The paradigms of legal thinking

420 Pages·2012·3.258 MB·English, Hungarian

by  Varga, Csaba

Paradigms jo borito 11/12/19 9:01 Page 1
The author introduces the reader to reasoning in law through the possibilities, boundaries
and traps of assuming personal responsibility and impersonal pattern adoption that have
arisen in the history of human thought and in the various legal cultures. He discloses actual
processes hidden by the veil of patterns followed in thinking, processes that we encounter
both in our conceptual-logical quests for certainties and in the undertaking of fertilising
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ambiguity. When trying to identify definitions lurking behind the human construct of facts,
n
notions, norms, logic, and thinking, or behind the practice of giving meanings, he discovers
i
tradition in our presuppositions, and our world-view and moral stance in our tacit k
agreements. Recognising the importance of the role communication plays in shaping n
society, he describes our existence and institutions as self-regulating processes. Since law i
h
is a wholly social venture, we not only take part in its oeuvre with our entire personality, but
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are also collectively responsible for its destiny.

In the final analysis, anything can be qualified as ‘legal’ or ‘non-legal’ in one or another l
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recognised sense in which law can originate, but, as a relative totality, it can only be
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qualified as ‘more legal’ or ‘less legal’ in any combination of the above senses. Being
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formed in an uninterrupted process, neither the totality nor particular pieces of law can be
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taken as complete or unchangeably identical with itself. Therefore law can only be

identified through its motions and computable states of ‘transforming into’ or ‘withdrawing f
o
from’ the distinctive domain of the law. Thereby both society at large and its legal

professionals actually contribute to—by shaping incessantly—what presents itself as s
ready-to-take, according to the law’s official ideology. For our initiation, play, role- m
undertaking and human responsibility lurk behind the law’s formal mask in the backstage.
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Or, this equals to realise that all we have become subjects from mere objects, actors from
i
mere addressees. And despite the variety of civilisational overcoats, the entire culture of d
law is still exclusively inherent in us who experience it day to day. We bear it and shape it. a
Everything conventional in it is conventionalised by us. It has no further existence or effect r
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beyond this. And with its existence inherent in us, we cannot convey the responsibility to be
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born for it on somebody else either. It is ours in its totality so much that it cannot be torn out

of our days or acts. It will thus turn into what we guard it to become. Therefore we must take e
care of it at all times since we are, in many ways, taking care of our own. h
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CSABAVARGA— <http://drcsabavarga.wordpress.com> — is Professor of the Pázmány Péter Catholic A
University, Founding Director of its Institute for Legal Philosophy (H–1428 Budapest 8, POB 6 / G
[email protected]) and Scientific Adviser at the Institute for Legal Studies of the Hungarian Academy R
A
of Sciences (H–1250 Budapest, POB 25 / [email protected]) V CCSSAABBAA VVAARRGGAA

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Old001-008 11/12/19 12:56 Page 1
CSABA VARGA
THE PARADIGMS
OF LEGAL THINKING
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PHILOSOPHIAE IURIS
Edited by
Csaba Varga
Series Editor
Professor Csaba Varga
Director of the
Institute for Legal Philosophy,
Pázmány Péter Catholic University of Hungary
H–1088 Budapest,Szentkirályi u.28 (visit)
H–1428 Budapest 8,P.O.B.6 (mail)
[phone];4297226 (fax);4297227 & 4297226 (secretary)
[email protected]/[email protected] (secretary)
http://drcsabavarga.wordpress.hu
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CSABA VARGA
THE PARADIGMS
OF LEGAL
THINKING
SZENT ISTVÁN TÁRSULAT
Budapest 2012
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The book is the translated version of the original Hungarian
A jogi gondolkodás paradigmái
(Budapest: Szent István Társulat 2004),
as the 2nd—enlarged—edition of
Lectures on the Paradigms of Legal Thinking
(Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó 1999)
© Cs. Varga 2012
ISBN 978 963 277 299 8
ISSN 1218-0610
Szent István Társulat
H–1053 Budapest, Veres Pálné utca 24.
www.szit.katolikus.hu
Responsible publisher: Dr. Huba Rózsa
Responsible manager: Olivér Farkas
Printed and bound by Prime Rate
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Preliminary considerations 9
2. Methodological directions in thinking 20
2.1.The example of legal development 20
2.1.1. Classical Greek antiquity 20
2.1.2. Roman legal development 28
2.1.2.1.The dikaion-period 28
2.1.2.2.Praetorian law 37
2.1.2.3.JUSTINIAN’s codification 43
2.1.3.Enlightened absolutism 49
2.1.4.The codificational ideal of the Code civil 54
2.1.5.Turning point in the way of thinking 60
2.2.The example of geometry 61
2.2.1.EUCLIDean geometry 62
2.2.2.Challenge by BOLYAIand LOBACHEVSKY 65
2.2.3.EINSTEIN’s revolution 70
2.3.The example of thinking 71
2.3.1. Autonomy 73
2.3.1.1.New Testament argumentation 73
2.3.1.2.CICERO’s testimony 86
2.3.1.3.SAINTAUGUSTINE 87
2.3.1.4.The Talmudic lesson 90
2.3.1.5.Orthodox Christianity 97
2.3.1.6.Modern “irrationalism” 99
2.3.1.7.Beyond conceptual strait-jackets 104
2.3.1.8.Patterns of thought,patterns of law 112
2.3.2. Heteronomy 131
2.3.2.1.SAINTTHOMASAQUINAS 131
2.3.2.2.GROTIUS 136
2.3.2.3.LEIBNIZ 138
2.3.3. The dilemma of the evolution of thought 141
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6 TABLE OF CONTENTS
3. Science-theoretical questions raised by the philosophy of history 163
4. Paradigms of thinking 175
4.1. The paradigm of paradigms 175
4.1.1. Conventionality 175
4.1.2. Cultural dependence 178
4.1.3. The nature of paradigms 182
4.2.The basic notions of “fact”, “concept”, “logic”, and “thinking” 189
4.2.1. The need for a change of paradigms 189
4.2.2. The false alternative of objectivism and subjectivism 194
4.2.3. What are facts? 197
4.2.4. What are notions? 215
4.3.The nature of norms 229
5. Dilemmas of meaning 237
5.1.Theories of meaning 237
5.1.1. Lexicality 238
5.1.2. Contextuality 252
5.1.3. Hermeneutics 265
5.1.4. Open texture 282
5.1.5. Deconstructionism 285
5.2.Social construction of meaning 294
5.2.1. Speech-acts 295
5.2.2. Social institutionalisation 298
5.3.Autopoiesis and systemic response 301
6. Paradigms of legal thinking 310
6.1.The nature of law 310
6.1.1. Law as process 317
6.1.2. Multifactorality 318
6.1.3. Law as made up from acts 325
6.2.The nature of legal thinking 327
7. Concluding thoughts 333
Appendix I. Law and its approach as a system 335
1.Tendencies of formal rationalisation in legal development 335
2.Historical development of the approach to law as a system 339
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TABLE OF CONTENTS 7
Appendix II. Is law a system of enactments? 346
1.The working models of law 346
2.The senses of contextuality in law 348
3.Jurisprudential approach and socio-ontological approach 349
4.Conclusions 351
4.4.1.Law as historical continuum 351
4.4.2.Law as open system 352
4.4.3.Law as complex phenomenon with alternative strategies 352
4.4.4.Law as an irreversible process 352
4.4.5.The genuinely societal character of law 352
Appendix III. Institutions as systems 353
1.A logic of systems 353
2.Ideal types and historically concrete manifestations 357
3.Ideal type as a normative ideology 359
4.Objectivity and contingency of systems 362
5.Limits and bonds, consequentiality and practicability of a system 365
Appendix IV. Legal technique 368
1.Legal technique 368
1.1.1.[In a broader sense] 369
1.1.2.[In legal practice] 371
1.1.3.[In legal scholarship] 372
1.1.4.[Law as a special technique] 373
2.On legal technique 374
1.2.1.Definition and function 374
1.2.2.Legal technique and legal cultures 376
1.2.3.Postulates of legal technique in the cultures of modern formal law 380
Appendix V. The inherent ambivalence of a rational approach 384
(Is the human fullness of being to be destroyed as a price of progress?)
Subject index 391
Index of normative materials 403
Index of names 404
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1. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS
The purpose of the reasoning below is to lead the reader Philosophy of science
methodologically to the understanding of the paradigms and philosophy
that have shaped our concept of law from the beginning and of language
which form the basis of our thinking in law.This presupposes
a journey to the fields of philosophy of science and philos-
ophy of language.However alien it may seem to our subject,
a certain distance is still needed in order to be able to raise
particular issues at all. Such issues are, for example:What
does language actually mean? What does it mean that we can
enter communication with others relying upon something
common in language? How can we decipher a text and how
is it expedient to do so? How can we unravel and disclose
messages inherent in a text? How do we reason in everyday
life? And how do we reason when conducting a scientific
inquiry? And, anyway, what choices has human thinking
faced throughout our known history?
This range of problems might appear to be an area remote Legal thinking /
from law, yet it proves to be of direct interest from the everyday thinking
perspective of law.For everything that has ever surfaced in
the evolution of human civilisation has appeared also in law
as well,as its own particular product.At the same time,this
realisation presumes the fact (and concomitantly gives it
particular emphasis) that the path to law,just as to any other
cultural manifestation, leads through fact, language and
logic, and that is cognition. I must venture a further state-
ment here. Namely, however shallow a truth may seem at
first and however strongly it may suggest that we are just
repeating evidences unquestioned at the level of everyday
experience: concerning the arch between historical evolu-
tion and cultural variety we are bound to realise that