Dworkin in the Desert of the Real

Abstract

Dworkin's positivist critics have charged that he errs in supposing that the philosophy of law and the philosophy of language have any connection. This paper argues that Dworkin is exactly right to deny a split between law and language. But there is an incommensurability in Dworkin's jurisprudence which Dworkin is well aware of: the split between theory and practice, between being and doing. This incommensurability means that Dworkin's jurisprudence is of the highest interest to law and psychoanalysis. It also makes Dworkin the noir philosopher of our age, as adjudication is subjected to what psychoanalysis calls the "ethics of the real."