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In sociology, nomos (plural:nomoi) is a habit or custom of social and political behavior that is socially constructed and historically specific. [1] It refers not only to explicit laws but to all of the normal rules and forms people take for granted in their daily activities. [2] Because it represents order that is validated by and binding on those who fall under its jurisdiction, it is a social construct with ethical dimensions. [3]
Nomos was an Ancient Greek term that was used for a broad range of societal or socio-political norms or laws in the city-states (poleis) of that time. [4] This was the basis for the literary claims that Hellenes were different or morally superior to the "warlike" and "bloodthirsty" tribes of the Thracians, who were accused of intemperate drunkenness, immorality and uninhibited sexuality. [5]
Carl Schmitt began using the term in his 1934 publication On the Three Types of Juristic Thought [6] to denote the "concrete order" of a people. [7] He later extended its use into his 1950 book The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum. [8]
After Schmitt, the next influential writer to use the term in a modern context is Peter L. Berger. Berger writes of human beings fashioning a world by their own activity. [9] : 5 Berger sees this taking place through a continual threefold cycle between individuals and society: externalisation, objectivation, and internalization.
The world thus fashioned has an order—a set of principles—which comes to be read on to society by individuals through externalisation and objectivation, and also internalised in each individual. This order thus comes to be assumed, spoken of, and placed into social discourse to be treated as common sense. This ordering of the world and experience, which is a corporate and social process as well as an individual one, is a nomos.
Berger writes of the "socially established nomos" being understood "as a shield against terror;" in other words, "the most important function of society is nomization." [9] : 22 We all need this structuring nomos: it provides us with stability and predictability; a frame of reference in which to live. The alternative is the chaos and terror of what Berger calls anomie .
To be most effective, the nomos must be taken for granted. The structure of the world created by human and social activity is treated not as contingent, but as self-evident: [9] : 24–5
Whenever the socially established nomos attains the quality of being taken for granted, there occurs a merging of its meanings with what are considered to be the fundamental meanings inherent in the universe.
Berger sees this happening in all societies; while in "archaic societies" the nomos is expressed in religious terms, "in contemporary society, this archaic cosmization of the social world is likely to take the form of 'scientific' propositions about the nature of men rather than the nature of the universe." [9] : 25 Therefore, while its expression has most often been religious, this process of world-construction is not necessarily religious in itself. Later, Berger explores the part that religious belief has played in nomoi: it provides a connection with the cosmic, seeking to provide a completeness to that religious world-view.
Every human society is an edifice of externalized and objectivated meanings, always intending a meaningful totality. Every society is engaged in the never completed enterprise of building a humanly meaningful world. Cosmization implies the identification of this humanly meaningful world with the world as such, the former now being grounded in the latter, reflecting it or being derived from it in its fundamental structures. Such a cosmos, as the ultimate ground and validation of human nomoi, need not necessarily be sacred. Particularly in modern times there have been thoroughly secular attempts at cosmization, among which modern science is by far the most important. It is safe to say, however, that originally all cosmization had a sacred character. [9] : 27
The next landmark in the use of the term is generally thought to be by Robert Cover in his influential 1982 paper "Nomos and Narrative". [10] His use of the term is rooted in Berger's argument that nomos requires mythology and narrative, as pillars for the understanding of the meaning of each act within a particular nomos.
Cover argues that, while the mechanisms of law and social control are part of law, students of the law, and legal actors, should instead focus on the normative universe, the whole of the means of social control. As with Berger, Cover roots the nomos in "narrative," or what a post-structuralist would call meta-narrative . Cover argues that no set of legal institutions exists apart from the narratives that locate it and give it meaning. [10]
He argues that this is due to the fact that our moral sense is composed of the narratives from which we draw conclusions, and by which we locate ourselves in relation to other people. Because narrative is morality, the normative universe must rest on narrative. Since we also construct our view of the universe physically from narrative, Cover argues that the normative universe is as much a part of our existence as the physical universe.
Cover then makes an argument of incorporation: just as we develop increasingly complex responses to the physical world, so too is our development of responses to "otherness" conditioned over time by interaction. From this, he argues that societies that have great legal systems rest on more than formal and technical virtuosity, but in the richness of their understanding of the normative universe.
He argues that the explicit relationship between formal apparatus of a society, in this case a legal society, and the normative range of behavior is the fulcrum to understanding whether the society is functional or not.
Jurisprudence, also known as theory of law or philosophy of law, is the examination in a general perspective of what law is and what it ought to be. It investigates issues such as the definition of law; legal validity; legal norms and values; as well as the relationship between law and other fields of study, including economics, ethics, history, sociology, and political philosophy.
Religion and mythology differ in scope but have overlapping aspects. Both are systems of concepts that are of high importance to a certain community, making statements concerning the supernatural or sacred. Generally, mythology is considered one component or aspect of religion. Religion is the broader term: besides mythological aspects, it includes aspects of ritual, morality, theology, and mystical experience. A given mythology is almost always associated with a certain religion such as Greek mythology with Ancient Greek religion. Disconnected from its religious system, a myth may lose its immediate relevance to the community and evolve—away from sacred importance—into a legend or folktale.
Sociology of religion is the study of the beliefs, practices and organizational forms of religion using the tools and methods of the discipline of sociology. This objective investigation may include the use both of quantitative methods and of qualitative approaches.
Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture, including certain fundamental questions asked by humans. During the Renaissance, the term "humanities" referred to the study of classical literature and language, as opposed to the study of religion, or "divinity". The study of the humanities was a key part of the secular curriculum in universities at the time. Today, the humanities are more frequently defined as any fields of study outside of natural sciences, social sciences, formal sciences, and applied sciences. They use methods that are primarily critical, speculative, or interpretative and have a significant historical element—as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of science.
Social reality is distinct from biological reality or individual cognitive reality, representing as it does a phenomenological level created through social interaction and thereby transcending individual motives and actions. As a product of human dialogue, social reality may be considered as consisting of the accepted social tenets of a community, involving thereby relatively stable laws and social representations. Radical constructivism would cautiously describe social reality as the product of uniformities among observers.
Nomos, from Ancient Greek: νόμος, romanized: nómos, is the body of law governing human behavior.
In sociology, secularization is a multilayered concept that generally denotes "a transition from a religious to a more worldly level." There are many types of secularization and most do not lead to atheism, irreligion, nor are they automatically antithetical to religion. Secularization has different connotations such as implying differentiation of secular from religious domains, the marginalization of religion in those domains, or it may also entail the transformation of religion as a result of its recharacterization.
Religious studies, also known as the study of religion, is the scientific study of religion. There is no consensus on what qualifies as religion and its definition is highly contested. It describes, compares, interprets, and explains religion, emphasizing empirical, historically based, and cross-cultural perspectives.
A prescriptive or normative statement is one that evaluates certain kinds of words, decisions, or actions as either correct or incorrect, or one that sets out guidelines for what a person "should" do.
Peter Ludwig Berger was an Austrian-born American sociologist and Protestant theologian. Berger became known for his work in the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of religion, study of modernization, and contributions to sociological theory.
Carl Schmitt was a German jurist, political theorist, and prominent member of the Nazi Party.
The Law of Moses, also called the Mosaic Law, is the law said to have been revealed to Moses by God. The term primarily refers to the Torah or the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.
Roberto Mangabeira Unger is a Brazilian philosopher and politician. His work is in the tradition of Western philosophy and classical social theory, and is developed across fields in legal theory, philosophy and religion, social and political theory, progressive alternatives, and economics. In natural philosophy he is known for The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time. In social theory he is known for Politics: A Work in Constructive Social Theory. In legal theory he was associated with the Critical Legal Studies movement, which helped disrupt the methodological consensus in American law schools. His political activity helped the transition to democracy in Brazil in the aftermath of the military regime, and culminated with his appointment as Brazil's Minister of Strategic Affairs in 2007 and again in 2015. His work is seen to offer a vision of humanity and a program to empower individuals and change institutions.
Robert M. Cover was an American law professor, scholar, and activist. He taught at Yale Law School from 1972 until his death at age 42 in 1986. Cover wrote on a number of subjects, including the relationship of violence to the law; the centrality of narrative to juridical structures, jurisgenerativity, and court decisions regarding slavery. Cover's interests were wide-ranging and included philosophy of law, baseball, Hebrew texts, and political affairs.
Paul W. Kahn is the Robert W. Winner Professor of Law and the Humanities at Yale Law School and the director of the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights.
The American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (ASPLP) is a learned society founded in 1955 by political theorist Carl Friedrich. Its aim is to bring together scholars in political science, law, and philosophy who are interested in interdisciplinary exploration of a range of problems in political and legal philosophy. The ASPLP's main activities are to hold an annual conference, on a topic chosen in advance by the membership, and to publish the papers, along with formal commentary and invited additional essays, in Nomos, its yearbook. As Friedrich explained in the Preface to Authority, the first yearbook: "We are calling the series NOMOS, which is the broadest Greek term for law, because in this term there are also traditionally comprised the notions of a basic political order and of customs and a way of life." He continued: "It describes reasonably well, and perhaps better than any term of modern English, what must be the focus of a society such as ours, uniting the several social sciences, law, and philosophy." That commitment to interdisciplinary normative inquiry has characterized the ASPLP and the Nomos series ever since.
The katechon is a biblical concept which has subsequently developed into a notion of political philosophy.
Qur'anic hermeneutics is the study of theories of the interpretation and understanding of the Qur'an, the central text of Islam. Since the early centuries of Islam, scholars have sought to mine the wealth of its meanings by developing a variety of different methods of hermeneutics. Many of the traditional methods of interpretation are currently being challenged with a more modern or contemporary approach. The three primarily established typologies of tafsir are tradition (Sunni), opinion (Shi'i), and allegory (Sufi). The two main types of verses to be interpreted are Muhkamat and Mutashabihat. The traditional approach to hermeneutics within the Qur'an embodies an awareness of isnad. There are many challenges of addressing modern day human rights, women and minority groups through the traditional hermeneutical model.
In sociology and especially the sociological study of religion, plausibility structures are the sociocultural contexts for systems of meaning within which these meanings make sense, or are made plausible. Beliefs and meanings held by individuals and groups are supported by, and embedded in, sociocultural institutions and processes.
Systems theory in anthropology is an interdisciplinary, non-representative, non-referential, and non-Cartesian approach that brings together natural and social sciences to understand society in its complexity. The basic idea of a system theory in social science is to solve the classical problem of duality; mind-body, subject-object, form-content, signifier-signified, and structure-agency. Systems theory suggests that instead of creating closed categories into binaries (subject-object), the system should stay open so as to allow free flow of process and interactions. In this way the binaries are dissolved.
