ABSTRACT
The focus on conceptual connections in modern jurisprudence has been, an unfortunate one, in that it has served to reinforce intuitions about the role of philosophical analysis and its relationship to ordinary legal scholarship that are at odds with the traditional concern with law's moral nature. This chapter is concerned with the purpose or point of law within political and moral life, and the sense in which the legal order embodies the expression of a society's self-understanding and its views of human nature and the good life. It suggests that modern jurisprudence might be presented as a debate between two rival perspectives on law's capacity to realise the good. The suppression of historical reflection is a product of the progressive rejection of Aristotelian ethical thought in favour of a form of moral voluntarism which reached its high watermark in Immanuel Kant's doctrine of Right.
