France's most incisive jurist, Alain Supiot . has renewed the idea that all significant belief-systems require a dogmatic foundation by focusing its beam sharply, to the discomfort of their devotees, on the two most cherished creeds of our time: the cults of the free markets and of human rights.

- Perry Anderson, London Review of Books

Alain Supiot develops an original and ambitious approach of the place and role of the law for man with the curiosity and audacity of an anthropologist, but all the while avoiding thetrap of universalism... The use of an anthropological wide-focus lens furnishes him with a wealth of observations which ground a high-calibre reflection, rigorously documented with examples drawn from the legal domain.

Études

After centuries of triumphalism on behalf of homo economicus, one had given up hope of hearing one day about homo juridicus. We can only congratulate Alain Supiot for this work which defends the anthropological function of the law, reminding us that the human being is a metaphysical animal which exists not only in thew universe of things (the economic) but also in a universe of signs.

Revue trimestrielle de droit civil