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Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
  
  
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Conclusion. Millennia intervene between the death
of a boy accidentally impaled on a javelin hurled by
Olympic games athletes in ancient Greece and a mod-
ern spectator struck on the head by a flying puck in
a hockey arena. But the determination of legal causa-
tion is still as difficult in either case. Today the specta-
tor at the hockey game is said to have “legally” caused
his own harm by “voluntary assumption of the risk.”
The Greeks said the boy caused his own death by
running upon the javelin.

Modern doctrine attempts to ease the burden of the
individual human being immediately or directly caus-
ing injury by shifting loss on those more able to pay
or more likely to be able to pass the loss on by in-
surance and thence ultimately to the consuming public
in the form of higher prices.

Thus we see that while physical causation is still
thought to be basic, it is the notion of purposive causa-
tion, and of legal policy (the law's purposes) that mod-
ern lawyers think of when the idea of legal causation
comes to mind.