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What the Philosopher May Learn from the Study of Law

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Part of the book series: Synthese Library ((SYLI,volume 142))

Abstract

At the entrance of the Academy, Plato had placed the inscription ‘No one may enter unless he be trained in geometry’; in the same fashion, Descartes and Spinoza proposed the geometrical method to philosophers as a model of rationality. Leibniz dreamt of being able to terminate philosophical disputes by having recourse to counting — calculemus— and hoped to put an end to differences of opinion among philosophers by means of those procedures which bring mathematicians to agreement. Other thinkers with empirical tendencies, from Hume to Piaget, have proposed that philosophers follow the methods of the experimental sciences.

First published in Natural Law Forum, 1966, pp. 1–12.

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Notes

  1. P. Foriers, ‘Les Utopies et le Droit,’ in Les Utopies à la Renaissance, Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles, Brussels, 1963, pp. 233–67.

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  2. P. Foriers, ‘Les Utopies et le Droit,’ in Les Utopies à la Renaissance, Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles, Brussels, 1963, pp. 234–35.

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  3. P. Foriers, ‘Les Utopies et le Droit,’ in Les Utopies à la Renaissance, Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles, Brussels, 1963, p. 239.

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  4. Eméric Crucé, ‘Le Nouveau Cynée ou Discours d’Etat représentant les occasions et moyens d’establir une paix générale, et la liberté du commerce par tout le monde,’ 167 (1623), cited by Foriers, in Les Utopies à la Renaissance, Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles, Brussels, 1963p. 240.

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  5. Blaise Pascal, Pemées, in L’Oeuvre, Bibliotheque de la Plémde, Paris, 1950, no. 230.

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  6. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Routledge, London, 1894, p. 389.

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  7. The Babylonian Talmud, Seder Moed 2, Erubin 13B, edited in the English translation by I. Epstein, The Soncino Press, London, 1935–1948; cf. my article ‘Désaccord et rationalité des décisions,’ Archivio di Filosofia, 1966, pp. 87–93. English trans, in The New Rhetoric and the Humanities, Reidel, Dordrecht, 1979, Chapter 10.

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  8. Cf. Ch. Perelman, Justice et Raison, Presses Universitäres de Bruxelles, Brussels, 1963, pp. 246–37.

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  9. See, for details, E. Cammaerts, Albert of Belgium, Defender of Right, Nicholson and Watson, London, 1935, pp. 312–25, 332–35, 364.

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  10. Cf. Ch. Perelman, ‘The Rule of Justice,’ The Idea of Justice and the Problem of Argument, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1963, pp. 79–87.

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  11. Perelman, Justice et Raison, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1963, pp. 249–50.

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  12. Cf. Perelman, ‘Désaccord et rationalité des décisions,’ Justice et Raison, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1963, pp. 88 and 92 in The New Rhetoric and the Humanities, pp. 111 and 115.

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  13. Cf. in the present vol. Chapter 6, pp. 70–71.

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  14. For the idea of universal audience (l’auditoire universel), cf. Ch. Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, sections 6–9.

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  15. Perelman, Justice et Raison, op. cit., p. 102.

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© 1980 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland

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Perelman, C., Berman, H.J. (1980). What the Philosopher May Learn from the Study of Law. In: Justice, Law, and Argument. Synthese Library, vol 142. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9010-4_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9010-4_17

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-277-1090-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-009-9010-4

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