Postmodern Jurisprudence

Abstract

Abstract In previous chapters, I have considered the leading contemporary answers to the question of what it means to say that a proposition of law is true. With one exception, all the views discussed proceed from a “modernist” perspective on the question of truth. From the modernist point of view, “truth” names a relation between an asserted proposition and some state of affairs that makes the proposition true. The view I identify as “postmodern” rejects the project of unraveling the connection between propositions and what makes them true. From a postmodernist point of view, to say that some proposition is true is to say that “a sufficiently well placed speaker who used the words in that way would be fully warranted in counting the statement as true of that situation.” The first part of this chapter is devoted to providing an account of modernism and postmodemism.