Abstract

Starting from the motherland of the sociology of political communication, and building a dialogical bridge with the heritage of political philosophy, the essay questions the concept of “antisocialityµ, focusing on its meaning in connection to public arguments. Through an in depth-analysis of the shortcomings derivable from the analysis of the argumentative and ontological fallacy of composition already undertaken by Jon Elster in Logic and Society, the author proposes an original conceptual framework that allows: 1) to distinguish clearly between anti-social and a-social arguments; 2) to settle apart different notions of the “weµ, that might be implied in political arguments; 3) to avoid a reduction of the concept of society to the sum of its parts, which is implicit in most rational choice paradigms. In this way, the path is paved to apply a certain methodological approach to the analysis of antisocial and a-social arguments, that drawing on the classical model first proposed by Stephen Toulmin, allows a systematical evaluation of the richness and quality of both factual and normative argumentation in the public sphere.