1 Law as language (in contemporary analytic philosophy) 1 J.J. Moreso and Samuele Chilovi Suppose that at t the Master says to the Slave !φ; and suppose that the sphere of permissibility just before t contains some worlds, accessible at t, where φ is false at t. Then the sphere must contract to cut those worlds out: at t, and thereafter at least until the next change, none of those worlds are permissible. If the Master changes the sphere in this way by saying !φ, we say that the Master commands that φ. D. Lewis (1979a), ‘A problem about permission’ 1. Introduction According to the approach to ontology that has been pursued within the analytic tradition in philosophy at least since Quine (1948), the ontological question about some candidate entity x can be stated in English with three words – ‘does x exist?’ – and answered with one. 2 Since in this tradition ontological questions are conceived as existence questions, to inquire into the ontology of something is first and foremost to ask whether that thing exists. Given that in principle one may ask the ontological question with respect to anything, it is natural to think of the subject matter of 1 This paper is the translation of the penultimate draft of ‘Il diritto come linguaggio (nella filosofia analitica contemporanea)’, to appear in G. Bongiovanni, G. Pino, C. Roversi (eds.), Che cosa è il diritto. Ontologie e concezioni del giuridico, Giappichelli, Torino, 2016. Section 4 of the original version has been omitted, and the published version is significantly different; for in-depth study we recommend readers to consult the official version. The text is conceived as a textbook introduction to the subject for law students. 2 Actually, according to Quine the question of ontology should be stated in quantificational idiom; but then, since for him existence is the same as being, and “to be is to be the value of a bound variable” (Quine 1939: 708), it is not inaccurate to ascribe to him the view that ontological questions are existence questions.