Abstract
Adolf Reinach, phenomenologist and philosopher of law, developed a social and legal theory (Reinach, Die apriorischen Grundlagen des bürgerlichen Rechtes. In: Reinach, Adolf. 1989. Sämtliche Werke, pp 141–278. English translation: Reinach, Adolf. 1913. The Apriori Foundations of the Civil Law. (trans Crosby John). Aletheia 1983, pp 1–142, 1913) which provides an interesting answer––alternative to that of John Searle (Speech acts. An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge University Press, New York, 1969, The construction of social reality. Allen Lane, London, 1995, Making the social world. The structure of human civilization. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010)––to the question of the nature of social and legal reality. For Reinach, unlike Searle, social and legal entities are not grounded in constitutive rules, collective intentionality, and status functions declarations. They are grounded, instead, in a priori structures [apriorische Gebilde] and essential laws [Wesengesetze]. These are the “a priori foundations of law,” dependent neither on positive law nor on beliefs, individual or collective, about them.
Reinach’s theory is a strongly realistic and absolutely non-conventionalist account of social and legal reality, based on Husserl’s phenomenology and particularly on his theory of ontological dependence (Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. In: Husserliana XIX/1, XIX/2 U. Panzer. Den Haag (eds) Nijhoff, 1984. English Translation: Husserl, Edmund. 1976. Logical investigations, (trans: Findlay JN). Routledge, London, 1901).
The aim of this chapter is to show that Reinach’s account of the a priori foundations of social and legal reality is a useful account, one which can compete with Searle’s social ontology account and which, with respect to some issues I will deal with, could be even more convincing than Searle’s.
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Regarding this first issue, I am in debt to Barry Smith and Wojciech Żełaniec, who deal systematically with the risk of circularity which lurks behind Searle’s social ontology and its lack of an ontological basis which is not itself conventional (Smith and Zełaniec 2011). About Searle’s conventionalism in social ontology, one must nonetheless acknowledge that Searle seems indeed to find a way out of strong conventionalism by grounding the normativity of social reality on the normativity of language (on the rules of semantics), which in his view has a biological—and hence nonconventional—ground (see Searle 2001 and 2010). But even with this perspective, Searle still runs the risk that his social ontology will be circular without the introduction of a nonconventional ground.
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In this paragraph, I will make use of Smith’s exposition of Husserl’s theory of ontological dependence and of Reinach’s application in his social ontology of the Husserlian account (see Smith 1990: § 6–7).
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Georg Henrik von Wright analyses the eidos of promising and describes it as a sort of whole which is not reducible to its parts but which needs its parts in order to exist: “A promise is not an utterance or a sentence or anything which could be reasonably called a ‘linguistic’ category. Nor is a promise an act, or a relation between a promise-giver and a promise-receiver. It would also be false to say that a promise is a kind of obligation. But ‘utterance’, ‘sentence’, ‘act’, ‘relation’ and obligation are all needed for a satisfactory account of promises” (von Wright 1962: 277).
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As Husserl puts it:
There is always an a priori law governing what is non-independent, having its conceptual roots in what is universal in the whole and part in questions. […] To pin down the concept of non-independence, it is enough to say that a non-independent can only be what it is (i.e. what is in virtue of its essential properties) in a more comprehensive whole. (Husserl 1901, 3rd LI, § 10 “The multiplicity of laws governing the various sorts of non-independent contents”).
«Zur Unselbständigkeit gehört nach den bisherigen Überlegungen allzeit ein apriorisches Gesetz, welches in dem Allgemeinen des bezüglichen Teiles und Ganzen seine begrifflichen Grundlagen hat. […] Zur Feststellung des Begriffes des Unselbständigkeit genügt es schon zu sagen, es könne ein unselbständiger Gegenstand als das, was er ist (d. i. vermöge seiner Wesensbestimmtheiten), nur in einem umfassenderen Ganzen sein), nur in einem umfassenderen Ganzen sein» (Husserl 1901, III LU, § 10 «Die Mannigfaltigkeit der zu den verschiedenen Arten von Unselbständigkeiten gehörigen Gesetze»).
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Kant had specified “necessity and strict universality” as “sure and certain marks” of the a priori which “belong together inextricably” (I. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B4, Vorwort).
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As Husserl affirms:
Each pure law, which includes material concepts, so as not to permit a formalization of these concepts salva veritate – each such law, i.e., that is not analytically necessary – is a synthetic a priori law. Specifications of such laws are synthetic necessities: empirical specifications of course are so also, e.g., This red is different from this green. What we have said should be enough to make plain the essential distinction between laws grounded in the specific nature of the contents to which non-independent factors belong, and analytic and formal laws, which, being founded purely on formal categories, are unaffected by all material of knowledge. (Husserl 1901, 3rd LI, § 12)
«Jedes reine Gesetz, das sachhaltige Begriffe in einer Weise einschließt, die eine Formalisierung dieser Begriffe salva veritate nicht zuläßt (m. a. W., jedes solche Gesetz, das keine analytische Notwendigkeit ist), ist ein synthetisches Gesetz a priori. Besonderungen solcher Gesetze sind synthetische Notwendigkeiten; darunter natürlich auch empirische Besonderungen, wie z.B. dieses Rot ist verschieden von diesem Grün. Das hier Ausgeführte dürfte genügen, um den wesentlichen Unterschied ersichtlich zu machen zwischen den in der spezifischen Natur der Inhalte gründenden Gesetzen, an welchen die Unselbständigkeiten hängen, und analytischen und formalen Gesetzen, welche, als rein in den formalen „Kategorien“ gründend, gegen alle “Materie der Erkenntnis” unempfindlich sind» (Husserl 1901, III LU, § 12).
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“Spontaneity” [Spontaneität]—as Reinach affirms—means that in these acts, the self shows itself to be the originator, that is, the author [Urheber] of the act. Social acts are spontaneous heterotropic acts: they are spontaneous acts which are addressed to another subject (the act’s addressee) and which have to be communicated (generally by speaking) to the addressee in order to be grasped by him. Some examples of spontaneous acts are deciding, asserting and forgiving, and some examples of social acts (which are spontaneous, too) are promising, questioning, commanding and informing (see Reinach 1913: § 3; Reinach 1911; Mulligan 1987, 2001; De Vecchi 2010a, b, 2012a, b; De Vecchi and Passerini 2012; Lorini 2008). By using the concept of “spontaneity” in order to identify a specific class of intentional acts, Reinach anticipates the contemporary distinction between authorship and agency, on the one hand, and ownership on the other hand. This distinction is today an important criterion in cognitive sciences and philosophy of mind (see, e.g. Gallagher 2000; Gallagher-Zahavi 2008).
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About this point, see the very clear explication of Smith (1990: § 7).
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About generic ontological dependence, see Simons (1987: chapter 8).
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In 1913, the year of the publication of Reinach’s “A priori Foundations of Civil Law”, the famous American philosopher of law Wesley N. Hohfeld published “Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning” where he identifies what he calls the “fundamental legal relations”, a sort of a priori legal relations. He describes them through a scheme of “jural opposites” and “jural correlatives”. The relationship between duty and right (or claim) is a “jural correlative” (Hohfeld 1913).
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On Reinach’s material a priori, see the objections of Jean-Louis Gardies who maintains that the relation between promising and claim/obligation is not a material (or synthetic) relation but an analytical relation (Gardies 1987). See also the works of Wojciech Żełaniec, who discusses some examples of analytic and synthetic propositions given by Reinach and Husserl (Żełaniec 1992, 2011).
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Consider the famous example Husserl presents in his Prolegomena: “Ein Krieger soll tapfer sein”. This assertion means that just a brave warrior is actually a warrior (Husserl 1900: II, § 14). Consider also Husserl’s arguments about the “theoretical disciplines as grounds of the normative disciplines” (Husserl 1900: II). On this issue, see also Husserl (1913: First Section and De Monticelli 2008).
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Is this a counterexample to the Searle’s thesis that there are no institutional facts without brute facts? I do not believe it. The problem is that Searle’s thesis works only with institutional facts, which have material support as in the case of money (Searle 1995). In this case, it is difficult to find the brute fact supporting an obligation or a claim. Searle would probably reply that here the brute fact is the neurobiological basis—in the brain of the claim/obligation bearers. But this is not a very convincing answer in my view. This is in general the problem of the “freestanding Y terms” which Searle addresses in his last book by introducing the “status functions declarations” as the general form of the creation of institutional facts and by considering the constitutive rules, which need brute facts, as a particular form of creation of institutional facts (see, Smith 2003, 2012, Searle 2010).
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This is also the topic of the relation between essence and contingent data which Husserl deals with in the first section of Ideen I (Husserl 1913).
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The relation between a priori law and positive law could be defined as a phenomenon of “nomotropism” (i.e. acting with reference to rules without conformity to rules (see Conte 2000; Di Lucia 2002)), whereby “acting” I mean the action of the legislator. Positive law created by the legislator refers necessarily to a priori law, but it does not conform itself to a priori law. A priori law is effective with respect to positive law, but it is an efficacy without fulfilment.
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De Vecchi, F. (2013). Ontological Dependence and Essential Laws of Social Reality the Case of Promising. In: Schmitz, M., Kobow, B., Schmid, H. (eds) The Background of Social Reality. Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5600-7_14
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