Heterodox Logic and Law: Topics for a Report on Philosophy and Hermeneutics

Abstract

This work deals with the philosophical approach for Juridic Sciences focusing on Heterodox Logics. It begins by considering how contradictory theories and incompatible questions in Juridical Hermeneutics can be objectively treated by Philosophy of Heterodox Logics. To speak about the insertion of new logics in juridical thought means to establish other criteria to map the intuitive concept of truth and coherence in Law, considering that what is most important are the pragmatic consequences of that truth. The central thesis of Heterodox Logic applied to Law is the intuition resides in uncertainty, ambiguousity, vagueness and inconsistency without trivialization, in the operation of contradictions and complementarities, as demonstrated by the theorems that validate them. This event can be really revolutionary for Law, in the sense that it signifies a change of paradigm in the present juridical theory. Besides, the practicability of complementariness between systems and subsystems may provide the opening of new field for the really scientific investigation of Law. But the successful use of Heterodox Logic in law infers a change in the intellectual attitude in the sense of comprehension based on intuitionism, since the concept of complementarity, fundamental in Heterodox Logic, presupposes the non-necessity of mutual exclusion so that incompatibility between systems does not mean that one must (but only may) exclude the other one. So, the new logics – more specifically the Heterodox Logic – rise in order to reveal, starting from their own fundaments, significant conquests not only for Law but for Science in general. The purpose of this paper is not to recapitulate the classical question of the Logic of Law, nor to review its history in reference to norms taken individually. What is meant is to start preliminary considerations about questions applicable to some problems referring to Law structure, that is, to juridical ordering.. The importance of Hermeneutics is inquestionable in the theoretical construction of Law, particularly for feeding the human and social nature of that knowledge. On the other hand, it is impossible to deny a certain “epistemological crisis” at present in Positive Law, in regard to the complex social question, for which the jurisdiction will have to be as far as possible, scientific, precise, and satisfactory.