The Verdict on Modernity’s Anti-Rhetorical Methodologism

Reflections from 2004, Revisited in 2026

There is a rare beauty in learning. Adding to what we already know is only part of the experience. The other part, often more difficult and more fruitful, involves allowing what we learn to transform our questions, unsettle our certainties, and compel us to reconsider our own dogmas.

In the silence of a library, in a study, or in an encounter between people willing to listen, something takes place that no credential can guarantee: the possibility of emerging changed by an experience of understanding.

That concern prompted these reflections in 2004. Revisiting them in 2026, I find good reason to retain their central question: what happens to knowledge when method, devised to discipline inquiry, begins to determine in advance everything that may be recognized as true?

Science owes part of its strength to explicit procedures, the demand for justification, and openness to criticism. These achievements deserve preservation. The problem arises when this discipline becomes methodologism: the conviction that following a particular procedure is sufficient to ensure the quality of thought, or that only what fits within that procedure deserves to be known.

At that point, the instrument of inquiry acquires authority over the question itself. Researchers no longer choose their approaches according to the problem; they begin choosing problems that their customary approaches can accommodate.

The history of knowledge cannot be reduced to a single genealogy. Philosophical, religious, legal, and experimental traditions contributed to its development through both collaboration and conflict. Nor did modernity produce a single method. One of its temptations, however, has been to elevate particular ideals of certainty, demonstration, and formalization into a universal standard of rationality.

In the human sciences, that ambition calls for particular care. Human behavior can be counted, compared, and investigated empirically. Yet understanding an action also requires asking about its reasons, its language, the circumstances in which it occurred, and the historical horizon of the person seeking to interpret it.

Quantification can illuminate fundamental aspects of a problem. Its precision, however, does not by itself resolve questions of meaning or determine what we should do with what we discover.

In law, this distinction becomes especially consequential. Identifying a norm, examining its validity, understanding its application, and assessing its consequences are related tasks, each with its own demands. The internal consistency of a legal construction does not eliminate the need to ask what it helps us understand—or what it fails to grasp about human experience.

The reader might object: what about acclaimed research, highly rated academic programs, and centers of excellence?

The objection deserves consideration. Academic recognition can reflect rigorous work and a meaningful contribution. No intellectual community can dispense with standards of evaluation. But the evaluator’s judgment must itself remain open to examination.

An institution may accurately recognize a work’s conformity to its standards while inadequately assessing the importance of the question it asks. It may reward a technically sophisticated answer without noticing that the decisive problem has been left outside the inquiry.

The persistence of poverty, violence, and exclusion does not demonstrate the absence of excellent research. Between knowledge and transformation lie political decisions, resources, interests, and structures of power. It would be unfair to expect universities alone to resolve conditions that an entire society produces and reproduces.

It is nevertheless legitimate to ask how much of their excellence consists in expanding our ability to understand these problems—and how much of their prestige derives from successfully reproducing the standards by which they recognize their own achievements.

This question does not pass judgment on all research. It prevents institutional judgment from closing the question.

It is here that reading Hans-Georg Gadamer, particularly his recovery of Vico in Truth and Method, remains fruitful.

In discussing sensus communis and the humanistic ideal of eloquentia, Gadamer brings forms of understanding rooted in shared life back into consideration. Common sense, in this context, should not be confused with prevailing opinion. It concerns the cultivation of judgment in a world we inhabit with others, where we must deliberate without always possessing the certainty of a demonstration.

Eloquence likewise extends beyond verbal ornament. Speaking well requires discerning what deserves to be said, to whom, under what circumstances, and on what grounds. At its most demanding, it brings together language, judgment, and responsibility.

In 2004, I was surprised to encounter the ancient dispute between rhetoric and philosophy. That surprise remains instructive. What I had regarded as a naturally harmonious relationship revealed itself as a field of controversy over human cultivation and the wisdom required for public life.

This dispute does not justify choosing persuasion as a substitute for truth. Rhetoric can illuminate, and it can manipulate. Its recovery requires standards: fidelity to facts, willingness to answer objections, explicit acknowledgment of assumptions, and respect for the listener’s capacity for judgment.

Responsible argument must admit the possibility of yielding to better reasons.

Criticism of legal formalism also becomes stronger when it accurately addresses what it seeks to challenge. The methodological purity proposed by Kelsen seeks to delimit the object of legal science and distinguish it from moral evaluations, political programs, and explanations drawn from other disciplines. This delimitation has an intellectual purpose that must be understood before it can be criticized.

The question that interests me remains: how far does this separation clarify law, and at what point does it become insufficient for understanding law as a human practice?

A theory may legitimately delimit its object. The difficulty begins when its interpreters turn that delimitation into an exhaustive account of legal reality. A selected perspective then comes to be mistaken for the whole.

Law exists in institutions, decisions, conflicts, and expectations. Its concepts organize experience and produce consequences. An inquiry into its normative structure can be rigorous and indispensable without exhausting questions about its interpretation, legitimacy, or effects.

In 2026, this discussion takes on renewed urgency.

Algorithmic systems and artificial intelligence tools expand our ability to organize information, recognize patterns, and produce texts. They also make it easier to present answers that convey an appearance of mastery before the question has been adequately examined.

A fluent answer can inspire confidence. A precise indicator can suggest a scope it does not possess. The uniform application of a procedure can make the human choices embedded in its design less visible.

The old question returns: who defined the problem, selected the data, established the criteria, and decided what would count as a satisfactory answer?

The greater our capacity to automate operations, the greater our responsibility to examine their assumptions. The ready availability of answers makes the cultivation of people capable of questioning, interpreting, and exercising judgment more valuable still.

The continuing relevance of the humanistic tradition therefore rests on our ability to guide the use of technology with discernment.

The social responsibility of knowledge must also be formulated carefully. A discovery does not become true because it is popular, nor does it lose its value because it produces no immediate benefit. The consequences of some research emerge only much later.

Even so, it is reasonable to expect those who produce and apply knowledge to make its limits explicit and remain answerable for the consequences of its use. One justification for intellectual autonomy lies in the freedom to ask uncomfortable questions, including questions about the institutions that sustain it.

I therefore propose that we examine methods’ claims to exclusivity and the authority we assign to them. Let us preserve rigor while broadening our understanding of its forms. Let us recognize the contributions of demonstration, empirical inquiry, historical interpretation, and practical argument, requiring each to offer justifications appropriate to what it seeks to know.

The verdict on methodologism must remain faithful to the openness it demands: no procedure deserves immunity from criticism, and no criticism is excused from offering reasons.

I continue to recommend Truth and Method. My engagement with Gadamer remains a developing dialogue, in which agreement also requires understanding the limits of that agreement.

The beauty of learning lies in this willingness. We learn when we acquire answers, but also when we discover that our questions were too narrow.

An intellectual community matures when it can turn that discovery into practice: acknowledging what it knows, answering for what it claims, and preserving room for what it has yet to understand.