英文从休谟到黑格尔 法律思想与西方文化SSRN id1669584.pdfVIP

FROM HOMER TO HEGEL: IDEAS OF LAW AND CULTUREIN THE WEST John Witte,Jr. * THE HUMAN MEASURE: SOCIAL THOUGHT IN THE WESTERN LEGALTRADITION. By Donald R. Kelley. Cambridge: Harvard Uni- versity Press. 1990. Pp. xiv, 358. $35 In a series of impressive publications, Donald Kelley has uncov- ered a rich tradition of Europeanthinking on law and culture. Scores of obscure European writers from the Italian Renaissance to the French Restoration have come to light and life in his writings.1 Their ideas on the nature and function of legal and cultural institutions now form an integral part of our understanding of Western intellectual history. In The Human Measure, Kelley provides a much more ambitious account of the ideas of law and culture in the West - in part, he says, to atone for the shortcomings of his earlier work.2 In some 280 pages of text, he traverses 2800 years of Western thinking about law and culture. He begins with the mythical speculations of Homer and the ancient Greeks and ends with the metaphysical syntheses of Hegel and the moder Germans. In intervening chapters, he treats in rapid succession the contributions of the Greek philosophers and Roman jurists, the Germanic peoples and early Christians, the medieval and Renaissance civilians and canonists, and the early modern legal phi- losophers and historians, pausing periodically to investigate dis- crete legal developmentsin classical Rome and early modern England and France. The book is not entirely new and does not purportto be (p. xiii). It * Director of Law and Religion Program, Assistant Professor of Law, Emory University; Fellow, Center for Public Justice, Washington, D.C. B.A. 1982, Calvin College; J.D. 1985, Harvard Law School. - Ed. I am grateful for helpful discussions of thi