Original scientific paper

Ambiguity, "Leviathan", and the Question of Ultimate Interpreter

Dražen Pehar orcid.org/0000-0002-6027-9985 ; Institute for social and political research, Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

This essay aims to present, but not fully substantiate, a way of undermining the notion of ‘ultimate interpreter’ in the sense of ‘a limited, appointed or elected, institutional body.’ One effective way of such presentation is, as I argue, in terms of interpretation of Hobbes’s theory as a response to the problem of political ambiguity. Thus interpreted, Hobbes’s theory presses on us the choice between normative and non-normative view of language. If we endorse the former, the argument against ‘ultimate interpreter(s)’ seems to hold.
However, one can to a degree blunt the argument’s razor by making the status of the body dependent fully on the body’s theoretical performance, so that practical finality of the body’s deliberations tracks their theoretical finality, not the other way around.

Keywords

Hobbes; legal interpretation; normative view of language; political ambiguity; ultimate interpreter

Hrčak ID:

121954

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/121954

Publication date:

29.5.2014.

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