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Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

antilegalism en · NOUN

Etymology

From anti- + legalism.

Meanings

  1. A belief that salvation is attained or maintained not just by adherence to the requirements of moral law, but also by worship, faith, or grace.
    • Near-synonym: nonlegalism
    • In this coinage of the great apostle extremes meet; legalism and antilegalism; legalism in so far as it implies that God, as the Judaists contended demanded righteousness from all, antilegalism in so fare as it implies that the righteousness which God demands he at the same time bestows. 1896, William Rainey Harper, Ernest DeWitt Burton, Shailer Mathews, The Biblical World - Volume 7, page 10:
  2. (qualifier:political philosophy) An opposition to slavishly following the law, especially the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law; sometimes also an attitude that questions the legitimacy of the legal system and the judicial infrastructure.
    • For many commentatiors, antilegalism is a characteristic trait of Hegelianism, which thus finds itself far from the dominant opinion within postrevolutionary political philosophy, which saw rights as the inalienable condition of political freedom. 2018, Jean-François Kervégan, The Actual and the Rational: Hegel and Objective Spirit, page 27:
    • Those symbols and images of acts of civil disobedience that can turn a nation toward a better and more moral future path, in turn, merged seamlessly with the near mythic antilegalism of our Consitution, and its First and Fourteenth Amendments that target oppresive and discriminatory law, to eventually feed a narrative of civil rights as not only birthed by disobedience but as being in toto antithetical to law, and aligned instead with consitutionalism's most non-civic and atomistic inclinations. 2019, Robin West, Civil Rights: Rethinking their Natural Foundation, page 257:
    • Near-synonym: nonlegalism
    • Understanding antilegalism in this manner helps us to read French legal dramas in a different way. 2014, Michael Asimow, Kathryn Brown, David Papke, Law and Popular Culture: International Perspectives, page 328:

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
anti-legalism alternative lexicographic

Antonyms

legalism · legalism · nomism

Coordinates

universalism · Christian Universalism

Relateds

antilegal · against the law · legalistic

Synonyms

antinomism · antinomianism · nonlegalism · solifidianism · nonlegalism