Against Method 71

97. Rubin(note 3, above) provides a helpful bibliography at pp. 1835-1836. See also Stanley Fish , Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies(Durham : Duke University P:ress, 1989), 345.

98. On all that follows see Richard J. Bernstein , Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983). As Bernstein notes at p. 8, the tension between“objectivist” and“subjectivist” accounts of truth has been around ever since Plato battled the Sophists. The“modern” turn in this conflict comes with the “Enlightenment project,” the attempt to locate non-religious and rational foundations for human inquiry. On the“Enlightenment project,” see Alisdair MacIntyre , After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 36 See also H.G. Gadamer , Truth and Method , Second, Revised Edition(translation by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall; New York : Continuum, 1993), 277, on“the fundamental presupposition of the Enlightenment , namely that methodologically disciplined use of reason can safeguard us from

all error.”

99. In the words of Stanley Fish (note 98, above), p. 343:“the successful foundational project will have provided us with a‘method,’ a recipe which... will produce, all by itself, the correct result.... In literary studies the result would be the assigning of valid interpretation to poems and novels...”(Emphasis in the original).

100. See Thomas C. Grey,“Langdell’s Orthodoxy,” note 5, above, at p. 5:“Langdell believed that through scientific methods lawyers could derive correct legal judgments from a few fundamental principles and concepts, which it was the task of the scholar-scientist like himself

to discover.”

101. Although natural law has been around for quite a long time, its post-Enlightenment (i.e., non-openly-religious) manifestation deserves special mention. For a well-known representative, see John Finnis , Natural Law and Natural Rights(Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1980).

102. Chief among these is H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law(note 58, above). See, in general, Mario Jori, ed., Legal Positivism (New York : New York University Press , 1992).

103. See Fish(note 97, above), 342-355.

104. A sharp, brief expression of this critique is that of Richard Rorty , Consequences of Pragmatism(Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 1982), xix: Plato ’s effort to discover the ultimate basis of truth“is the impossible attempt to step outside our skins...and compare

ourselves with something absolute.”

105. Rubin(note 3, above), 1840.