Abstract

In his essay, “The Rational and the Reasonable” written in 1977, Chaïm Perelman distinguished between the two constructs, identifying the Rational as the dimension of law that preserves the logic and conformity of the system and the Reasonable as what is viewed as equitable and acceptable according to public opinion. This essay applies Perelman's theory to the 2008–2009 AIG bonus controversy to illustrate the self-correcting function of the dialectic between the rational and the reasonable and to reveal dimensions of Perelman's framework that have yet to be considered in the research literature.