The Routledge Handbook of Argumentation Theory

The Routledge Handbook of Argumentation Theory offers 43 chapters--written specifically for this volume by a team of leading, international scholars--that survey a wide spectrum of research on the nature, purpose, and promise of argument and the associated practice of argumentation.

Scott Aikin is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. He specializes in epistemology, argumentation theory, and ancient philosophy. He is the author of Epistemology and the Regress Problem (2011) and Straw Man Arguments, with John Casey (2022). John Casey is Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, IL. He specializes in the history of medieval philosophy and argumentation theory. He is the author of Straw Man Arguments (in 2022 with Scott Aikin), among other articles on argumentative adversariality, autonomy, informal fallacies, and meta-argument. Katharina Stevens is Associate Professor of Philosophy and an Argumentation Theorist working at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. She is a co-editor of the journal Informal Logic and a co-director of the University of Lethbridge's Critical Thinking and Citizen Engagement Lab. She publishes on Argumentation Theory, especially the Ethics of Argumentation and Precedent. She is also the author of The Ethics of Argumentation (2026).

Introduction Part I: Organizing Approaches in Argumentation Theory 1. Landmarks in the History of Argumentation Theory 2. The Concept of Argumentation 3. The Deductivist Approach to Argument Evaluation 4. The Rhetorical Perspective on Argumentation 5. The Epistemic/Epistemological Theory of Argument 6. The Pragma-Dialectical Approach to Argumentation 7. Normative Pragmatic Approaches to Argumentation 8. Psychology and Argument 9. The Informal Logic Approach to Argumentation 10. Contemporary Dialectical Theories of Argumentation 11. The Virtue Approach to Argument 12. Argumentation Design 13. Modes, Coalescence and Argument 14. The Linguistic Normative Model of Argumentation (LNMA) 15. Intercultural Argumentation 16. The Language and Argumentation Interface 17. Experimental Approaches to Argumentation Part II: Developing Debates in Argumentation Theory 18. Argumentation Schemes 19. Charity and Argument Reconstruction 20. Critical Thinking, Argumentation, and Critical Thinking Education 21. The Ethics of Argumentation 22. About Fallacies 23. The Problem of Adversarial Argument 24. Argumentation and Deep Disagreements 25. Feminism and Argumentation 26. Arguing with Pictures 27. Ongoing Inquiry into Analogical Arguments 28. Argument and Narrative 29. Legal Argumentation 30. Emotions and Argumentation 31. Political Argumentation 32. Political Disagreement, Epistemic Autonomy, and Epistemic Interdependence 33. Nommo and the Essence of African American Argumentation 34. Is argumentation knowledge-conducive? 35. Media argumentation and argumentation in the media 36. Meta-argumentation 37. A Pun, a Joke, and a Riddle Walk into an Argument 38. Multimodal Argumentation 39. What is the Burden of Proof, and Who Bears It? 40. Unlocking Unfounded Criticisms of the Ny-ya Account of the Form of a Good Argument 41. Mun--ara and Islamic Traditions of Argument 42. Argumentation and its theorizing in ancient China 43. Argumentation & Natural Language Processing