The age of discontent: The revolt against interpretive cognitivism

Abstract

By the end of the 21th century, the disparate cognitivist views endorsed by the exegetical jurists, Savigny, the "first" Jhering, Windscheid, and their fellows began to be perceived, and severely criticized, as false and obnoxious to the legal culture and the legal profession by a generation of jurists and legal theorists who, following the lead of the revolutionary instrumentalist turn advocated by the "second" Jhering, brought into the law the general spirit of derogation and impatient ennui for the long siècle that was finally drawing to a close-though they had to wait until 1914 for its final, ominous, demise.