Metaphor, Objects, and Commodities

This article is a contribution to a symposium that focuses on the ideas of Margaret Jane Radin as a point of departure, and particularly on her analyses of propertization and commodification. While Radin focuses on the harms associated with commodification of the person, relying on Hegel's idea of alienation, we argue that objectification, and in particular objectification of various features of the digital environment, may have important system benefits. We present an extended critique of Radin's analysis, basing the critique in part on Gadamer's argument that meaning and application are interrelated and that meaning changes with application. Central to this interplay is the speculative form of analysis that seeks to fix meaning, contrasted with metaphorical thought that seeks to undermine some fixed meanings and create new meanings through interpretation. The result is that speculative and metaphorical forms are conjoined in an interactive process through which new adaptations emerge. Taking this critique an additional step, we use examples from contemporary intellectual property law discourse to demonstrate how an interactive approach, grounded in metaphor, can yield important insights

Ricoeur's Philosophy of Imagination

non

Critical Hermeneutics: The Intertwining of Explanation and Understanding as Exemplified in Legal Analysis

Understanding and explanation are often viewed as oppositional: understanding is considered a search for the meaning a text provides, while explanation employs a critical, analytic method that maintains a distance from the text it interrogates. This Article demonstrates that in legal interpretation, understanding and explanation are not opposed but inextricably interconnected. Drawing first on the work of Robert Bork and Justice Antonin Scalia, this Article shows how elements of critique are present even within forms of legal interpretation that seek to maintain fidelity to the understanding of authorial meaning. Second, it illuminates the converse, that theories drawn to methods of explanation—such as Judge Richard Posner\u27s invocation of the social sciences—must contextualize this evidence within larger, debatable theories of interpretive understanding. Third, critical hermeneutics provides a means to recast the interrelation of understanding and explanation in its portrayal of the circular intertwining between explanatory part and interpretive whole. Critical hermeneutics offers a method that accommodates the critiques Judge Posner has launched against top down (deductive) and bottom up (inductive) methods. Finally, this Article recovers a sense of law that encompasses both understanding and explanation. As in theories of evolutionary biology, law need not be based primordially on determinative explanation but can integrate explanation within a larger appeal to narrative understanding

Deconstructing the Law: The Politics of Law

In recent years progressive critique of the legal enterprise has derived from two principle sources: the legal realist and Marxian traditions. Succinctly expressed, these traditions have rejected the law\u27s claim to objectivity. The legal realists have argued that legal decision-making involves not formal, deductive logic but subjective choice; any legal choice made is never logically compelled. In the Marxian tradition the objection has been not so much that the law is imbued with values, but that the distribution of legal outcomes is skewed to particular values, particular interests; the law reflects dominant economic interests

The Practice of Hermeneutics: The Legal Text and Beyond

This article attempts to show the continuing practical relevance of hermeneutics through the example of legal interpretation. The article begins with the very concrete nature of legal hermeneutics that forms everyday legal practice—the interrelation of meaning and application— and expands at a more theoretical to show how legal hermeneutics, and hermeneutics more generally, offers what Ricoeur calls an interpretive “choice in favor of meaning.” The choice in favor of meaning underscores the restorative character of hermeneutics that legal hermeneutics can epitomize. The article concludes with some of the challenges facing contemporary legal hermeneutics

Adressing Contemporary Challenges to Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics encounters three current challenges: by more quantitative orientations, by stances that reject pluralism, and by criticism that the hermeneutic field is elitist and esoteric.  The article offers a response through Ricœur. The hermeneutic “choice in favor of meaning” insists upon the ontological value of the human condition. It shows the insufficiency of the quantitative approach, the remaining value of pluralistic consideration of what human meaning entails, and the real world consequences of interpretation. Examples in Ricœur show how a hermeneutic choice in favor of meaning is not passive but instead reads texts with a particular orientation even when the text seems engaged in another project. The article’s final part undertakes an internal critique, raising the adequacy of Ricœur’s emphasis on meaning as an affirmation of “being.” The example of Buddhist insistence on “emptiness” is offered as one counterexample. The article concludes by arguing that in our contentious times hermeneutics confirms its contemporary vitality through its choice in favor of meaning even as it retains pluralistic consideration of what that meaning entails.L’herméneutique est confrontée à trois défis actuels : des orientations plus quantitatives, des positions rejetant le pluralisme et une critique selon laquelle le champ herméneutique est élitiste et ésotérique. L’article propose une réponse en faisant appel à Ricœur. Le “choix (herméneutique) en faveur du sens” insiste sur la valeur ontologique de la condition humaine. Il montre l’insuffisance de l’approche quantitative, l’intérêt toujourd actuel de l’approche pluraliste des implications du sens humain, et le réel impact de l’interpétation sur le monde. Chez Ricœur, un certain nombre d’exemples montrent comment un choix herméneutique en faveur du sens, loin d’être passif, permet au contraire de lire les textes avec une orientation particulière même lorsque le texte semble engagé dans un autre projet. La dernière partie de l’article entreprend une critique interne, en s’interrogeant sur la pertinence de l’accent mis par Ricœur sur le sens en tant qu’affirmation de l’“être.” L’exemple de l’insistance bouddhiste sur la “vacuité” est proposé à titre de contre-exemple. L’article conclut en soutenant qu’à notre époque controversée, l’herméneutique confirme sa vitalité contemporaine par son choix en faveur du sens, même en maintenant une approche pluraliste concernant les implications de ce sens

Digital Ricœur

As Ricœur scholars know, the literature by and on Ricœur is vast. Material written by Ricœur that is not collected in published volumes is often difficult to locate, and even in the published volumes it is frequently a challenge to locate where Ricœur discusses a particular topic. Given the amount of his work it can be a challenge too to determine changes in his analyses over the life of his corpus. And locating secondary literature on Ricœur can be equally problematic. In response, we have been working to establish a model for how Ricœur’s corpus might be digitized so that the issues of access, keyword location, and pattern might all be addressed. To develop the model, we are starting with Ricœur’s primary texts in English and plan to expand over time to other languages and to the secondary literature on Ricœur. In the present article we discuss our model and its five steps: digital access; copyright; text preparation for digital searches and analysis; examples of digital searches and analyses; and an archive portal interface that allows users to query based on an extensible set of search variables without needing to know or access the underlying search logic. We also invite interested researchers to help assist the development of this digitization project.Comme le savent les spécialistes de Ricœur, l’œuvre de Ricœur comme la littérature secondaire qui lui est consacrée sont vastes. Les écrits de Ricœur qui ne sont pas réunis dans des volumes publiés sont souvent difficiles à localiser, et même dans les volumes publiés, c’est fréquemment un défi que de localiser dans quels écrits il aborde tel ou tel thème. Étant donné l’ampleur de son œuvre, determiner quels ont été les changement de ses analyses tout au long de son corpus peut aussi constituer un défi. De même, localiser la littérature secondaire sur Ricœur peut s’avérer problématique. En réponse à cela, nous avons travaillé à établir un modèle de numérisation du corpus de Ricœur, de façon à ce que les questions d’accès à l’œuvre, de localisation par mots-clés et de modélisation puissent être toutes solutionnées. Pour developper ce modèle, nous commençons avec les écrits de Ricœur en anglais et nous prévoyons avec le temps d’étendre cette demarche aux écrits du philosophe dans d’autres langues ainsi qu’à la littérature secondaire le concernant. Dans cet article, nous présentons notre modèle dans ses cinq étapes: accès numérique; droits d’auteurs; préparation de textes pour des recherches et des analyses numériques; exemples de recherches et d’analyses numériques; interface de portail destiné aux archives et basée sur un ensemble extensible de variables permettant aux utilisateurs de faire leur recherche sans avoir besoin de connaître ou d’avoir accès à la logique de recherche sous-jacente. Nous invitons également les chercheurs intéressés à contribuer à ce projet de numérisation