1. See Simon Blackburn, Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning (Clarendon Press, 1998) at 84-91.

2. Any metaethical account does involve a metaphysical or ontological element—the question of nature and the existence of moral truths. See David O Brink, Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 1989) at 1.

3. Ronald Dworkin, Law’s Empire (Harvard University Press, 1986) at 85.

4. This is, of course, not at all to suggest that contract theory is any less sophisticated, philosophically, than metaethics or metaphysics—just that the nature of the enterprise does not require engagement with these questions.

5. Diego Panizza, “Political Theory and Jurisprudence in Gentili’s De Iure Belli: The Great Debate Between ‘Theological’ and ‘Humanist’ Perspectives from Vitoria to Grotius” in Pierre-Marie Dupuy & Vincent Chetail, eds, The Roots of International Law (Brill, 2014) 211 at 213.

6. See Shivprasad Swaminathan, “Mos Geometricus and the Common Law Mind: Interrogating Contract Theory” (2019) 82:1 Mod L Rev 46.

7. Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 1985) at 23.

8. See Lewis Carrol, “What the Tortoise Said to Achilles” (1895) 4:14 Mind 278 at 280 (as we shall find out, Euclid makes a return later).

9. See HLA Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford University Press, 1961).

10. Panizza, supra note 5 at 213.

11. See Gerald J Postema, Bentham and the Common Law Tradition (Clarendon Press, 1986) at 69 (to adopt a phrase used by Postema to describe the role of the common law judge).

12. Simon Blackburn, Spreading the Word: Groundings in the Philosophy of Language (Oxford University Press, 1984) at 181-82.

13. Ibid .

14. See Michael Smith, The Moral Problem (Blackwell, 1994) at 7-9.

15. See Christine M Korsgaard et al, The Sources of Normativity, ed by Onora O’Neill (Cambridge University Press, 1996).

16. See Shivprasad Swaminathan, “Projectivism and the Metaethical Foundations of the Normativity of Law” (2016) 7:2 Jurisprudence 231.

17. See Simon Blackburn, Essays in Quasi-Realism (Oxford University Press, 1993) at 52.

18. See Luke Russell, “Two Kinds of Normativity: Korsgaard v Hume” in Charles R Pigden, ed, Hume on Motivation and Virtue (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) 208.

19. See Simon Blackburn, “Majesty of Reason” (2010) 85:1 Philosophy 5.

20. HLA Hart, The Concept of Law, 3d ed by Les Green (Oxford University Press, 2012) at 12.

21. See Blackburn, supra note 17.

22. See George Berkley, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, ed by Jonathan Dancy (Oxford University Press, 1998) Perhaps we could call it an ‘emotive’ word, bereft of descriptive meaning and completely bracket the question of who the ‘real’ sceptic is.

23. See Swaminathan, supra note 16.

24. Ibid.

25. This is a rough rendering of the shape of contract theory. See Section III for a discussion.

26. See Brian Bix, Contract Law: Rules, Theory, and Context (Cambridge University Press, 2012) at 147.

27. See Charles Fried, Contract as Promise: A Theory of Contractual Obligation (Harvard University Press, 1981).

28. See Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, translated by Douglas Smith (Oxford University Press, 1996); Hans Ruin, “Hägerström, Nietzsche and Swedish Nihilism” in Sven Eliaeson, Patricia Mindus & Stephen P Turner, eds, Axel Hägerström and Modern Social Thought (Bardwell Press, 2013) 177.

29. See Max Lyles, A Call for Scientific Purity: Axel Hägerström’s Critique of Legal Science (Rättshistoriskt Bibliotek, 2006).

30. See Kevin Toh, “Hart’s Expressivism and His Benthamite Project” (2005) 11:2 Leg Theory 75; Kevin Toh, “Raz on Detachment, Acceptance and Describability” (2007) 27:3 Oxford J Leg Stud 403.

31. See Alf Ross, Book Review of The Concept of Law by HLA Hart, (1962) 71:6 Yale LJ 1185.

32. See Karl Olivecrona, Law as Fact, 2d ed (Stevens & Sons, 1971) at 165.

33. See John Finnis, “On Hart’s Ways: Law as Reason and Fact” in Matthew Kramer et al, eds, The Legacy of HLA Hart: Legal, Political and Moral Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2008) 3.

34. See HLA Hart, “Who Can Tell Right from Wrong?”, Book Review of Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy by Bernard Williams, The New York Review (17 July 1986) 49. See also Williams, supra note 7.

35. See HLA Hart, Essays on Bentham: Studies in Jurisprudence and Political Theory (Clarendon Press, 1982) at 254.

36. See Hart, supra note 20 at 89-91. Hart, of course, did not mean to deny the live possibility of pathological cases of legal systems where the internal point of view may not be pervasive among citizens. Ibid at 117.

37. See Stephen A Smith, Contract Theory (Oxford University Press, 2004) at 42.

38. Ibid at 43.

39. Ibid at 46, 106.

40. Ibid .

41. See Martijn W Hesselink, “Democratic Contract Law” (2015) 11:2 European Review of Contract Law 81 (for discussion on connection between truth and contract theory).

42. See Bix, supra note 26.

43. See Swaminathan, supra note 6; Martijn W Hesselink, Justifying Contract Law in Europe: Political Philosophies of European Contract Law (Oxford University Press, 2021).

44. See Peter A Alces, A Theory of Contract Law: Empirical Insights and Moral Psychology (Oxford University Press, 2011) at 2.

45. See Hesselink, supra note 41.

46. See Peter Benson, “The Unity of Contract Law” in Peter Benson, ed, The Theory of Contract Law (Cambridge University Press, 2001) 118 [Benson, Theory of Contract Law]. For an overview see Smith, supra note 37 at 140-58; David Winterton, Money Awards in Contract Law (Bloomsbury, 2015) at 9. See also Robert Stevens, Torts and Rights (Oxford University Press, 2007) (an influential rights-based theoretical account of tort law).

47. See Randy E Barnett, “A Consent Theory of Contract” (1986) 86:2 Colum L Rev 269.

48. See PS Atiyah, Promises, Morals, and Law (Clarendon Press, 1981).

49. See Andrew S Gold, “A Property Theory of Contract” (2009) 103:1 Nw UL Rev 1 (transfer of property).

50. See TM Scanlon, “Promises and Contracts” in Benson, Theory of Contract Law, supra note 46 at 86.

51. See Charles Fried, supra note 27.

52. See Anthony T Kronman, “Contract Law and Distributive Justice” (1980) 89:3 Yale LJ 472 (for an account of distributive justice).

53. See Richard Craswell, “Contract Law, Default Rules, and the Philosophy of Promising” (1989) 88:3 Mich L Rev 489; Anthony T Kronman & Richard A Posner, eds, The Economics of Contract Law (Little Brown & Co, 1979); Richard Craswell, “Two Economic Theories of Enforcing Promises” in Benson, Theory of Contract Law, supra note 46 at 19.

54. This is, admittedly, not an exhaustive catalogue. The interpretivist account offered by Steven Smith does not neatly fall into either category. However, arguably, it has a lot more in common with deontological accounts—and it is obviously not consequentialist.

55. See Peter Benson, Justice in Transactions: A Theory of Contract Law (Belknap Press, 2019).

56. This argument does not, however, seek to make cognitivism isomorphic with deductivism. Cognitivism is best seen as the genus of which Euclidian deductivism is the specie.

57. See Smith, supra note 14 at 7-9.

58. Charles Leslie Stevenson, “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms” (1937) 46:181 Mind 14 at 16.

59. See Michael Ridge, “Non-Cognitivist Pragmatics and Stevenson’s ‘Do so as well!’” (2003) 33:4 Canadian Journal of Philosophy 563.

60. See Derek Parfit, “Normativity” in Russ Shafer-Landau, ed, Oxford Studies in Metaethics, vol 1 (Clarendon Press, 2006) 325; Derek Parfit, “Reasons and Motivation” (1997) 71 Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes 99.

61. See Anders Wedberg, A History of Philosophy, 2d ed (Clarendon Press 1982) at 7.

62. Ibid at 32.

63. Ibid at 35. Their works too wear this ambition on their sleeve. Consider, for instance, Galileo’s Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences, and Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. See Galileo Galilei, Two New Sciences, translated by Stillman Drake (Wisconsin University Press, 1974); Isaac Newton, The Principia, translated by I Bernard Cohen & Anne Whitman (University of California Press, 1999); Wedberg, supra note 61 at 35. See also Franz Wieacker, History of Private Law in Europe with a Particular Reference to Germany, translated by Tony Weir (Clarendon Press, 1995) at 203.

64. Gregory S Kavka, Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory (Princeton University Press, 1986) at 5.

65. René Descartes, Key Philosophical Writings (Wordsworth Editions, 1997) at 83.

66. See FA Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty: A New Statement of the Liberal Principles of Justice and Political Economy (Routledge, 1982) at 10.

67. Ibid .

68. Pierre Legrand, “Adjudication as Grammatication: The Case of French Judicial Politics” in Luís Pereira Coutinho, Massimo La Torre & Steven D Smith, eds, Judicial Activism: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the American and European Experiences (Springer, 2015) 47 at 56.

69. Wieacker, supra note 63 at 202.

70. Ibid at 218. See also RC van Caenegem, An Historical Introduction to Private Law, translated by DEL Johnston, (Cambridge University Press, 1992) at 127.

71. Hayek, supra note 66 at 106.

72. See Wieacker, supra note 63 at 218; Maximiliano Hernández Marcos, “Conceptual Aspects of Legal Enlightenment in Europe” in Enrico Pattaro, ed, A Treatise of Legal Philosophy and General Jurisprudence, vol 9 (Springer, 2009) 69 at 98.

73. See FH Lawson, A Common Lawyer Looks at the Civil Law (University of Michigan Law School, 1955) at 31.

74. Wedberg, supra note 61 at 39.

75. Ibid at 38.

76. See van Caenegem, supra note 70 at 127.

77. See MH Hoeflich, “Law & Geometry: Legal Science from Leibniz to Langdell” (1986) 30:2 Am J Leg Hist 95 at 95, 99.

78. Ibid at 101.

79. Ibid at 100.

80. Ibid.

81. See Peter Stein, “Elegance in Law” (1961) 77:2 Law Q Rev 242 at 253.

82. See James Gordley, The Jurists: A Critical History (Oxford University Press, 2013) at 195.

83. Thomas D Musgrave, “Comparative Contractual Remedies” (2009) 34:2 UWA L Rev 300 at 304.

84. See Amalia D Kessler, A Revolution in Commerce: The Parisian Merchant Court and the Rise of Commercial Society in Eighteenth-Century France (Yale University Press, 2007) at 153; Jean-Louise Halperin, “French Legal Science in the 17th and 18th Centuries: To the Limits of the Theory of Law” in Pattaro, supra note 72 at 43.

85. Legrand, supra note 68 at 57. See also Jean Domat, The Civil Law in Its Natural Order, translated by William Strahan (Charles C Little & James Brown, 1850) vol 2 at 510.

86. Hoeflich, supra note 77 at 103.

87. Ibid.

88. Van Caenegem, supra note 70 at 120. See also Legrand, supra note 68 at 55 (the aim was ‘mos geometricus’ which meant to mathematicise law so that adjudication became superfluous).

89. Hoeflich, supra note 77 at 104.

90. Van Caenegem, supra note 70 at 120.

91. See Stein, supra note 81 at 253.

92. See David Ibbetson, “Sir William Jones and the Nature of Law” in Andrew Burrows & Lord Rodger of Earlsferry, eds, Mapping the Law: Essays in Memory of Peter Birks (Oxford University Press, 2006) 619 at 623.

93. Van Caenegem, supra note 70 at 118.

94. Merio Scattola, “Scientia Iuris and Ius Naturae” in Pattarro, supra note 72 at 29.

95. Ibid 28-29.

96. Hoeflich, supra note 77 at 104. See also van Caenegem, supra note 70 at 118.

97. Wieacker, supra note 63 at 230.

98. See Martti Koskenniemi, “Legal Fragmentation(s): An Essay on Fluidity and Form” in Christian Calliess et al, eds, Soziologische Jurisprudenz: Festschrift für Gunther Teubner (De Gruyter, 2009) 795 at 803; Rogelio Pérez-Perdomo, Latin American Lawyers: A Historical Introduction (Stanford University Press, 2006) at 12; Panizza, supra note 5 at 212.

99. Wieacker, supra note 63 at 214.

100. JB Schneewind, Essays on the History of Moral Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2010) at 170. See also Tim J Hochstrasser, Natural Law Theories in Early Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 2000) at 41; Peter Stein, “The Quest for a Systematic Civil Law” (1996) 90 Proceedings of the British Academy 147 at 158.

101. Alberto Artosi, Bernardo Pieri & Giovanni Sartor, eds, Leibniz: Logico-Philosophical Puzzles in the Law (Springer, 2013) at xviii, n 32.

102. See van Caenegem, supra note 70 at 119 (van Caenegem notes that Pufendorf was greatly influenced by “contemporary scientific thought,” ibid ).

103. See Wieacker, supra note 63 at 218 (even Leibniz subscribed to this view); Gordley, supra note 82 at 177.

104. Van Caenegem, supra note 70 at 120.

105. Ibid at 127.

106. See Stein, supra note 100 at 170.

107. Van Caenegem, supra note 70 at 122-23.

108. Ibid at 172-73.

109. See Stein, supra note 100 at 159.

110. Halperin, supra note 84 at 45.

111. See van Caenegem, supra note 70 at 134.

112. Sir Arthur Underhill, Change and Decay: The Recollections and Reflections of an Octogenarian Bencher (Butterworth & Company, 1938), cited in Stephen Waddams “Nineteenth-Century Treatises on English Contract Law” in Angela Fernandez & Markus D Dubber, eds, Law Books in Action: Essays on the Anglo-American Legal Treatise (Hart, 2012) 127 at 133.

113. Roman J Hoyos, “A Province of Jurisprudence?: Invention of a Law of Constitutional Conventions” in Fernandez & Dubber, supra note 112 at 114.

114. AWB Simpson, “The Rise and Fall of the Legal Treatise: Legal Principles and the Forms of Legal Literature” (1981) 48:3 U Chicago L Rev 632 at 680.

115. William Jones, An Essay on the Law of Bailments (J Nichols, 1781) at 123-24, cited in Ibbetson, supra note 92 at 623.

116. See AWB Simpson, Legal Theory and Legal History: Essays on the Common Law, (Hambledon Press, 1987) at 324.

117. In practice, however, they are often woefully underdetermined cases. Consider, for example, the case of will theory and the postal rule in Adams v Lindsell, [1818] EWHC KB J59, (1818) 1 B & Ald 681, 106 ER 250. A deductive application of the will theory did not dictate the postal rule, but the treatise writers persisted with it because it had the backing of Pothier and Savigny. See Gerhard Lubbe “Formation of Contract” in Kenneth Reid & Reinhard Zimmermann, eds, A History of Private Law in Scotland, vol 2 (Oxford University Press, 2000) 1; Shivprasad Swaminathan, “The Will Theorist’s Mailbox: Misunderstanding the Moment of Contract Formation in the Indian Contract Act, 1872” (2018) 39:1 Stat L Rev 14.

118. TFT Plucknett, Early English Legal Literature (Cambridge University Press, 1958) at 19.

119. See AWB Simpson, “Innovation in Nineteenth Century Contract Law” (1975) 91:2 Law Q Rev 247.

120. See Martin Hogg, Promises and Contract Law: Comparative Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 2011) at 87.

121. David Ibbetson, A Historical Introduction to the Law of Obligations (Oxford University Press, 2001) at 220 [Ibbetson, A Historical Introduction]. See also Warren Swain, “The Changing Nature of the Doctrine of Consideration, 1750-1850” (2005) 26:1 J Leg Hist 55; David Ibbetson “English Law Before 1900” in Jan Hallebeek & Harry Dondorp, eds, Contracts for a Third-Party Beneficiary: A Historical and Comparative Account (Martinus Nijhoff, 2008) 93 at 95; Joseph M Perillo, “Robert J Pothier’s Influence on the Common Law of Contract” (2005) 11:2 Tex Wesleyan L Rev 267.

122. Waddams, supra note 112 at 133.

123. See Simpson, supra note 116 at 324.

124. See Warren Swain, The Law of Contract 1670-1870 (Cambridge University Press, 2015) at 183; Simpson, supra note 119.

125. Ibbetson, A Historical Introduction, supra note 121 at 221.

126. Swain, supra note 124 at 202.

127. Simpson, supra note 114 at 665-66.

128. Ibid .

129. See Peter Stein, Legal Evolution: The Story of an Idea (Cambridge University Press, 1980) at 123.

130. See Ibbetson, A Historical Introduction, supra note 121 at 221-244.

131. See Shivprasad Swaminathan, “Dicey and the Brick Maker: An Unresolved Tension between the Rational and the Reasonable in Common Law Pedagogy” 40:2 (2019) Liverpool Law Review 203.

132. See Roscoe Pound, The Formative Era of American Law (Little, Brown & Company, 1938) at 162.

133. See Waddams, supra note 112.

134. Swaminathan, supra note 6 at 50.

135. See ibid at 50; Bix, supra note 26 at 147-48.

136. See Nathan Oman, “Unity and Pluralism in Contract Law”, Book Review of Contract Theory by Stephen A Smith, (2005) 103:6 Mich L Rev 1483 at 1484-85; Roy Kreitner, “On the New Pluralism in Contract Theory” (2012) 45:3 Suffolk University Law Review 915 at 915-16 (describes these theories as based on a ‘single’ justificatory principle).

137. Thomas S Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2d ed (University of Chicago Press, 1970) at 45ff.

138. See R T Shannon, “Seeley, Sir John Robert (1834-1895)” in Lawrence Goldman, ed, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford University Press, 2004) at 12: “We seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind.”

139. Kreitner, supra note 136 at 916.

140. See e.g. James Goudkamp & John Murphy, “The Failure of Universal Theories of Tort Law” (2015) 21:2 Leg Theory 47; Peter A Alces, “Unintelligent Design in Contract Law” (2008) 2008:2 U Ill L Rev 505 at 511; Brian H Bix, “The Promise and Problems of Universal, General Theories of Contract Law” (2017) 30:4 Ratio Juris 391; Swaminathan, supra note 6.

141. See Swaminathan, supra note 6.

142. Gerald G Postema, “Law’s System: The Necessity of System in Common Law” 2014:1 NZLR at 69.

143. Stephen Waddams, Dimensions of Private Law: Categories and Concepts in Anglo-American Legal Reasoning (Cambridge University Press, 2003) at 2.

144. See Hesselink, supra note 43.

145. See Bix, supra note 26 at 159-61.

146. Williams, supra note 7 at 23.

147. Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton University Press, 1979) at 156-58.

148. See Blackburn, supra note 17 at 166.

149. See Francisco J Varela, Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom, and Cognition (Stanford University Press, 1999) at 9; Hubert L Dreyfus, “Overcoming the Myth of the Mental: How Philosophers Can Profit from the Phenomenology of Everyday Expertise” (2005) 79:2 Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 47.

150. JGA Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century, 2d ed (Cambridge University Press, 1987) at 171. See also Hayek, supra note 66 at 98 (this may be because of the fact that judges were principally tasked with maintaining the King’s peace).

151. Postema, supra note 11 at 79.

152. Ibid.

153. See Hart, supra note 20 at 117.

154. David Hume, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, 3d ed by LA Selby-Bigge & PH Nidditch (Oxford University Press, 1975) at 5-6.

155. Ibid at 6.

156. See Luke Russell, “Two Kinds of Normativity: Korsgaard v Hume” in Charles R Pigden, ed, Hume on Motivation and Virtue (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) 208 at 208-09.

157. See RM Hare, Language of Morals (Oxford University Press, 1963) at 145.

158. Matthew Chrisman, “Ethical Expressivism” in Christian B Miller, ed, Bloomsbury Companion to Ethics (Bloomsbury, 2014) 29 at 35.

159. For a discussion on the close connection between analogical reasoning, persuasion, and motivation see Shivprasad Swaminathan, “Analogy Reversed” 80:2 (2021) Cambridge LJ 366.

160. Jonathan Dancy, Ethics Without Principles (Clarendon Press, 2002) at 3.

161. Ibid at 7.

162. Chrisman, supra note 158 at 35.

163. See George Campbell, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (Harper & Brothers, 1841).

164. See Lloyd F Bitzer, “Hume’s Philosophy in George Campbell’s Philosophy of Rhetoric” (1969) 2:3 Philosophy & Rhetoric 139 at 153.

165. See Hume, supra note 154 at 290 (Hume supports this idea of transfer of moral imagination).

166. See Chaïm Perelman & L Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation (Notre Dame Press, 1969) at 107, 219.

167. See Albert R Jonsen & Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (University of California Press, 1988).

168. See Michael H Frost, Introduction to Classical Legal Rhetoric: A Lost Heritage (Ashgate, 2005).

169. See Theodor Viehweg, Topics and Law: A Contribution to Basic Research in Law, translated by W Cole Durham (Peter Lang, 1993).

170. See Swaminathan, supra note 159.

171. Ibid at 385.

172. See Konrad Zweigert & Hein Kötz, An Introduction to Comparative Law, 3d ed (Clarendon Press, 1998) at 259.

173. See Postema, supra note 11 at 69 (to adopt a phrase used by Postema to describe the role of the common law judge).

174. For a discussion see Shivprasad Swaminathan, “What the Centipede Knows: Polycentricity and ‘Theory’ for Common Lawyers” (2020) 40:2 Oxford J Leg Stud 265.

175. See Garry A Muir, “Stipulations for the Payment of Agreed Sums” (1985) 10:3 Sydney L Rev 503. As it so happens, the rule has taken quite a battering recently by the UK Supreme Court in Cavendish Square Holding BV v Talal El Makdessi and its companion case ParkingEye Limited v Beavis, [2015] UKSC 67 [Cavendish]. The distinction between primary and secondary obligations, underlying the old rule, however, continues.

176. Muir, supra note 175 at 518.

177. Ibid at 519.

178. See Mindy Chen-Wishart, “Controlling the Power to Agree Damages” in Peter Birks, ed, Wrongs and Remedies in the Twenty-First Century (Clarendon Press, 1996) 271 at 273 (despite the jolt it gave the doctrine, the court has followed this distinction in Cavendish).

179. See Mindy Chen-Wishart, “Undue Influence: Vindicating Relationships of Influence” (2006) 59:1 Current Leg Probs 231 at 252-59 [Chen-Wishart, “Undue Influence”]. See also Mindy Chen-Wishart, “Legal Transplant and Undue Influence: Lost in Translation or a Working Misunderstanding?” (2013) 62:1 ICLQ 1 at 13 (the author highlights the role played by tacit knowledge in Singaporean law in lending a local trajectory to the doctrine of undue influence).

180. See Chen-Wishart, “Undue Influence”, supra note 179.

181. See Jane Stapleton, Three Essays on Torts (Clarendon Press, 2021).