In 1940 Perelman, a lecturer at the Free University of Brussels, resigned to avoid coming to terms with the invaders. He is among the founders of the "Comité de défense des Juifs" that helps save thousands of Jews from deportation. After the war, as academic activity resumed, he became an international authority in the humanities and social sciences. In 1958, when questioned by Prime Minister Ben Gurion on the issue of Jewish identity, he spoke out against the identification of nation and religion and in favor of a secular evolution of Israel.
Forty years after his death, this essay traces and connects in an overview the salient themes of his philosophy: law, argumentation and rhetorical rationality. If the doctrine of law is an exemplary illustration of the theory of argumentation, the theory of argumentation is the lintel of a new reason embodied in the ethos and community values.
In 1966, introducing the Treatise on Argumentation, Norberto Bobbio wrote that Perelman's theory "rejects too sharp antitheses: it shows that between absolute truth and non-truths there is room for truth to undergo continual revision by the technique of adducing reasons for and against. He knows that when men cease to believe good reasons, violence begins."