The status quo takes as the basis of every legal system the notion that law is an active directorial force, capable of determining everyone’s conduct, particularly that of lawyers, police and prosecutorial officers, judges, and legislators.
The notion that law is a determinative force is a scientistic attitude, wherein concern is strictly limited to matter in motion. In law the Aristotelian model of the origin of motion is observed, in which human substance is in motion moved by something other than itself, which model is known as the cinesiological principle, wherein language of law is deemed to be a prime mover of persons. However, human ontological freedom is a bird of a different feather, and is not subject to being forcibly moved to action originated by a movent other which is law.
With the publication of Jean Paul Sartre’s (1901-1980) ‘‘Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology’’ (1943), an avant guard model of the mode of origin of human action is cast in the language of non-being/nothingness/negation. Human action is described as arising ex nihilo, wherein all determination to action is of negative origin, in the sense that every human act is predicated upon desideratum, absence, lack, non-being, via a modus operandi dubbed the ‘‘double nihilation’’; and, it is via Sartre’s radically negative theory of the nihilative origin of human action, whereby all positivist materialist causalist theory of the origin of a human act, including that entertained by the jurisprudence of decisional and legislated law, is rendered ontologically unintelligible nonsense.
The blindly mistaken, tacit, universal presupposition that published language of law is determinative of human conduct, is defeasible in the light of Sartre’s description of the human ontologicaI modus operandi of the origin of an act:
Whatever each and every one of us is thinking at this instant, that thought involves an intention to bring to pass what is not yet accomplished.
We humans are a perpetual engagement in negation/nothing/non-being constituting our absent, lacking, intended future action. I am constantly, ineluctably, making, i.e., nihilating, the nothing which constitutes my prefigured intended future act(s).
All human acts originate within a milieu of nothingness, which is precisely the nihilative operation of intentional consciousness determining itself to act; hence, the 1674 dictum declaring “determinatio negatio est”, i.e., “determination is negation”, authored by Baruch Spinoza (1634 -1677), which George Wilhelm Hegel ( 1770-1831), restated as “Omnis determinatio est negatio.”, i.e., “All determination is negation.”.
Jean Paul Sartre, (1901-1980), via employment of Hegel’s restatement of Spinoza’s dictum, explains that what already exists in the world does not, cannot, participate in the originative upsurge of a human act, thus:
” No factual state whatever it may be (the political and economic structure of society, the psychological “state,” etc.) is capable by itself of motivating any act whatsoever. For an act is a projection of the for-itself toward what is not, and what is can in no way determine by itself what is not.” (Sartre, J.P., “Being and Nothingness”, Chapter Four, “Freedom”). And, further: “But if human reality is action, this means evidently that its determination to action is itself action. If we reject this principle, and if we admit that human reality can be determined to action by a prior state of the world or itself, this amounts to putting a given at the beginning of the series. Then these acts disappear as acts in order to give place to a series of movements…The existence of the act implies its autonomy…Furthermore, if the act is not pure motion, it must be defined by an intention. No matter how this intention is considered, it can be only a surpassing of the given toward a result to be attained. This given, in fact, since it is pure presence, can not get out of itself. Precisely because it is, it is fully and solely what it is. Therefore it can not provide the reason for a phenomenon which derives all its meaning from a result to be attained; that is, from a non-existent…This intention, which is the fundamental structure of human reality, can in no case be explained by a given, not even if it is presented as an emanation from a given.” (Sartre, J. P.,”Being and Nothingness”, Chapter Four, “Freedom”].”
Human conduct originates ex nihilo and, never on the basis of a given factual state of affairs, extant law being the cardinal factual state of affairs to which we now mistakenly, delusionally, ascribe a determinative efficacy within our sociosphere.
Human beings are ontologically barred from being determined to action or inaction by given states of affairs.
Only the ‘‘double nihilation’’ is the negation, i.e., the negative process, the means, whereby human action originates/upsurges.
To ‘‘nihilate’’ is to make nothing. Within the double nihilation are contained two negative moments wherein nothing is made such that on the one hand, the present is made nothing by transcending it toward the intended project, and, the intended project, as an absent, lacking, unaccomplished objective, constitutes the other negative moment which is precisely the moment wherein consciousness makes the nothing which is the not yet achieved objective of the intended project.
Human existential absurdity designates givens as cause/motive/determinant of one’s action, while, in reality, ontologically, human action exclusively originates ex nihilo, via consciousnesses’ nihilative capacity. (Sartre, J.P., “Being and Nothingness”, Part Four).
Jurisprudential illusion is an instance of human existential absurdity, wherein the illusion consists in blindly, mistakenly, presupposing given language of law to be determinative of human action and inaction; — jurisprudential illusion is the ontologically unintelligible misconception of mistakenly presupposing given language of law determines one’s acts, and/or, that one determines one’s self to act, or forbear action, by given law. Hence, when a police or prosecutorial officer, magistrate or legislator, tacitly claims to be determining, or determined, to act against any person or persons on the basis of or by given law, that ignorant determinative claim is unintentionally mistaken, dishonest, and dishonorable.
The notion that law is in itself a force determinative of human conduct is mistaken, for human conduct cannot, does not, originate on the basis of given external states of affairs. The universal notion that law is a movent force efficient to move human beings to either action or inaction, is untrue, hence, extant law-based civilization is built upon untruth.