Metaphysics of Law

Abstract

Although in many philosophy and social theory circles there is a sense that investigating social practice is desirable, and is even what scholarly inquiry should be all about, pinning down what social practice might be is surprisingly difficult. Even the grammar is unclear: sometimes there is social practice as an uncountable noun, other times there are social practices, understood as vaguely countable. The language strains when social practices are individuated, when we talk about a set of social practices. Talking about social norms only adds further complications. Social norm terminology ranges from being used as, on the one hand, a virtual synonym for social practice, to, on the other hand, a specific type of normativity dealing with those questions of right and wrong over which a community holds authority. The idiom of social practices and social norms certainly has been fecund, as the previous chapters have shown. Here I suggest that developing a more rigorous understanding of the concepts would be even more fruitful. Advancing such an account lays the groundwork for a robust development of an immodest jurisprudence.