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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 is the Ancient Greek term for the societal norms of the Hellenes. 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. [4]
Carl Schmitt began using the term in his 1934 publication On the Three Types of Juristic Thought [5] to denote the "concrete order" of a people. [6] He later extended its use into his 1950 book The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum. [7]
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. [8] : 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." [8] : 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: [8] : 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." [8] : 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. [8] : 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". [9] 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. [9]
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 is the philosophy and theory of law. It is concerned primarily with both what law is and what it ought to be. That includes questions of how persons and social relations are understood in legal terms, and of the values in and of law. Work that is counted as jurisprudence is mostly philosophical, but it includes work that also belongs to other disciplines, such as sociology, history, politics and economics.
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.
Secularism is the principle of seeking to conduct human affairs based on naturalistic considerations, uninvolved with religion.
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.
Georgios Gemistos Plethon, commonly known as Gemistos Plethon, was a Byzantine scholar and one of the most renowned philosophers of the late Byzantine era. He was a chief pioneer of the revival of Greek scholarship in Western Europe. As revealed in his last literary work, the Nomoi or Book of Laws, which he circulated only among close friends, he rejected Christianity in favour of a return to the worship of the classical Hellenic gods, mixed with ancient wisdom based on Zoroaster and the Magi.
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 theoretical 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.
Religious naturalism is a framework for religious orientation in which a naturalist worldview is used to respond to types of questions and aspirations that are parts of many religions. It has been described as "a perspective that finds religious meaning in the natural world."
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.
Political theology is a term which has been used in discussion of the ways in which theological concepts or ways of thinking relate to politics. The term is often used to denote religious thought about political principled questions. Scholars such as Carl Schmitt, a prominent Nazi jurist and political theorist, who wrote extensively on how to effectively wield political power, used it to denote religious concepts that were secularized and thus became key political concepts. It has often been affiliated with Christianity, but since the 21st century, it has more recently been discussed with relation to other religions.
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.
