ABSTRACT
The focus of Hobbes's account of law is on authority, and initiating acts of authority. Insofar as Hobbes focuses on law, he takes on its resistance to philosophical strategies of assigning universal truths; in so far as he focuses on legal and political processes, he takes on board rhetorical interests and analysis. Hobbes uses law; Vico makes law the center of his inquiry. The Romanist Alan Watson has argued the importance of the isolation of Roman law, its resistance to the colonizations of Greek philosophy. To read, retroactively, the investment of laws and legal practices by philosophical values is to misread the achievements of Roman law and the persistence of the Roman legal heritage. The peculiar resistance, the particular isolation key to understanding this achievement and heritage, is the resistance to Greek philosophical moralizing.
