Anything goes in private law theory? : on the epistemic and ontological commitments of private law multi-pluralism

Abstract

This article argues that the New Private Law Theory (NPLT) recently proposed by Grundmann, Micklitz, and Renner is radically multi-pluralist, in that it combines pluralism along a multitude of dimensions with the absence of any organizing or constraining principle on the meta level. Consequently, the NPLT makes no epistemic commitments about private law truth or ontological commitments about private law reality. The article raises the question of whether a theory which makes no such commitments is a theory at all. Indeed, a site where quite divergent epistemic and ontological commitments are equally acceptable is not usually referred to as a theory but as a democracy. Therefore, the article discusses how NPLT could be turned into a democratic theory of private law. It concludes that to that end, NPLT’s selection of materials should be more diverse, in particular, less economically oriented, less Eurocentric, and more inclusive of various critical perspectives.