Introduction
The story of Duncan Kennedy’s (b. 1942–) key intellectual contribution to jurisprudence – legal structuralism – has its origins in the French intellectual universe of the twentieth century. Of course, there are many ways in which to stylize the contours of French social theory. The most relevant here, however, begins with Jean-Paul Sartre’s existential philosophy, which is then eclipsed by Claude Lévi-Strauss’s structural anthropology, which is in turn swallowed up in the glare of Jacque Derrida’s supernova that was deconstruction. Hovering in and around all of this like so much dark matter was a reconceived idea of language, and in particular, the influence of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course on General Linguistics. First put into print by Saussure’s students in 1916, Saussure’s Courseoffered a new platform for understanding the semiology of language systems, and it is here that structuralism is typically thought to begin. Indeed, as the historian...
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Desautels-Stein, J. (2023). Kennedy, Duncan. In: Sellers, M., Kirste, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6519-1_272
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