ABSTRACT
The suspiciously simple argument of this chapter is that law as a unified entity can only be reconciled with its contradictory existences if we see it as myth. Such a claim may appear at first to compound contradiction. Modern law, after all, was formed in the very denial of that mythic realm which had so deluded the premoderns. My summary response is to agree but then to say that such a denial typifies a renewed and now modern mythology. In this negation of mythic being, there is a denial of that which gives law coherent existence. Negation through law is the negation of law. Yet, as I show in later chapters, it is this negative quality, this vacuity of law, which enables a mythic mediation to be effected between law’s contradictory existences and which enables the unity of law to be maintained.
