Francis J Mootz
Biographic Data
| ID | 3469232 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Francis J Mootz |
| GIVEN NAMES | Francis J |
| FAMILY NAME | Mootz |
| SIGNATURE | MOOTZ F J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Pennsylvania State University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 5 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 5 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Law
Legal positivists regard law as written texts enacted and disseminated to be followed as rules. But this project rests on deeply mistaken conceptions about how language works. No written text stands alone and conveys a “plain meaning.” Law is expressed through language, but language does not exhaust the meaning of the law. Legal language always already draws on the ordinary language of the community, which, in turn, draws on a deeply symbolic rea…
Gadamer and Ricoeur
Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur were two of the most important hermeneutical philosophers of the twentieth century. Gadamer single-handedly revived hermeneutics as a philosophical field with his many essays and his masterpiece, Truth and Method. Ricoeur famously mediated the Gadamer-Habermas debate and advanced his own hermeneutical philosophy through a number of books addressing social theory, religion, psychoanalysis and political philosoph…
On Philosophy in American Law
Responding to Nietzsche
As a student of Hans-Georg Gadamer, and later a translator and important commentator on Gadamer’s philosophy, P. Christopher Smith is widely acknowledged to be a leading hermeneutical philosopher. In a series of works, Smith has argued that Gadamer provides an important corrective to Nietzsche’s caustic critical challenges, but that Gadamer’s hermeneutics has no relevance for legal theory because law is just the manifestation of will to power. In…
Belief and Interpretation
Is belief a prerequisite of interpretation? Can we interpret a document if we do not believe that it has something to say to us, if we do not anticipate that we can learn from the text? Jaroslav Pelikan's assessment of the similarities and differences in constitutional and Biblical hermeneutics does not raise this question expressly, but his eloquent description of how the faithful struggle to remain true to their guiding texts inexorably leads o…
Gadamer and Ricoeur
Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur were two of the most important hermeneutical philosophers of the twentieth century. Gadamer single-handedly revived hermeneutics as a philosophical field with his many essays and his masterpiece, Truth and Method. Ricoeur famously mediated the Gadamer-Habermas debate and advanced his own hermeneutical philosophy through a number of books addressing social theory, religion, psychoanalysis and political philosoph…
Belief and Interpretation
Is belief a prerequisite of interpretation? Can we interpret a document if we do not believe that it has something to say to us, if we do not anticipate that we can learn from the text? Jaroslav Pelikan's assessment of the similarities and differences in constitutional and Biblical hermeneutics does not raise this question expressly, but his eloquent description of how the faithful struggle to remain true to their guiding texts inexorably leads o…
Responding to Nietzsche
As a student of Hans-Georg Gadamer, and later a translator and important commentator on Gadamer’s philosophy, P. Christopher Smith is widely acknowledged to be a leading hermeneutical philosopher. In a series of works, Smith has argued that Gadamer provides an important corrective to Nietzsche’s caustic critical challenges, but that Gadamer’s hermeneutics has no relevance for legal theory because law is just the manifestation of will to power. In…
On Philosophy in American Law
Gadamer and Ricoeur
Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur were two of the most important hermeneutical philosophers of the twentieth century. Gadamer single-handedly revived hermeneutics as a philosophical field with his many essays and his masterpiece, Truth and Method. Ricoeur famously mediated the Gadamer-Habermas debate and advanced his own hermeneutical philosophy through a number of books addressing social theory, religion, psychoanalysis and political philosoph…
Law
Legal positivists regard law as written texts enacted and disseminated to be followed as rules. But this project rests on deeply mistaken conceptions about how language works. No written text stands alone and conveys a “plain meaning.” Law is expressed through language, but language does not exhaust the meaning of the law. Legal language always already draws on the ordinary language of the community, which, in turn, draws on a deeply symbolic rea…
Philosophy (4 works) · Epistemology (3 works) · Hermeneutics (3 works) · Law (2 works) · Law in Society and Culture (2 works) · Linguistics (2 works) · Philosophy (2 works) · Political science (2 works) · Sociology (2 works) · American Constitutional Law and Politics (1 work)