From Newton's Sleep

Vining, Joseph

ISBN 10: 0691034877 / ISBN 13: 9780691034874

Published by Princeton University Press, 1995

About this Item

New book, never been read. A passionate reexamination of law and our society, Vining ultimately argues for law as an independent value system guiding our interpretation of events around us. 1st printing. Current list price: $47.50. box 240.

Seller Inventory # 004573

Bibliographic Details

• Title: From Newton's Sleep
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication Date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691034877
• ISBN 13: 9780691034874
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: New
• Dust Jacket Condition: New
• Weight: 1.107 pounds
• Seller catalogs:
  • Law

About this title

Synopsis

What the presence of law tells us about our beliefs, our language, and the world around us

In a strikingly original work intended not only for practicing lawyers but for anyone interested in the modern dilemma of the loss of meaning, Joseph Vining invites us to reconsider law as a unique form of thought, inseparably connected to everything in the world that makes up human identity. Oliver Wendell Holmes asserted at the end of the nineteenth century that human law is ultimately a phenomenon in quantitative relations to its causes and effects, and many have been left with an impression of law as a set of processes and rules. Vining takes issue with this and with various reductionist attempts in scientific thought today to express the universe in a single mathematical description of forces, as well as with post-structuralist speculation that there are no valid truth claims, and that human inter-action can be reduced to analysis of power relationships. Law, he argues, is an independent discourse, not reducible to any other, that exists only in human interaction and reflects continuing human worth. Vining's search to reinstate the spiritual dimension in public discourse brings him head-on with a wide array of powerful academic forces: linguistics theory, political science, the new historicism, and the traditional teaching of law.

This book consists of a collection of what Vining calls "amplifications" of the implied text of the law—impressions, commentaries, vignettes, poems, and dialogues—which illustrate aspects of conventional legal language and logic, and the subjects legal practice regularly deals with, such as promises, death, and crime. Throughout we see that law reaches deeply into the way we know ourselves and other persons, all of whom speak through law as law connects language to person and person to action. The texts generated by legal method constitute the living record of social acquaintance and contest, speaking across cultures and across centuries. It is the close reading of legal texts and contexts, Vining argues, that provides the present source of the transcendental in modern secular life. But unlike the other academic arts of interpretation, law alone is directly connected with the most real, the most particular and, at the same time, the most universal facts of social life.

From Newton's Sleep casts doubt on the certainties past and present and creates new grounds for skepticism and conviction. The fragmentary form of the book mirrors its subject. It is intended to be picked up and read as occasion allows by lawyers and anyone interested in law.

About the Author

Joseph Vining is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.