lunedì 23 novembre 2009

Christian Religion and the Shape of Property


Bable on Witte & Alexander on Law and Christianity

Paul T. Babie (University of Adelaide - Law School) has posted Looking East to the Concept of Property A Review Essay of Witte and Alexander, Christianity and Law: An Introduction (Adelaide Law Review, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
    The notion that there is anything like ‘Christian law’ in the way that there is Islamic law, Judaic law, or Hindu law is little understood. Yet, increasingly, scholars, both lawyers and theologians, tell us that one finds in the Western legal tradition itself a form of Christian law, at least in origin if not contemporary operation. 

sabato 21 novembre 2009

Managing Meaning: The Use of Metaphor in Policy



Sarah Armstrong of Glasgow University posted on SSRN an Article on the Use of Metaphor summarised in the following
Abstract:     
This paper takes an unorthodox approach to the study of policy, by analysing the use of metaphors in policy documents. Policy language presents an important topic of study because the policy text is an increasingly important technique of governance, aiming at one level to satisfy desires for transparency and public consultation, and, at another, to translate law and norms into technical rules of everyday practice. Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) provides the methodology for exploring the role metaphors play in policy texts. While metaphor is, outside of linguistics, commonly treated as an optional linguistic ornament used to convey an unfamiliar concept in terms of a familiar one, CMT claims metaphors are ever present features of language and fundamental to knowing. Analysis of metaphors in a key (Scottish) criminal justice policy text provides a case study for analysing how metaphors assist understanding a new category of offender – the serious violent and sexual offender. Equally important, the paper considers the possibility that the means of controlling such offenders – risk management – is itself a metaphor.


Keywords: policy analysis, metaphor analysis, rhetoric, risk management, serious violent and sexual offenders, Conceptual Metaphor Theory

giovedì 19 novembre 2009

Carlos Fernandez Sessarego




“BOSQUEJO PARA UNA
DETERMINACIÓN ONTOLÓGICA
DEL DERECHO”
now available for download

martedì 17 novembre 2009

Maurizio Ferraris on Documentality and Social Ontology

Documentalità. Perché è necessario lasciar tracce

di Ferraris Maurizio 

read the book


Objects come in three kinds: (1) physical objects (mountains, rivers, human bodies, and
animals) that exist in space and in time, and are independent from subjects knowing them,
even though they may have built them, as for artifacts (chairs, screwdrivers); (2) ideal objects
(numbers, theorems, relations) that exist outside of space and time, and are independent
from the subjects knowing them, but which, after having been discovered, can be socialized;
(3) social objects, that do not exist as such in space, since their physical presence is
limited to the inscription, but last in time, and whose existence depends on the subjects
who know, or at least can use, them and who, in certain cases, have constituted them.
This latter circumstance display us the fact that social objects, for which construction is
necessary, depends on social acts, whose inscription constitutes the object. As I show
through the law Object = Inscribed Act, social objects consist in the recording of acts that
encompass at least two people, and are characterized by being inscribed, on a physical substrate
what so ever, from marble to neurons, passing through paper and computers.
If all this is true, then a theory of social objects develops naturally into a theory of the
document, understood as an inquire centered on the definition of what I call “documentality”,
namely the properties that constitute, in each case, the necessary and sufficient conditions
to be a social object. At last, there is no society if there are no documents, and documents
are records with a particular social value.

Imagery, Ambiguity and Culture by Miroslav Vojtěchovský

The invention of photography is, according to Vilém Flusser, one of the most challenging
philosophers of the second half of the 20th century – a decisive and historical turning point, as much
so as the invention of linear writing in the 2nd millennium BC. As the first of modern mechanical
media, photography became ubiquitous, but after the more than 160 years of its existence, it is
perhaps more enigmatic now than it seemed to be at the time of its invention,
read more

domenica 8 novembre 2009

A New Site on Law & Aesthetics



A new site has been devoted to collect ideas and new related to the field of intersection between law, politics, representation and aesthetics trynig to reach a deeper understanding of the thresholds lying across these boundaries and their potentially impressive meaning

Document Ontology 1.0 Revisited


9 years later it is worth visiting again the old but still capturing stuff embodied in the document ontology draft 1.0

domenica 1 novembre 2009

Synedoche and Translation



Simultaneous translation is used as the basis for a study of the transmission of meaning in the process of translation and in that of oral communication. The fact that most utterances give only a hint of an idea to express the entire thought is the foundation of the study. (Text is in French.) (AMH)
see more



Metaphor and Metaphysics


The Joseph J. Kockelman's viewpoint
see here

Heidegger's Roots


Another inquiry into the hermeneutical cipher of Heidegger's encrypted utterances concerning art, technology, poetry, politics and the destiny of the West, peculiarly intriguing for the standpoint of law, language and ontology
read more

Cryptology Home Page

Steganography, Cryptography, Ciphers, Plyalphabets etc.
see more

Journal of Cryptology


Description
The Journal of Cryptology is a forum for original results in all areas of modern information security. Both cryptography and cryptanalysis are covered, including information theoretic and complexity theoretic perspectives as well as implementation, application, and standards issues.
see more

On Cryptology see also the Law & Geopolitcs web site
On the connected notion of cryptotype in Comparative Law see here (in French) and here

"“The Task of the Translator”: Walter Benjamin’s Essay in English, a Forschungsbericht"

Susan Ingram
TTR : traduction, terminologie, rédaction, vol. 10, n° 2, 1997, p. 207-233.
Pour citer la version numérique de cet article, utiliser l'adresse suivante :
http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/037305ar
Note : les règles d'écriture des références bibliographiques peuvent varier selon les différents domaines du savoir.
click here

A theory of allegory beyond Walter Benjamin and Paul de Man: with some remarks on allegory and memory.



Germanic Review, TheMarch, 2002 by Knaller, Susanne


In the essay De las alegorias a las novelas, Jorge Luis Borges declares allegorical art to be dumb and frivolous: "se que el arte alegorico parecio alguna vez encantador [...] ahora es intolerable." (1) The Argentinean author underscores his evaluation with a quotation from Benedetto Croce's Estetica: "Ma se il simbolo e concepito come inseparabile dall'intuizione artistica, e sinonimo dell'intuizione stessa, che ha sempre carattere ideale; non v'e nell'arte un doppio fondo, ma un rondo solo, e tutto in essa e simbolico perche tutto e ideale." (2)
Croce does not challenge the primacy of the symbol, as claimed by Goethe and the Romantics and exemplified by Samuel T. Coleridge: "Now an allegory is but a translation of abstract notions into picture language,...
read more

sabato 31 ottobre 2009

Lost in Translation: EU Law & The Official Languages

By Andrej Glézl
"This article deals with the problem of interpretation of Community2 law from the perspective of the
language in which the relevant source of Community law3 is expressed. The first part of the article
defines the legal basis causing the problem in interpretation of Community law, which is caused by
the fact that it is expressed in many languages, all of which are official and legal instruments
expressed in them are deemed to be authentic."
read more

Contemporary Translation Theories

Edwin Gentzler's Book in Google Books

Heidegger and Translation Studies


ZISSELSBERGER Markus , The Claim and Use of Language in Translation : Heidegger (and) Übersetzen

Résumé / Abstract

Starting from the premise that what calls for and happens in the work and thinking of translation is inseparable from the experience of reading Heidegger's philosophy, this article suggests that translation in Heidegger's work is a philosophical problem fundamentally implicated in the thinking of Being. The article first examines Heidegger's distinction between Übersetzen-a form of translation that seeks correspondences between words of different languages, and Übersetzen-a translation within one's own language that seeks to respond to the "claim" of language itself. The second part of the article links translation with Heidegger's later reflections on language in Unterwegs zur Sprache, arguing that what is at stake in the work of translation is a thinking of our relation to language. Focusing on the notion of "usage/Brauch", it concludes with the suggestion that insofar as thinking translation according to (and with) Heidegger requires a"response"to the claim of language,it also calls for a more sustained engagement with the question of how the human is claimed and used by language.

Ontology Language in Wikipedia

Entry In Wikipedia
In computer science and artificial intelligenceontology languages are formal languages used to construct ontologies. They allow the encoding ofknowledge about specific domains and often include reasoning rules that support the processing of that knowledge. Ontology languages are usuallydeclarative languages, are almost always generalizations of frame languages, and are commonly based on either first-order logic or on description logic.

Law and Incarnation: Messianism as State of Exception

In this paper, written in italian, Monateri tries to interpret Jesus teachings in the context of the beginning of a cosmic state of exception when, in accordance with traits of the Second Temple ideology, the final battle between God and his enemy is going to start.
In such a context the Law reincarnate itself into the figure/body of the Sovereign, the Lord, instead of being excarnated as it has been in the Book. Thus the Lord as a nomos empsuchos (a living law) can suspend and renew the law, and the same substance of the law changes ...
read more ....

Michael Mack on Benjamin

An article reviewing Walter Benjamin's Notion of Law from a quite independent standpoint of appraisal
Abstract  In this article I give the first detailed reading of Benjamin's Zur Kritik der Gewalt as well as his Kapitalismus als Religion in its relation to Kant's notion of Recht. I shall give the first analysis of Kant's reversal of St. Paul's spirit-letter opposition. It is by means of such a reversal that Kant sets out to redefine both religion and law in a radically anti-Judaic manner. If Benjamin rejects law in Zur Kritik der Gewalt he does not criticise Jewish law, rather he attempts to undermine the ethical validity of KantianRecht. Yet Benjamin employs Kant's transcendental method. Benjamin's ambiguous relation to Kant becomes understandable through his 1934 Kafka essays. The rejection of Recht in Zur Kritik der Gewalt conceals a melancholic farewell to rabbinical Jewish law as voiced in the 1934 Kafka essays. Thus, the Kafka essays are read as Zur Kritik der Gewalt's missing link.

Rethinking Schmitt, Benjamin and Law's Foundation


La radice dei Concetti. Il fondamento della legge in Walter Benjamin e Carl Schmit




Titolo Rivista: SOCIOLOGIA E RICERCA SOCIALE
Autori o Curatori: Carmelo Lombardo
Anno di pubblicazione: 2006  Fascicolo: 80
N. pagine: 24  Dimensione del file: 313 Kb.

venerdì 23 ottobre 2009

Law's complexities

For an intriguing and inspiring comprehension of Western Legal Thought, E. Engle, Ontology, Epistemology, Axiology: a Basis for a Comprehensive Theory of Law , available at SSRN

Investigating the possible ground of Legal Ontology

A. Amatrudo, A Suggested Basis for Legal Ontology , available at SSRN

Law's Ontology

A deep inquiry on Law's Ontology
P. Amselek and N. MacCormick (ed.), Controversies about Law's Ontology , Edinburgh University Press, 1991.
For an overview of the contents click here

Reformulating Legal Ontologies

A very brilliant assessment on this topic: G. Wilson, Refactoring the Law: Reformulating Legal Ontologies