Abstract
In discussing the broad historical context of Saussure’s peculiarly explicit formulation of an autonomous science of language, I placed considerable emphasis upon the extensive philological tradition to which this science belongs. While Saussure’s formulation of the object of linguistics as the language system is most normally, and quite accurately, examined in the more modern terms of its dependence upon the neo-Kantian conception of scientific methodology which to varying degrees pervaded all the social sciences during the second half of the nineteenth century, the wider context and the history of linguistic study deserve recollection.2 In common with the entire spectrum of medieval European humanistic scholarship, it is the rediscovery and reception of the works of the classics of Hellenic and Roman civilisation within the confines of the monastery and of the university which originally demarcated and defined the scholarly disciplines.3 If philology was the methodology of such recovery and transmission in general, and exegesis of the written monument or of the petrified written form was the characteristic mode of dissemination, then it is not hard to see that the later developments of an objective grammar or of language studied as a code are broadly consistent, if secularised, representations of earlier textual traditions.
Just as in religion, so long as there is a religion, there must be a dogmatic theology, which cannot be replaced by any religious psychology or sociology, so, as long as there is a law, there must be a normative theory of law.
H. Kelsen.1
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Notes and References
H. Kelsen, ‘The Pure Theory of Law, Its Methods and Fundamental Concepts’ (1934) 50, Law Quarterly Review, 474 (p. 490 ).
See, for example, R. M. Unger, Knowledge and Politics ( New York: Free Press, 1975 ) pp. 80–100;
R. M. Unger, Law in Modern Society (New York: Free Press, 1976) pp. 11–13;
D. Kennedy, ‘Form and Substance in Private Law Adjudication’ (1976) 89, Harvard Law Review, 1685;
D. Kairys (ed.), The Politics of Law (New York: Pantheon, 1982) chapter 2.
M. S. Moore, ‘The Semantics of Judging’ (1981) 54, Southern California Law Review, 151, 166.
Generally, J. Shklar, Legalism ( Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964 );
J. Cohen, ‘The Political Element in Kelsen’s Pure Theory’ (1978) Yale Law Journal 1;
Ch. Perelman, Logique Juridique ( Paris: Dalloz, 1976 );
H. Kelsen, General Theory of Law and State (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1945 ) pp. 409–46;
H. Kelsen, Essays in Legal and Moral Philosophy ( Dordrecht: Reidel, 1973 ).
E. Balibar, ‘Positivism and Irrational Thought’ (1978) 107, New Left Review 3.
H. Kelsen, Pure Theory of Law ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970 ) pp. 191–2.
J. Raz, The Concept of a Legal System (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980) pp. 95ff.
For commentary on this aspect of Kelsen’s work, see G. della Volpe, Rousseau and Marx (London: Merlin Press, 1978) chapter 2 and appendix.
H. Kelsen, The Communist Theory of Law ( Aalen: Reprint Press, 1976 ).
E. B. Pashukanis, Law and Marxism (London: 1978 ).
G. Cohn, Existentialism and Legal Science ( New York: Oceana Press, 1967 ).
J. Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980 ) p. 21.
Particularly, J. L. Austin, How to do Things with Words ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962 );
L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations ( Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963 ).
L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus ( London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961 ).
For a useful general commentary, G. della Volpe, Logic as a Positive Science (London: New Left Books, 1980) appendix 3.
J. L. Austin, Philosophical Papers ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961 ) p. 182.
B. Malinowski, Coral Gardens, and their Magic (London: Allen & Unwin, 1955) Compare: Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations paras 10, 11, 15.
F. Waismann, ‘Verifiability’ (1945) 19, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.
R. M. Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (London: Duckworth, 1978) chapters 2–4.
D. N. MacCormick, Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978) chapter 8.
H. L. A. Hart, ‘Problems of the Philosophy of Law’ (1967) 6, Encyclopaedia of Philosophy 264 (pp. 271ff).
On the historical context of the decision, see A. Sachs and J. H. Wilson, Sexism and the Law (London: Martin Robertson, 1978) chapter 1.
M. Pêcheux, Language, Semantics and Ideology ( London: Macmillan, 1982 ) p. 6.
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© 1987 Peter Goodrich
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Goodrich, P. (1987). The Language of Legal Faith. In: Legal Discourse. Language, Discourse, Society . Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08818-8_3
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