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A Reply to J. Judd Owen

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Stanley Fish*
Affiliation:
University of Illinoisat Chicago

Abstract

Although J. Judd Owen's account of my work is on target in many ways, on some points he mischaracterizes my argument by making it claim or do too much. His misunderstandings flow in part from a conflating of two assertions: (1) that our convictions cannot be grounded in any independent source of authority and (2) that our convictions are ungrounded. I certainly assert the first but never the second. Rather, it is my contention that while we have no independent grounds—grounds implicated in no particular vision of life or comprehensive doctrine—we have, because we live within them, the grounds that are constitutive of our everyday lives, their practices and routines. What are the consequences of this argument? My answer is none whatsoever. If you are persuaded that no independent grounds are available, but that the grounds of your everyday practice are sufficient, you will feel neither disabled by what you do not need nor enabled by recognizing the nonindependent foundations you have always rested on and will continue to rest on. In the end, the most salient characteristic of my argument, a characteristic Owen resists, is its minimalism.

Type
Forum
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1999

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References

REFERENCES

Alexander, Larry. 1993. “Liberalism, Religion and the Unity of Epistemology.” San Diego Law Review 30 (Fall):763–97.Google Scholar
Fish, Stanley. 1989. Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practics of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Fish, Stanley. N.d. The Trouble with Principle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Forthcoming.Google Scholar
Owen, J. Judd. 1999. “Church and State in Stanley Fish's Anti-Liberalism. American Political Science Review 93 (December):911–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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