Charles Arthur Willard

Charles Arthur Willard (born 1945) is an American argumentation and rhetorical theorist.

He received his doctorate at the University of Illinois, Urbana, USA, in 1972. From 1974 to 1982 he was the Director of Forensics at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire (USA). He has lectured in Austria, Canada, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. He is Professor and University Scholar at the University of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky, USA.

His published works include Argumentation and the Social Grounds of Knowledge (1982) and A Theory of Argumentation (1988). He has published monographs in and served on editorial boards for Communication Monographs, Informal Logic, Journal of the American Forensics Association, Argumentation, Social Epistemology and the Quarterly Journal of Speech. He has published more than 50 articles and book chapters on topics in rhetoric and argumentation. He was a co-director of the International Association for the Study of Argumentation based at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He has received distinguished scholarship awards from the National Communication Association, the American Forensics Association, and the Universities of Illinois and Louisville.

His Liberalism and the Problem of Knowledge: A New Rhetoric for Modern Democracy (1996) debunks the discourse of liberalism, arguing that its exaggerated ideals of authenticity, unity, and community have deflected attention from the pervasive incompetence of the rule by experts. He proposes a ground of communication that emphasizes common interests rather than narrow disputes.

Read more about Charles Arthur Willard:  Selected Works

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