Gradual thinking. Yan Thomas against ontology

Abstract

An element that characterizes Yan Thomas’ intellectual path consists in an uncompromising refusal to think law by absolute concepts which form something given, acquired at once forever, whereas the juridical institutions are only constructions by degrees, which essence does not depend on the not quantifiable but rather on the measurable in diverse stadiums. By studying majesty or kinship, Yan Thomas made of this movement by progressive approaches a remarkable, if not main, attribute of his comprehension of law. Pulverized in its tiniest fragments, the institution reveals its operational force while becoming emancipated from the hypostatized representation of power that she personifies to the eyes of the juridical and political philosophy, and also from certain sociological critique. Taken in the moulds of law, the institution is only a name that includes a series of proximities between different elements. To represent the institution, for Thomas, depends on a metrological operation governed by a nominalist conception of social facts.