Two methodological claims in Hart's TheConceptofLaw have produced perplexity: that it is a book on 1 and that it may also be regarded as an essay in 2 Are these two ideas reconcilable? We know that mere analysis of our legal concepts cannot tell us much about their properties, that is, about the empirical aspect of law. We have learned this from philosophical criticisms of conceptual analysis; yet Hart informs us that analytic jurisprudence can be reconciled with descriptive sociology. The (...) answer to this puzzle lies in the notion of nonambitious conceptual analysis. The theorist analyzes concepts but accepts the limitations of conceptual analysis and therefore uses empirical knowledge and substantive arguments to explain, refine, or perhaps refute initial insights provided by intuitions. This is the conclusion that this paper arrives at as an argumentative strategy to defend Hart's legal theory from the criticisms of Stavropoulos and Dworkin. The latter argues that Hart's legal theory cannot explain theoretical disagreements in law because he relies on a shared criterial semantics. Stavropoulos aims to show that Hart's semantics is committed to ambitious conceptual analysis and relies on the usage of our words as a standard of correctness. Both attacks aim to show that the semantic sting stings Hart's legal theory. This essay refines both challenges and concludes that not even in the light of the most charitable interpretation of these criticisms is Hart's legal theory stung by the semantic sting. This study defends the view that Hart's methodological claims were modest and that he was aware of the limits of conceptual analysis as a philosophical method. He was, this study claims, far ahead of his time. (shrink)

_Naming and Necessity_ has had a great and increasing influence. It redirected philosophical attention to neglected questions of natural and metaphysical necessity and to the connections between these and theories of naming, and of identity. This seminal work, to which today's thriving essentialist metaphysics largely owes its impetus, is here reissued in a newly corrected form with a new preface by the author. If there is such a thing as essential reading in metaphysics, or in philosophy of language, this is (...) it. (shrink)

Professor Hilary Putnam has been one of the most influential and sharply original of recent American philosophers in a whole range of fields. His most important published work is collected here, together with several new and substantial studies, in two volumes. The first deals with the philosophy of mathematics and of science and the nature of philosophical and scientific enquiry; the second deals with the philosophy of language and mind. Volume one is now issued in a new edition, including an (...) essay on the philosophy of logic first published in 1971. (shrink)

A transcript of three lectures, given at Princeton University in 1970, which deals with (inter alia) debates concerning proper names in the philosophy of language.

This book is a systematic and constructive treatment of a number of traditional issues at the foundation of ethics, the possibility and nature of moral knowledge, the relationship between the moral point of view and a scientific or naturalistic world view, the nature of moral value and obligation, and the role of morality in a person's rational life plan. In striking contrast to many traditional authors and to other recent writers in the field, David Brink offers an integrated defense of (...) the objectivity of ethics. (shrink)

Simon Blackburn puts forward a compelling original philosophy of human motivation and morality. He maintains that we cannot get clear about ethics until we get clear about human nature. So these are the sorts of questions he addresses: Why do we behave as we do? Can we improve? Is our ethics at war with our passions, or is it an upshot of those passions? Blackburn seeks the answers in an exploration of guilt, shame, disgust, and other moral emotions; he draws (...) also on game theory and cognitive science in his account of the structures of human motivation. Many philosophers have wanted a naturalistic ethics a theory that integrates our understanding of human morality with the rest of our understanding of the world we live in. What is special about Blackburn's naturalistic ethics is that it does not debunk the ethical by reducing it to the non-ethical. At the same time he banishes the spectres of scepticism and relativism that have haunted recent moral philosophy. Ruling Passions sets ethics in the context of human nature: it offers a solution to the puzzle of how ethics can maintain its authority even though it is rooted in the very emotions and motivations that it exists to control. (shrink)

In this reprint of Law's Empire,Ronald Dworkin reflects on the nature of the law, its given authority, its application in democracy, the prominent role of interpretation in judgement, and the relations of lawmakers and lawgivers to the community on whose behalf they pronounce. For that community, Law's Empire provides a judicious and coherent introduction to the place of law in our lives.Previously Published by Harper Collins. Reprinted (1998) by Hart Publishing.

Jules Coleman, one of the world's leading philosophers of law, here presents his most mature work so far on substantive issues in legal theory and the appropriate methodology for legal theorizing. In doing so, he takes on the views of highly respected contemporaries such as Brian Leiter, Stephen Perry, and Ronald Dworkin.

To say that the law is indeterminate is to say that the class of legal reasons is indeterminate. The Class, in turn, consists of four components: 1. Legitimate sources of law ; 2. Legitimate interpretive operations that can be performed on the sources in order to generate rules of law ; 3. Legitimate interpretive operations that can be performed on the facts of record in order to generate facts of legal significance ; and 4. Legitimate rational operations that can be (...) performed on facts and rules of law to finally yield particular decisions. (shrink)

the question of objectivity in legal interpretation has emerged in recent years as an imprtant topic in contemporary jurisprudence. This book addresses the issue of how and in what sense legal interpretation can be objective. The author supports the possibility of objectivity in law and spells out the content of objectivity involved. He then provides a defence against the classical, as well as less well-known, objections to the possibility of objectivity in legal interpretation. The discussion is thoroughly grounded in metaphysics, (...) which sets the book apart from other similar discussions in jurisprudence. Stavropoulos identifies an important source of resistance to the acceptance of the possibility of objectivity in legal interpretation; a widely held but faulty semantic. He then develops an alternative semantic framework, drawing on influential theories in contemporary philosophy. The book shows that objectivism is a natural, common sensical position, and rejects the currently popular notion that objectivism requires extravagant or bizarre metaphysics. Furthermore, the discussion presents the opportunity to re-interpret major debates in jurisprudence and to show how influential theories, notably H.L.A. Hart's and Ronald Dworkin's, bear on that issue. (shrink)

Various disastrous consequences have been attributed to ethical relativism, ranging from increased crime rates to the decline of Western cultural values. While sceptical about such empirical claims, this article contends that relativism has subv ersive interpretative consequences, i.e. those pertaining to the viability of our ethical self‐understanding. The main such consequence is its subversion of the idea of ethical critique, which in turn undermines (i) the distinction between reason and power and (ii) the idea of ethical progress. In defending consequence (...) (i), a critique is offered by Ronald Dworkin's arguments to the effect that no meta‐ethical view can have subversive practical implications. In defending consequence (ii), anti‐relativism is distinguished from historicism, chauvinism and ethical monism. Doubts are then raised about various strategies for re‐investing relativism with critical power. The article concludes with the suggestion that relativism's consequences warrant a presumption against its acceptance. (shrink)

The American Legal Realists, as I read them, are tacit legal positivists: they presuppose views about the criteria of legality that have affinities with positivist accounts of law in the sense that they employ primarily pedigree tests of legal validity. Ever since Ronald Dworkin's well-known critique of H.L.A. Hart's positivism a generation ago, however, it has been hotly contested whether there is anything about positivism as a legal theory that requires that tests of legal validity be pedigree tests. So-called Soft (...) or Inclusive versions of positivism are willing to relax the restrictions on the content of a Rule of Recognition to admit non-pedigree criteria of legal validity; Hard or Exclusive versons of positivism deny that such a move is compatible with the central commitments of positivism. Hard Positivism, of which Joseph Raz has been the leading proponent, thus competes with various Soft Positivisms, defended by, among others, Coleman, Lyons, Soper, Waluchow, and now, explicitly, Hart himself in the “Postscript.” If the Realists are positivists, as I claim, then it cannot be the case that Soft Positivism is a genuinely positivistic doctrine. But there is more at stake here than just labels. Realist arguments for the indeterminacy of law—arguments central to the whole Realist enterprise—depend crucially on their tacit Hard Positivism. If, in fact, positivism has a more relaxed view of the criteria of legality than Hard Positivism supposes, then Realist arguments depend on unsound tacit premises about legal validity. What is at stake, then, is not whether Realists should be called “Positivists” or merely “Hard Positivists,” but whether their underlying view of the criteria of legality is sound. It can only be so if the best arguments favor Hard Positivism. (shrink)

This article argues that the apparent incompatibility between Social Theses about the nature of law and the Coherence (or Interpretivist) Thesis should be resolved by seeing them as representing two different conceptions of law. The Social Thesis associated with Exclusive Positivism is a powerful device for understanding the relationship between law and the citizen. But its central features, which turn on the authoritative nature of law, do not necessarily apply to the conception of law used by judges when deciding cases. (...) Failure to recognize the concurrence of the two conceptions of law can conceal some important issues of justice. (shrink)

This article contends that Dworkin's notion of ‘genuine’ theoretical disagreements, which is a fundamental pillar in his criticism of legal positivism and semantic disagreements, requires a realist reinterpretation. This view is defended according to two core arguments. First, a realist reinterpretation of ‘genuine’ theoretical disagreements enables Dworkin to avoid semantic criticisms such as the one advanced by Joseph Raz, who propounds a sophisticated model of criterial semantics to explain theoretical disagreements. Second, to make intelligible the distinction between theoretical and semantic (...) disagreements in law, we need to resort to realist elements. The conclusion is striking and in clear contradiction with Dworkin's ametaphysical and epistemic abstinence. The article shows that there is a problematic tension within Dworkin's constructivist project and that he should revise either its ametaphysical view and epistemic abstinence, or notions such as ‘genuine’ theoretical disagreements. (shrink)