PERELMAN Chaim (1912-1984)

Benoit Frydman presents an encyclopedic overview of Chaïm Perelman's major contributions to legal philosophy and the theory of justice, tracing how Perelman moved beyond the constraints of formal logic to establish argumentation as the foundation for understanding justice and judicial reasoning. Benoit Frydman emphasizes that Perelman identified six competing conceptions of justice (egalitarian, merit-based, need-based, performance-based, rank-based, and formally legal) that express irreducible values and cannot be reconciled through logic alone; instead, they must be weighed argumentatively depending on concrete circumstances. The article's central argument is that judicial decisions constitute paradigmatic acts of practical reasoning in which judges justify their choices before an "universal audience," thereby integrating principles of justice into the ongoing development of positive law and transcending the false divide between natural law and positive law.