Academic contestation over a concept’s definition does not negate its world-making power

Evidence

Neoliberalism carries no settled definition, and there now exists a substantial academic literature arguing about its constitutive characteristics. A few have gone so far as to suggest that its amorphous, protean, and contested character casts doubt on its very existence. Yet as is the case with other world-altering formations, including capitalism, socialism, liberalism, feudalism, Christianity, Islam, and fascism, ongoing intellectual contestation about their underlying principles, elements, unity, logics, and dynamics does not vitiate their world-making power. Neoliberalism—the ideas, the institutions, the policies, the political rationality—has, along with its spawn, financialization, likely shaped recent world history as profoundly as any other nameable phenomenon in the same period, even if scholars continue to debate precisely what both are. — Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, 35

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Lochner is merely one example in which a false assertion of inexorability is decried as formalistic. Much contemporary criticism of Blackstone, Langdell, and others of their persuasion attacks their jurisprudence on similar grounds. They stand accused of presenting contestable applications of general terms as definitionally incorporated within the meaning of the general term. It is important, however, to understand the relationship between the linguistic and the ontological questions for those of Blackstone’s vision. Blackstone’s view that certain abstract terms definitionally incorporate a wide range of specific results is tied intimately to his perception of a hard and suprahuman reality behind these general terms. If the word ‘property,’ for example, actually describes some underlying and noncontingent reality, then it follows easily that certain specific embodiments are necessarily part of that reality, just as pelicans are part of the underlying reality that is the universe of birds. These instantiations might still follow even if the general term is not a natural kind whose existence and demarcation is beyond the control of human actors. There is nothing natural or noncontingent about the term ‘basketball,’ but it is nevertheless an error in this culture at this time to apply that word to a group of people hitting small hard balls with one of a collection of fourteen different sticks. Still, linguistic clarity and rigidity are both facilitated insofar as the words track the natural kinds of the world. To the extent that Blackstone and others believed that categories like liberty, property, and contract were natural kinds rather than human artifacts, they were less likely to perceive the choices we would now not think to deny. When one believes that a general term reflects a deep reality beyond the power of human actors, the view that certain particulars are necessarily part of that reality follows with special ease.

Broader Connections

• Lochner is merely one example in which a false assertion of inexorability is decried as formalistic. Much contemporary criticism of Blackstone, Langdell, and others of their persuasion attacks… #qualifies (0.75)