This chapter considers the law of treaties in the light primarily of the key Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969, much of which is considered as part of customary law. The chapter discusses the role and nature of international treaties in the light of their binding nature upon states parties (pacta sunt servanda). The making of treaties, from the formalities and methods of consent from signature to ratification, is covered before the chapter turns to reservations. The nature of reservations and their effect upon third parties is addressed is addressed as is the process of amendment of treaties. Consideration of treaty interpretation then follows with the various methodologies examined from the textual, intention and object, and purpose of the treaty points of view, with a careful look at case law. The particular position of human rights treaties in this process is noted. The chapter then turns to the invalidity, termination and suspension of treaties, including a discussion of the concepts of peremptory norms (jus cogens), material breach, supervening impossibility of performance and fundamental change of circumstances (rebus sic stantibus).

The forces of history have weighed on the Framers’ constitutional design. Their extended republic has grown geographically but shrunk in terms of transportation and communication. Representation as a filter of popular passions and the extended republic as a protection against majority faction have been less effective than the Framers anticipated. Significant changes to the Framers’ design by amendment, interpretation, and practice have also created openings for the influence of political factions.

This chapter focuses on the rules set out in the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT). This chapter begins with the concept of a treaty, before discussing treaty-making, with a particular focus on the conclusion of treaties, their entry into force, and reservations to treaties. The chapter then delves into how treaties operate, namely their scope of application and their interpretation. Finally, this chapter looks at the invalidity, suspension, and termination of treaties.

This final chapter traces how anthropology transformed Wittgenstein’s qualified antiformalism into an absolute principle. Through an examination of Writing Culture, the ‘suffering slot’, and work on ordinary life, it shows how anthropological theory made formlessness itself into the only legitimate approach to context. The chapter argues this distinctive interpretation of Wittgenstein has had lasting effects on the discipline.

Chapter 1 introduces the key research question of whether the European Court of Human Rights has the appropriate equipment to respond to authoritarian populism in its position of ultimate interpreter of the European Convention on Human Rights. It sets out the analytical and disciplinary framework, situates the project in a broader field of scholarship and summarizes the upcoming s.

This chapter studies the sixty-plus songs not forming part of Fauré’s seven defined song cycles, with reference also to the recently-published body of wordless vocalises that Fauré produced between 1906 and 1916. His evolving technique in song writing is viewed chronologically, in relation to poets he set, noting how he adapted compositional techniques to different poets; patterns that emerge can imply two further unstated ‘cycles’ involving his settings of Hugo and Baudelaire. Some meticulous hidden musical structuring can be related to his close attention to poetry, along with an unusual but focussed approach to syllabification, with vocal lines characteristically running in rhythmic counterpoint over piano parts rather than comfortably lying within them. Singers with whom Fauré collaborated closely are discussed, noting their vocal and musical qualities and how these may have marked Fauré’s vocal writing; the chapter ends by reciprocally quoting their accounts of Fauré’s wishes and preferences in performance.

Alongside Freud, Nietzsche, and Marx, Kierkegaard is a true master of the hermeneutics of suspicion. However, more than any other master of suspicion, Kierkegaard is keenly aware of suspicion’s potential existential and even epistemic dangers. In Works of Love, Kierkegaard warns that if suspicion becomes an exclusive mode of critique, rather than effectively exposing dogmatism, it can harden into a kind of hermeneutical dogmatism of its own. By contrast, he argues that love sees deeper than suspicion and is less susceptible to deception. This claim seems naive at best and dangerous at worst – something that the masters of suspicion would identify as illusion and internalized oppression. In this chapter, however, I offer extended analyses of Kierkegaard’s “suspicion of suspicion” and two of his most controversial prescriptions: (1) presupposing love and (2) finding mitigating explanations. I argue that, far from dismantling suspicion, these practices are designed to rehabilitate readers from hermeneutical dogmatism and thereby preserve suspicion’s justice-seeking capacities.

The French attitude about what is called the performing arts, since at least Verlaine, has been to consider that the formal aspect has to do with the meaning of a text, or a situation, and that nothing can be taken as accessory. For performers, the mélodie is, in that sense, at the heart of this concern. Henri Duparc’s celebrated setting of Baudelaire’ “La vie antérieure” provides a case study for the importance of a sensitive, careful, understanding of the poetic text in interpreting French song. Deepening work both on the form and meaning of all songs, whatever the language, without fabricating the sound, is the goal to achieve. The unspoken, the undetermined, in a word, the mystery of the world is what counts; the expression is neither a definition nor an explanation, but a quest. Recitalists are explorers of the unknown!

Introducing the book’s third essential part on ‘property’, this chapter sets out Alter-Native Constitutionalism’s jurisprudential framework for constitutional and statutory interpretation informed by vernacular law and oriented towards the everyday, ordinary South African as the ‘reasonable’ person in law. It draws on ethnography and sociolinguistics, problematising the continuities in how democratic South African law treats ‘customary law’ consistently with colonial-apartheid. A SiSwati conversation with Make Ng’Gogo frames the chapter’s exploration of vernacular law’s indigenous ethical orientation, embodied in Ubu-Ntu, as it applies to guiding not only societal organisation but also land rights – emphasising human-centred values over individualistic property rights. By first examining indigenous normative relationships with land then translating their application into critique of Constitutional Court interpretive practices, the chapter advances an Alter-Native framework that represents a paradigm shift in constitutional interpretation, privileging Ubu-Ntu’s holistic world-sense. This framework advocates reinterpretation of dignity and rights under the Constitution, moving beyond Western legal principles toward a jurisprudence grounded in indigenous natural law and relational ethics. The chapter argues for South Africa’s Constitutional Court to adopt this indigenously transformative constitutional approach to interpretation, treating vernacular law as equally legitimate to European ‘common law’ and thereby making truly transformative socioeconomic outcomes more possible.

This chapter addresses the question of the interpretation of fictions. Traditional views on this topic run the full gamut from straightforward versions of intentionalism – on which correct interpretations track what authors meant with the works they have created – to more or less extreme versions of conventionalism – on which correct interpretations instead track what the social practices of fiction determine to be the meanings of fictional works. I assume that interpretations are advanced as the paratextual uses of fictional discourse, as examined in Chapter 1 while discussing Lewis’s (1978) account. They may range from utterly commonplace, modest accounts of the core content of a fiction made for the benefit of those unfamiliar with it, to highly ambitious critical pursuits that ascribe unobvious deep meanings to a work; and it is a pragmatic issue whether they should be understood as playing one or another of these roles. Dedicated Representation accounts of fictionality, like the one promoted here, presuppose that fictions have contents, and hence have their own semantics. Such accounts are thus in a better position to offer a theoretical understanding of interpretive undertakings than Mere Pretense views, which forgo this advantage. The issue can then be used for abductive appraisal. A semantics requires a metasemantics for its justification, i.e., an account of the nature of fictions that can determine which semantic ascriptions are correct. Previous chapters have contrasted psychologically expressive accounts, such as the Gricean proposals made by Currie, Stock and others, with social-normative views like Walton’s, Abell’s, or the one favored here. Prima facie, psychological views fit intentionalist accounts better, while social views go with conventionalism. But the issue is more complex. While Stock does defend intentionalism, Currie instead endorses a rather conventionalist view; and while Abell supports conventionalism, the view I’ll advance here is intentionalist. The chapter also engages with Friend’s influential work. While assuming a form of conventionalism, Friend has articulated and defended a rather skeptical view of fictionality, and of the fiction vs. nonfiction divide, which I’ll critically discuss.

This chapter is, for the most part, devoted to an appraisal of Greek art as a school of humanity. Herder applies the model of nature’s force to the work of art. The force that produces the human form in the work of art also conditions the possibilities for viewing and understanding art. Art grounds visible categories of humankind and it renders visible the ideas that make these categories intelligible. Greek statuary is seen as a formalization of timeless categories of human life, but these categories are subject to the contingencies of interpretation. He discusses the Greek idealization of childhood, heroism, the gods, fauns, satyrs, and centaurs. He then concludes that there is no such thing as formless goodness and truth. This is followed by an appraisal of allegory. A text by Johann Christoph Berens is cited as an example of practical moral enlightenment. In this connection, the question of public morals is raised with respect to Homer and Montesquieu. Kant’s pursuit of truth is praised. The chapter closes with thoughts on freedom of thought and the state.

Rights are at home in law-courts. In popular understanding, they seem like attributes attached to individuals who are found in isolation. When carefully examined, however, they can be characterised as aspects of relations in the sight of a tribunal (which may, of course, be conscience or public opinion or God). They have their being, it might be said, within a field of vision - the version of reality that the tribunal sees - in which a right apparently located in one person must have a dissimilar correlate located in another. If, when the information that counts as fact in, a court is in principle willing to do X for A against B, it cannot simultaneously have the same willingness to do X for B against A. On the account definitively worked out by Wesley Hohfeld, my claim must have its correlate in someone else’s duty, but even the simplest privilege (my right against the world to take a walk into the park) has correlates in ‘no-rights’ attaching to the indefinite range of other individuals who might take legal action with a view to stopping me.