Jean Lassègue

How is the authority of law challenged by digital technologies? Is the digitisation of law an appropriate means to achieve legal impartiality? This book provides an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the impact of the ongoing digital transformation of legal systems. Digital law differs from traditional law in that it relies on decision-support software and networked databases. Such mechanisms must be understood not only in technical terms but also in their social and historical dimensions: the computational foundations of digital law should be situated within the long history of the mechanisation of writing. Digitalisation constitutes a graphic revolution which, in the legal domain, transforms the very conditions of impartiality. Whereas the legality of traditional legal systems is grounded in territorial sovereignty, digital law is no longer anchored in a sovereign territory. It not only increasingly transcends established borders, but also dispenses with the spatial embeddedness that has underpinned legal authority. Digital legality must therefore be reconceptualised to consider how automated systems may be integrated into the social space within which law operates.

How is the authority of law challenged by digital technologies? Is the digitisation of law an appropriate means to achieve legal impartiality? This book provides an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the impact of the ongoing digital transformation of legal systems. Digital law differs from traditional law in that it relies on decision-support software and networked databases. Such mechanisms must be understood not only in technical terms but also in their social and historical dimensions: the computational foundations of digital law should be situated within the long history of the mechanisation of writing. Digitalisation constitutes a graphic revolution which, in the legal domain, transforms the very conditions of impartiality. Whereas the legality of traditional legal systems is grounded in territorial sovereignty, digital law is no longer anchored in a sovereign territory. It not only increasingly transcends established borders, but also dispenses with the spatial embeddedness that has underpinned legal authority. Digital legality must therefore be reconceptualised to consider how automated systems may be integrated into the social space within which law operates.

This book presents the transformation of Cassirer’s transcendental point of view. At an early stage, Cassirer was confronted with a scientific crisis triggered by the emergence of various forms of objective knowledge, such as the plurality of geometric axiom systems and non-Euclidean geometry in relativistic physics. He finally developed a solution to the problematic unity of objective knowledge by replacing the overarching notion of objectivity with that of forms of objectification. This led him to consider the notion of “symbolic forms” as the driving force in the objectification process. This concept would become instrumental in demonstrating that the objective and human sciences are not adversaries; they merely differ in their modes of semiotic construction. These modes cannot be summarized in a fixed list of symbolic forms but operate transversally, at a level where Cassirer distinguishes between three specific operators: Expression, Evocation and Objectification. The last part of the book investigates how the relationships between these three operators stabilize specific symbolic forms. Four of these forms are then studied as examples: Myth and Ritual, Language, Scientific Knowledge, and Technology.

This book presents the transformation of Cassirer’s transcendental point of view. At an early stage, Cassirer was confronted with a scientific crisis triggered by the emergence of various forms of objective knowledge, such as the plurality of geometric axiom systems and non-Euclidean geometry in relativistic physics. He finally developed a solution to the problematic unity of objective knowledge by replacing the overarching notion of objectivity with that of forms of objectification. This led him to consider the notion of “symbolic forms” as the driving force in the objectification process. This concept would become instrumental in demonstrating that the objective and human sciences are not adversaries; they merely differ in their modes of semiotic construction. These modes cannot be summarized in a fixed list of symbolic forms but operate transversally, at a level where Cassirer distinguishes between three specific operators: Expression, Evocation and Objectification. The last part of the book investigates how the relationships between these three operators stabilize specific symbolic forms. Four of these forms are then studied as examples: Myth and Ritual, Language, Scientific Knowledge, and Technology.

Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) fut l'un des principaux acteurs des debats philosophiques et epistemologiques de l'entredeux- guerres en Allemagne. Heritier de la tradition epistemologique kantienne et neo-kantienne, Cassirer fut confronte a une situation epistemologique sans precedent: la pluralisation des geometries montrait que l'idee de connaissance etait susceptible de variation dans ses propres modes d'objectivation. Tirant philosophiquement toutes les consequences de cette situation inedite, Cassirer reconnut l'egale valeur de modes d'objectivation jusqu'alors consideres comme seulement propedeutiques a la connaissance scientifique, tels le langage, le mythe, la technique ou le droit. Il a forge, avec la notion de forme symbolique un outil conceptuel original qui articule sciences de la nature et sciences de la culture en placant, au coeur des modes de l'objectivation, la capacite de transformation propre au sens. Il a, ce faisant, deplace le centre de gravite de la philosophie kantienne du transcendantal au semiotique.