The Devil Plays with Us When We Do Not Think Accurately. Monograph Review: Legal Hermeneutics in the 21st Century: Monograph / Eds E. N. Tonkov, Yu. Yu. Vetiutnev. Saint Petersburg, Aletheia Publ., 2016. 440 P.

Abstract

The article constitutes a critical review of the collective monograph “Legal Hermeneutics in the 21st century” which, according to the editors, was intended to summarize the achievements of the modern legal hermeneutics. Noting a number of interesting themes devoted to certain problems of legal hermeneutics in the book and the unquestionable value of this work per se, the authors of the review nevertheless have to admit that the multidisciplinary research team has failed to achieve its ambitious target. In particular, separate articles of individual authors were not united by a single conceptual vision of the subject. As a result, the reader cannot get answers to the questions about the specific character of the hermeneutic work with law as such, about modern trends the legal hermeneutics development and about the most typical features of this type of law understanding. According to the authors of the review, the reason for this, among other things, was the lack of attention to the ontological dimension of the legal hermeneutics and to the fundamental questions of the philosophy of law without reference to which neither the methodological role of the hermeneutics nor its ethical implications can be fully understood. In particular, some authors of the monograph reduced the hermeneutic idea to contextualism and particularism, whereas, in the opinion of the reviewers, it is, on the contrary, a part of the universalist discourse of equal respect for everyone. Special attention is paid to the outrageous design of the book which, together with the heterogeneity of the content, reminds of a famous passage of M. K. Mamardashvili used as a title for the review. 

Keywords:

legal hermeneutics, interpretation of law, understanding, methodology, ontology