Platonic Myths and Straussian Lies: The Logic of Persuasion

2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-115
Author(s):  
Kenneth Royce Moore
Keyword(s):  
Leo Strauss ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Crucial Issue ◽  
Central Interest ◽  
Heideggerian Phenomenology ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Many ◽  
Noble Lie

This article undertakes to examine the reception of Platonic theories of falsification in the contemporary philosophy of Leo Strauss and his adherents. The aim of the article is to consider the Straussian response to, and interaction with, Platonic ideas concerning deception and persuasion with an emphasis on the arguments found in the Laws. The theme of central interest in this analysis is Plato’s development of paramyth in the Laws. Paramyth entails the use of rhetorical language in order to persuade the many that it is to their advantage to obey certain laws. It does so without explaining in detail why a given law is ethically correct and its use assumes that the audience, on the whole, is not capable of understanding the finer philosophical underpinnings of the law. The so-called ‘noble lie’ of the Republic is also considered in this context. The crucial issue, for Plato if not for Strauss, is whether or not an instance of falsification, however minor, for the purposes of persuasion contains ‘truth-value’, that is, whether it is morally justifiable in terms of ends and means. In terms of Strauss’s reception of Plato, such issues as ancient Hebrew mysticism, Medieval Jewish and Islamic scholarship and Heideggerian Phenomenology figure in the argument. Ultimately, the article finds that Strauss and his followers have constructed a particular view of Platonic ideas that, while unique, is not compatible with their original signification.

The Constitutional Principle of Accountability: A Study of Contemporary South African Case Law

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chuks Okpaluba
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Public Procurement ◽  
Case Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Constitutional Principle ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Law ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
The Many

‘Accountability’ is one of the democratic values entrenched in the Constitution of South Africa, 1996. It is a value recognised throughout the Constitution and imposed upon the law-making organs of state, the Executive, the Judiciary and all public functionaries. This constitutional imperative is given pride of place among the other founding values: equality before the law, the rule of law and the supremacy of the Constitution. This study therefore sets out to investigate how the courts have grappled with the interpretation and application of the principle of accountability, the starting point being the relationship between accountability and judicial review. Therefore, in the exercise of its judicial review power, a court may enquire whether the failure of a public functionary to comply with a constitutional duty of accountability renders the decision made illegal, irrational or unreasonable. One of the many facets of the principle of accountability upon which this article dwells is to ascertain how the courts have deployed that expression in making the state and its agencies liable for the delictual wrongs committed against an individual in vindication of a breach of the individual’s constitutional right in the course of performing a public duty. Here, accountability and breach of public duty; the liability of the state for detaining illegal immigrants contrary to the prescripts of the law; the vicarious liability of the state for the criminal acts of the police and other law-enforcement officers (as in police rape cases and misuse of official firearms by police officers), and the liability of the state for delictual conduct in the context of public procurement are discussed. Having carefully analysed the available case law, this article concludes that no public functionary can brush aside the duty of accountability wherever it is imposed without being in breach of a vital constitutional mandate. Further, it is the constitutional duty of the courts, when called upon, to declare such act or conduct an infringement of the Constitution.

Appropriating Law in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Dred

2007 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 380-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura H. Korobkin
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Slave System ◽  
Personal Beliefs ◽  
Great Dismal Swamp ◽  
Dismal Swamp ◽  
The World ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Individual

This essay investigates Harriet Beecher Stowe's interpolation of State v. Mann, a harsh 1829 North Carolina proslavery decision, into her 1856 novel Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp. The essay argues that Stowe's use of State v. Mann continues a conversation about slavery that had been carried on through its text for many years in abolitionist writings. Bringing State v. Mann's circulation history into view shows Stowe engaging the antislavery establishment as well as the legal system, borrowing and imitating its techniques for handling proslavery materials. If her novel is infiltrated and structured by the many legal writings that it assimilates, its fictive world in turn infiltrates, interprets, and alters the significance of the writings she employs, so that proslavery legal writings are made to testify strongly against the slave system that they originally worked to maintain and enforce. Stowe's hybrid text dominates the law while smoothly assimilating it into an interpretive fictive context. Simultaneously, Stowe's typographical cues remind readers of State v. Mann's ongoing, destructive extratextual legal existence. By linking fictive context to legal content, Stowe's novel suggests that slave law must be read and interpreted as a unit that includes the individual suffering it imposes. Misreading State v. Mann as revealing its author's belief in the immorality of slavery, Stowe constructs a fictional judge who upholds slave law despite his personal beliefs. By absorbing, imitating, and besting the strategies and the reach of both legal and abolitionist writings, Dred implicitly stakes a claim for the superior power of political fiction to act in the world.

scholarly journals On what a theory of natural law is supposed to be

2020 ◽  
pp. 167-200
Author(s):  
Michael Pakaluk
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Natural Teleology ◽  
Law And Morality ◽  
The Law ◽  
John Finnis ◽  
The Many ◽  
Locus Classicus

A theory may properly be called a theory of natural law, if either it functions as such a theory is expected to function; or it has the expected content; or it is a plausible interpretation of a theory generally acknowledged to be in the tradition of natural law. It functions as such a theory if it supports appeals to natural law intended to ‘contextualize’ human law. It has the expected content, if it adverts to providential, natural teleology as the basis for a law given to us prior to convention. It would clearly be located in the tradition, and rightly accounted as such a theory, if it were a plausible interpretation of Aquinas’ Treatise on Law, which is the locus classicus for the philosophical treatment of natural law. But the ‘New Natural Law,’ first expounded in Natural Law and Natural Rights (NLNR) of John Finnis, meets none of these criteria. NLNR seems best construed, then, as a contribution to the «law and morality » debate, not a theory of natural law. It gives merely another ‘method of ethics’ along with the many others put forward in the 20th c. If so, the philosophical work needed for a persuasive, contemporary revival of natural law still remains to be done.

scholarly journals The Iron Law

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
William Sims Bainbridge
Keyword(s):  
Social Disorganization ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Star Wars ◽  
The Law ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Old Republic ◽  
The Many

Star Wars: The Old Republic and Fallen Earth are two of the many recent online gameworlds that depict disintegrating and conflict-ridden societies, in which the very legitimacy of the law is in doubt. Thus they become vehicles for critique of real modern society, and intentionally or unintentionally reflect social-scientific theories of social disorganization, institutional functionality, and the origins of law. This essay examines these examples in terms of the Iron Law of Oligarchy proposed a century ago by Robert Michels, and related classical theories that either contradict or extend it.

D. 41,2,3,21: Titulierte Besitzarten, Erwerbsgründeund das unum genus possidendi

2013 ◽  
Vol 81 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 527-559
Author(s):  
Eric H. Pool
Keyword(s):  
Roman Law ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Many

D. 41,2,3,21 turns on the issue of how possessio is to be divided. Understanding its content presupposes making a distinction that was self-evident for the Roman jurist but has never been made by later scholars of Roman law. They do not distinguish the varying ‘causes’ of possession (pro emptore … pro suo) which mark different types of lawful possession, and the ‘causes’ of acquisition (causae adquirendi) which justify obtaining possesion as by an owner. Taking a legally valid sale as an example the distinctive features of (possessio) pro emptore in contrast to emptio are established as well as their relevance for procedural practice. In particular there are no less than six forms of action in the law of inheritance for which these features are relevant. Next, the many negative effects of failing to make this distinction are indicated. There follows an in depth analysis and interpretation of the main phrases in Paul’s text: (i) quod nostrum non est; (ii) causae ad­­quirendi, in particular iustae causae traditionis; (iii) unum genus possidendi; (iv) species infinitae.

The Origins of the Re Hastings-Bass Rule

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Ashdown
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Present State ◽  
Practical Importance ◽  
Future Application ◽  
Precise Nature ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Many ◽  
Court Of Appeal

The present state of the law must now be treated as authoritatively set out by Lord Walker in Pitt v Holt, and to a lesser but still important extent by the earlier judgment of Lloyd LJ in the Court of Appeal in the same case. This chapter, however, is concerned with the earlier development of the Re Hastings-Bass doctrine. Its purpose is to establish the doctrinal legitimacy of the rule in Re Hastings-Bass as an aspect of the English law of trusts. Whilst this is primarily of academic and theoretical concern, in view of the Supreme Court’s reformulation of the law into its present shape, it is also of practical importance. In particular, the future application of the doctrine to novel situations will depend upon understanding the precise nature and scope of the rule propounded by the Supreme Court. That decision cannot simply be divorced from the many decided cases which preceded it, and from its place in the wider compass of the law of trusts.

Some Contributions from and Influence of the Italian Doctrine of International Law

2020 ◽  
pp. 433-467
Author(s):  
Giovanni Distefano ◽  
Robert Kolb
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
State Responsibility ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Public International Law ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
Italian School ◽  
German School ◽  
Legal Thinking ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Many

This chapter deals with the contribution of Italian scholarship to public international law. Its approach is two-fold. First, adopting an “external” perspective, the contribution of Italian scholars to the highly esteemed series of Hague Courses of the famous eponymous Academy may shed some light on what the Italian conception brought to international legal scholarship but also on how Italian scholars were perceived by their foreign brethren, and in what context they were quoted. Second, selecting a specific issue, the chapter focuses on the influence of Italian legal thinking on the shaping of doctrines of State responsibility. Among all the many areas of international law, this is one where the Italian school is constantly viewed as pioneering (together with the German school). For example, the writings of Anzilotti or Cavaglieri are often quoted as astonishingly modern exposés of that branch of the law, providing thus a test-case to verify the contribution and influence of the Italian doctrine of international law.

10. Industrial action

2019 ◽  
pp. 704-794
Author(s):  
Ian Smith ◽  
Aaron Baker ◽  
Owen Warnock
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Common Law ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Industrial Action ◽  
Unfair Dismissal ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Many ◽  
Contractual Rights ◽  
The Impact

This chapter considers the law relating to strikes and other industrial action including the important changes made by the Trade Union Act 2016. It deals with the historical development of common law and statute in this field to illuminate the current law. The relevance of the European Convention on Human Rights is considered. The tortious and criminal liabilities flowing from industrial action are considered and the crucial immunity for tortious liability provided by the ‘golden formula’ including the exceptions to this immunity and the preconditions of complying with rules on balloting and notice of industrial action. Picketing is considered in relation to the many legal liabilities and the statutory immunity for some peaceful picketing. The granting of injunctions to stop industrial action is examined. The impact of industrial action on individual employees is considered in relation to their contractual rights and liabilities and the law of unfair dismissal.

14. Specific and agreed remedies

Contract Law ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mindy Chen-Wishart
Keyword(s):  
Specific Performance ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Many

While courts are very willing to award orders compelling the defendant to pay the agreed price, orders compelling non-monetary performance (for specific performance or injunctions) are rarely given because of the many ‘bars’ to such awards. The law also controls the parties’ agreed remedies. This chapter addresses the following questions: (1) To what extent does (and should) the law grant specific enforcement of contract? (2) How can parties control the consequences of breach and prevent under-compensation? (3) To what extent does (and should) the law permit the parties to agree on the remedies for breach? (4) What considerations influence the answers to questions 1–3?

Contextualism and the Many Senses of Knowledge

2005 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
René van Woudenberg
Keyword(s):  
The Core ◽  
Knowledge Ascriptions ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
The Many ◽  
Peter Unger

Contextualists explain certain intuitions regarding knowledge ascriptions by means of the thesis that 'knowledge' behaves like an indexical. This explanation denies what Peter Unger has called invariantism, i.e., the idea that knowledge ascriptions have truth value independent of the context in which they are issued. This paper aims to provide an invariantist explanation of the contextualist's intuitions, the core of which is that 'knowledge' has many different senses.

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