Social and Legal Studios

Abstract

This material is a review for the book by Oleg Pavlyshyn “Legal Reality as a sign system” (2017), which presents author’s concept of understanding law as a sign system, and as a basic research paradigm is offered semiotic-legal approach. Reviewer highlights strengths and weaknesses of both proposed approach itself, and results of its applying by author laid out in the monograph. On the whole the approach proposed by Oleg Pavlyshyn turns out to be quite farsighted, however, it requires more thorough elaboration in terms of organization and implementation in specific research. The reviewer compares the work by O. Pavlyshyn with the researches in the field of semiotics of law by V. Rechytskyi (2007) and O. Balynska (2013). He considers them interdependent, since the scientists consider the movement and development of knowledge as carried out not according to the scheme of “semiotic triangle”, but due to “hermeneutic circle”. The figure of the hermeneutic circle has already been used in ancient rhetoric; this symbol acquired new content in romantic hermeneutics, which argued that the parts of each complex message should be understood, based on their integrity of interconnection, as well as the main idea of the whole message. The hermeneutic circle should not be identified as a vicious circle in reasoning – these are different things. The figure of a hermeneutical circle means that the understanding of the fragment is due to the understanding of the whole, which is understood through the comprehension of all fragments, and vice versa. It seems that the hermeneutic circle, similar to Ouroboros represents search for all the above-mentioned researchers best of all, since each of them, outlining the fundamental provisions of the executions, deepens into its domain of the symbolic law and returns to the holistic vision again... It remains only to hope that the circle-circulation of the related to a semiotic triangle of meanings will ultimately lead to a new perfect form of knowledge. And one should not be afraid to walk in a circle

Keywords: semiotics of law, symbolic reality, semiotic triangle, hermeneutic circle

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