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Created: January 27, 2003
Latest Update: January 27, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Conceptually Linking Philosophy and Law

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, January 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

This essay offers a good example of conceptual linking.

On Monday, January 27, 2003, Debbol Shenkute wrote:

Dear sir/madam:

My name is Debbol Shenkute.I am a first year law student at Addis Ababa university, Addis Ababa, in Ethiopa.I have a paper on political philosophy and law. Would you please be kind enough to provide some soft copy material on politcal philosphy and law?

Best regards,
Debbol

On Monday, January 27, 2003, jeanne responded:

Hi, Debbol. That's quite a request. Your topic, philosophy and law, covers almost everything I do. When you say soft copy, I suspect you mean that you would like me to make the material accessible on the Internet; is that right? If you could narrow your topic, to give me some idea of what precisely you would like to know, that would help.

For example, the issue of "right" and "wrong," sometimes called "good" and "evil,'" is very much a philosophical issue, in that our definition of human nature. and our understanding of community are part of the structure of values by which we live. On this I should recommend Maria Pia Lara's Moral Textures, some notes for which are available on our site at http://www.habermas.org/lara.htm. Is it more information like that that you're looking for?

The problem of relating such information to the law is one that I refer to as conceptual linking, that is, showing how the "good" or "evil" issue ties in with issues of law. Here, we could consider the definition of crime, which Richard Quinney says is socially defined. That would mean that we who write the law and we who enforce the law would reflect through the law itself our own visions of "good" and "evil." Postmodernism has been accepted today at least to the extent of recognizing that there are many human perspectives, and that the perspective considered "right" is more likely to be supported by "power" than by any overall metatheme of inherent truth. Would this kind of analysis help?

I cc'd this response to others on our teaching team who might also be able to help.
love and peace, jeanne

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