The variety and richness of the contributions in this issue offer a compelling portrait of contemporary philosophy of law (as evidenced, among other things, by the presence of numerous foreign authors), marked by enduring theoretical tensions and new questions concerning foundations. Rather than aiming at a single synthesis, the essays form a mosaic of perspectives that, through their dialogue, portray a body of knowledge that is intrinsically problematic. The selection was guided by a precise methodological criterion: not merely to follow the most visible trends in current debate – certainly relevant, yet often tied to academic contingencies – but rather to privilege the questions emerging from the very problems inherent in law itself.
A first thematic axis concerns the relationship among law, interpretation, and rationality. On the one hand, increasing attention is devoted to logic as an instrument of evaluation and argumentation within legal discourse; on the other, a hermeneutic sensitivity develops that encourages reading law through a substantively oriented conception of soft law capable of addressing complexity with solutions far from rigid or univocal. Reflections on the philosophy of language also move in this direction: drawing on Wittgenstein’s thought, they show how the legal order is rooted in practices and contexts of use rather than in abstract structures.
A second problematic core concerns the principles of law and its traditional dogmatics. The crisis of the notion of the “source” of law, a penetrating functional analysis of fundamental legal acts (by Norberto Bobbio, Hannah Arendt, and Rudolf von Jhering), and the redefinition of the relationship between natural law and positive law all reveal a widespread need for theoretical reconsideration. In this context, classical perspectives, such as the Thomistic, re-emerge, reinterpreted in light of contemporary issues, alongside approaches that emphasize the role of values in legal practice and in defining its boundaries. Particularly noteworthy is the attention devoted to the virtue of prudence, already thematized by Aristotle and here proposed as an indispensable element of procedural ethics, capable of guiding the jurist’s action beyond mere conformity to rules.
There is also an inquiry into law in contemporary society, marked by profound technological and cultural transformations. Contributions addressing artificial intelligence and deepfakes highlight regulatory challenges posed by emerging technologies and the anthropological implications looming on the horizon. Analyses of “predictive justice” emphasize the risks of a technicist approach that, by depending solely on statistical responses, could weaken the essential role of adjudication, which ultimately rests on the uniqueness of each case. At the same time, interdisciplinary reflections – such as those intertwining law, narrative, and imagination – show how legal categories are now confronted with unprecedented scenarios, ranging from cryopreservation to symbolic representations of life and death.
No less relevant is the engagement with contemporary socio-political dynamics. The return of keywords such as “nation” and “homeland,” together with discussions on European cultural pluralism, reveals the need for a legal thought capable of distinguishing between narratives and reality, between collective fears and empirical data, while maintaining a firm commitment to the fundamental values of pluralist democracies.
Finally, especially noteworthy are the studies on non-verbal forms of normativity, on regulatory models “without rules,” and on extraordinary legal phenomena in non-human animal societies. What emerges is an understanding of law as a complex configuration, rooted in practices, environments, and forms of life beyond conventional normative language.
In the wake of Hegel’s Owl of Minerva, this issue evidently offers no definitive answers. Philosophy, after all, never does – nor could it. Rather, it raises questions. Philosophy, indeed, always lives within the inexhaustible interplay between norm and fact, universality and particularity, rationality and force, at the heart of the ceaseless unfolding of history.