without ever resolving the confusion revealed in a logos which expresses the problematic while at the same time evading it.

22Likewise, Meyer notes that the Aristotelian division between rhetorical genres corresponds to a historical reality that is, in part, transferable to today. But this division will be more readily understood if we define it using the criterion of the respective degree of problematicity contained in each of the genres. Let us recall that Aristotle divided rhetoric according to the three activities undertaken by the orator and the audience, giving rise to the famous division into genres: the deliberative, charged with articulating political debates in view of making decisions; the judicial, charged with pronouncing judgments in the framework of a trial; and finally, the epideictic, which expresses praise and reprimands. Such discourses are built around great figures incarnating the virtues and vices that together define the values of a community. In this tri-partition of genres, problematology orders the discourses according to their degree of problematicity. The deliberative genre contains the highest degree of problematicity because debates bear upon questions for which there are no criteria of resolution. The judicial genre involves a lesser degree of problematicity in that it bears upon ‘uncertain’ questions, but for which the law offers a code of resolution. Lastly, the epideictic genre deals with a weak degree of problematicity insofar as the problem is to not raise the problem (for example, in the eulogy). [5]

23In this perspective, what remains of the division of rhetorical ‘genres’ once again illustrates the powerful rigorousness of the theory of questioning. Indeed, it resolves—and always thanks to the strength of a singular principle—the confusion, the aporia even, of the rhetorical logos which presents itself simultaneously as problematizing and deproblematizing. In sum, the philosophy of questioning tells us that everything depends on the way in which problems are presented to the other through logos.

Problematology and the mechanisms of thought

24Once rhetoric is integrated into the problematological system of thought, we can envisage things from the higher perspective of the mechanisms of thought, for rhetoric is just the uncertain and shifting expression of these deeper mechanisms which problematology also endeavors to explain. Take an event that nobody would dream of disputing : the one we label the ‘French Revolution’. For Meyer, such an event is at once outside of questioning and in question. This difficulty is resolved, in part, by proposing to determine what in an utterance plays the role of the subject or the predicate :

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If we consider the French Revolution because it poses a problem, we can say that this problem can be equally expressed by “x is A” or by “A is x”: “The French Revolution is the taking of power by the bourgeoisie, the meeting of the States General, the storming of the Bastille,” or we can also say, “the taking of power by the bourgeoisie, the reunion of the States General, the storming of the Bastille are (what we call) the French Revolution.” The predicates refer to the subject, but we choose them as a function of it. Questioning represents this movement of reciprocal determination which ends up establishing the surety of a singular answer. The dual reading “x is A” versus “A is x” encompass the same phenomenon : A is the French Revolution, and even though it is out of the question because of a certain aspect which renders it singular (the symbol A), it poses a problem and we want to know what is x; or we consider this Revolution as being in question, so the x encompasses the term-subject, and the attributes A(B, C, or D) are its already known determinations that individualize what is out of the question in this x which is the French Revolution (a predicate, therefore A). [6]

26This lengthy citation will allow the reader to evaluate, once again, the concern for logical consistency in the theory of questioning. With regard to the example above, this panoramic vision of the notion of ‘French Revolution’ shows us that what is ‘in question’ or ‘out of the question/not in question’ will condition the place of the subject or the predicate in the utterance, the origin of which is the need to mark the problematological difference. In this way, questions and solutions appear in their entire linguistic reality, but also in their entire ontological unreality. In a way, we decide to use language in order to determine what will be in and out of the question, and from there, what will play the role of the subject or the predicate. Here is where we see, yet again, that the theory of questioning is a theory of discursive action.

27It is also through this relationship between the subject and the predicate that we can determine that metaphorical utterances present the same structure as literal utterances. Whether we say ‘Napoleon is the victor at Austerlitz,’ ‘Richard is a lion,’ or ‘Hugo est une grande plume,’ [7] we find the subject-predicate structure in all cases. But in one case, we are dealing with an utterance in which the relationship between the question and the answer is presented as metaphorical, in another we are dealing with an utterance that presents this relationship as real. And it is from this logico-linguistic level that we are able to transfer the model of problematology to the properly rhetorical level :

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Between the scientific quest, which verifies the validity of the chosen predicate, and the trope, which annuls any quest by guaranteeing without responding, there is the argumentative response that tackles the problem by offering an answer which takes care to eliminate its possible negations. Their exclusion is, moreover, implied by any assertion that tries to impose itself as truth. It is upon this third possibility for treating questioning that we settle, for it incarnates on its own the very essence of rhetorical reasoning, of dialectical argumentation as Aristotle had imagined it, even if in an especially propositional way. [8]

29So, the problematological treatment of the distance between argumentation and rhetoric where the question is put forth boils down, in abstracto, to the two problematological ways of expressing problematic responses and apodictic responses.

Rhetoric according to problematology

30This leads us to consider the most recent step in Meyer’s reflection on rhetoric, in which one finds a systematization that extends to formalization adapted to the question of rhetoric, to the difference between two problematological modes, such as they have been worked out over twenty years.

31The first step of this systematization consists in a careful examination of the rhetorical links between ethos, pathos and logos. Faithful to the principle that grants equal importance to each of the three rhetorical proofs, Meyer seeks to systematize his rhetoric in the interaction between the three proofs. Let’s see how he proceeds. He states that there is the effective ethos, that is, the one that speaks, and the projective ethos, or the image that the audience makes of the speaker. [9] The orator can choose what distance she establishes between the two. She has three possible solutions :

1. There can be correspondence between the projective ethos and the effective ethos. This means that the orator seeks to gain his audience’s approval. This is known as the deliberative genre.
2. There can be a rupture between the two ethoses. In this case conflict emerges which, Meyer stresses, must be resolved by an exterior person : the judge. This is the origin of the judicial genre.
3. Finally, there can be a lapse between the projective and the effective ethos. But this lapse should nonetheless be desired and positive. This consent perceived and lived by the audience typically stems from the epideictic genre.

32We can extend this systematization to the other two proofs of rhetoric in order to obtain the following table:

Projective Ethos Effective Ethos Ethos Identity and intention Question Logos Sincerity of discourse Production of the answer Pathos Defense of values Difference Effective Pathos Projective Pathos Ethos Difference of points of view Understanding of what is in question Logos Answer to his questions Appropriateness of the answer to the question Pathos Moving emotions and beliefs Persuasion: is it the ‘right’ answer?

33According to Meyer, one must grasp the coherence of this table through the fact that the orator splits into two while projecting an audience which is like his complement. The audience acts similarly toward the orator. Therefore, we never know if the projective of one corresponds with the effective of the other, even though this sometimes seems to be the case.

34Once this framework is in place, we pass from systematization to formalization which enables the definitive explanation of the relationship between rhetoric and argumentation according to a fundamental law of unification of the two fields. In order to grasp this law, one must recall that certain utterances can be either answers or questions. For example, an utterance like ‘It is one o’clock’ can simply intend to say what time it is (in this case, it acts as an answer), but it can also be a figurative way of really saying, ‘Let’s have lunch.’ [10] This derived meaning only appears if the utterance does not obviously serve as an answer to someone who has asked the time. Another question is also at stake, the answer to which is represented by the implicit utterance ‘Let’s have lunch.’

35The fundamental law of rhetoric can thus be deduced from a system of potentially implicit questions and answers :

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Q 1 : What time is it ? A1 : It is one o’clock.
Q 2 : Is it time to eat ? A2 : It is time to eat.
From here, we obtain the fundamental law :
A1 ? Q1. Q2
Therefore A2 [11]

37This formula poses an equivalence between rhetoric and argumentation, which differ only in their manner of treating the problematic : either in a literal way, or a metaphorical way. Finally, from this fundamental law Meyer demonstrates how we can derive the entire question of tropes [12] and the uses of rhetoric in the human sciences.

38So, if Michel Meyer’s work commences from a reflection upon questioning as the primary relationship to oneself, to the world, and to others, it opens out into a rhetoric conceived as a working out of the relationship between the self and the other. Constructed as such, the system produces a total coherence in which the play of identities is treated as a unifying principle. From problematological philosophy to his rhetorical treatment of the negotiation of distances between individuals, Meyer’s thinking, which he has developed over a period of twenty years, rests on an explanatory principle of the treatment of what he claims is proper to humanity : the problematic.

39Translated by Vivian Rehberg