Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • 2 - Darwin’s Reinach

  • from Part I - Reinach and His Method
  • Edited by Marietta Auer, Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, Paul B. Miller, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, Henry E. Smith, Harvard Law School, Massachusetts, James Toomey, University of Iowa
  • Book:
    Reinach and the Foundations of Private Law
    Published online:
    20 July 2025
    Print publication:
    07 August 2025, pp 52-81
    • Chapter
      • You have access
      • Open access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation

  • Summary

    Reinach believed that basic legal concepts exist, that their existence is independent of the positive law, and their existence is independent of moral obligation. In this idiosyncratic juxtaposition of positions, Reinach is joined by contemporary theorists drawing on evolutionary psychology and cognitive science in jurisprudence. But Reinach emphatically insisted that his claims were ontological, not psychological. This chapter explains why. For Reinach himself, the ontological status of legal concepts was one front in a broader debate over whether basic mathematical and logical concepts were true a priori or features of human psychology; a demonstrative project in the breadth of the a priori. But it is suggested that today’s theorists need not be as preoccupied with this distinction as Reinach was. Not only is the practical difference between ontological and evolutionary theories not as wide as Reinach seems to have assumed, but arguments for metaphysical reality in other domains are substantially less persuasive as applied to Reinach’s legal concepts.