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Abstract
In the context of an epistemological revolution that subverts traditional juridical science, and that places “feeling” at the center of the reflection on the homo juridicus, Aesthetics opens a path to a more complex elaboration of sense that guides human behavior. The general goal of this article is to contribute to the development of an Aesthetics of Law that uses Law and Humanities as a methodology addressed primarily to jurists to experience sense.
More specifically, my first aim is to clarify the concepts of sense and form that interest us, by holding together both the rational qualities and the affective and sensory feelings of human intelligence that influence the experience of living. Moreover, I intend to highlight the link between Ethics and Aesthetics and between feeling and law, to approach legal norm as an aesthetic object, as a form open to the quest for sense, where the quest for sense is a search for justice and the common good. Finally, I propose an exercise of Law and Humanities, imagining two encounters experienced in front of the Annunciation by Beato Angelico and the Annunciation of Mary by Rainer Maria Rilke, respectively, to show how jurists can cultivate their sensibilities through contact with artworks.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Cf. Greta Olson, “Futures of Law and Literature. A Preliminary Overview from a Culturalist Perspective,” in Recht und Literatur im Zwischenraum/Law and Literature In-Between: Aktuelle inter- und transdisziplinäre Zugänge/Contemporary Inter- and Transdisciplinary Approaches, eds. C. Hiebaum, S. Knaller and D. Pichler (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2015): 37–69.
2 Cf. Guyora Binder and Richard Weisberg, Literary Criticism of Law (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
3 Cf. James Boyd White, “Establishing Relations between Law and Other Forms of Thought and Language,” Erasmus Law Review 1, no. 3 (2008): 3–22; Alberto Vespaziani, “Towards a Hermeneutical Approach to Legal Metaphor,” in Human Rights, Language and Law, eds. Thomas Bustamante and Oche Onazi (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag und Nomos, 2012), 79–92.
4 Cf. Robert Cover, “The Supreme Court, 1982 Term – Foreword: Nomos and Narrative,” Harvard Law Review 97, no. 4 (1983): 4–68; Robin West, “Communities, Texts, and Law: Reflections on the Law and Literature Movement,” Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities 1, no. 1 (1989): 129–56; François Ost, Raconter la loi. Aux sources de l’imaginaire juridique (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2004); M. Paola Mittica, “The Heart of Law,” No Foundations: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Law and Justice, Special Number on Law’s Justice. A Law and Humanities Perspective 9 (2012): 97–118.
5 Cf. Anthony G. Amsterdam and Jerome Bruner, Minding the Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Flora Di Donato, The Analysis of Legal Cases. A Narrative Approach (London and New York: Routledge, 2019).
6 Cf. Patricia Ewick and Susan Silbey, The Common Place of Law: Stories of Popular Legal Consciousness (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
7 Lynn Mather, “Law and Society,” in The Oxford Handbook of Political Science, ed. Robert E. Goodin (New York: Oxford University Press, Online Publication Date: Sep 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199604456.013.0015).
8 Cf. Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnometodology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967).
9 Cf. Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973).
10 Gary Minda, Postmodern Legal Movements. Law and Jurisprudence at Century’s End (New York: New York University Press, 1995).
11 Cf. Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error. 10th Anniversary Edition, with a New Author Preface (Penguin Random House, 2005).
12 Cf. Amy Coplan and Peter Goldie, eds., Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
13 Martha C. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought. The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
14 Toni M. Massaro, “Empathy, Legal Storytelling, and the Rule of Law: New Words, Old Wounds?” Michigan Law Review 87 (1989): 2099; Marianne Constable, Just Silences: The Limits and Possibilities of Modern Law (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); Martin L. Hoffman, “Empathy, Justice, and the Law,” in Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives, ed. Amy Coplan and Peter Goldie (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 230–54; Mortimer N. S. Sellers, ed., Law, Reason, and Emotion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); François Ost, Le droit, objet de passions? (Bruxelles: Académie royale de Belgique, 2018).
15 Cf. Lionel Bently and Leo Finn, eds., Law and the Senses: Sensational Jurisprudence (London: Pluto Press, 1996); Alan Hyde, Bodies of Law (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); David Howes and Constance Classen, eds., Ways of Sensing. Understanding the Senses In Society (London and New York: Routledge, 2013); Sheryl N. Hamilton, Diana Majury, Dawn Moore and Neil Sargent, eds., Sensing Law (London and New York: Routledge, 2017); Andrea Pavoni, Danilo Mandic, Caterina Nirta and Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, eds., TASTE (London: University of Westminster Press, 2018); Ead., SEE (London: University of Westminster Press, 2018); Caterina Nirta, Danilo Mandic, Andrea Pavoni and Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, eds., Touch (London: University of Westminster Press, 2020).
16 Cf. Patricia Branco and Valerio Nitrato Izzo, “Intersections in Law, Culture and the Humanities,” Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais, 112 (2017): 45–72.
17 Paolo Heritier, Estetica giuridica Vol. 1. Primi elementi. Dalla Globalizzazione alla secolarizzazione, Vol. 2. A partire da Legendre. Il fondamento finzionale del diritto positivo (Torino: Giappichelli, 2012); Id. “Law and Image: Towards a Theory in Nomograms,” in Law, Culture and Visual Studies, ed. Richard K. Sherwin and Anne Wagner (Dordrecht-Heidelberg-New York-London: Springer, 2014), 25–48; Daniele Cananzi, Percorsi ermeneutici di filosofia del diritto (Giappichelli: Torino, 2016); Id. Estetica del diritto. Sul fondamento geologico del giuridico (Giappichelli: Torino, 2017); Claudius Messner, “Now This: On the Gradual Production of Justice Whilst Doing Law and Music,” International Journal for the Semiotics of Law 31 (2018): 187–214; Id. “Il diritto, il linguaggio, la musica. Riflessioni sullo statuto estetico del diritto,” in Multimodal argumentation, Pluralism and images in law – Studies on argumentation & legal philosophy/3, eds. Maurizio Manzin, Federico Puppo and Serena Tomasi (Trento: Università degli Studi di Trento, 2018), 317–42; M. Paola Mittica, “Ritmo e trasformazione. Sulla via dell’estetica giuridica,” Materiali per una storia della cultura giuridica XLVII, no. 1 (2017): 67–85; Id. “Senso del sentire. Law and Humanities ed Estetica giuridica,” Rivista di Filosofia del diritto VIII, no. 2 (2019): 441–56.
18 Francesco Remotti, Culture. From complexity to impoverishment (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 20196).
19 Cf. Jerome Bruner, Acts of Meaning (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).
20 Cf. Arnold Gehlen, Man: His Nature and Place in the World New York (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980); Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983); Francesco Remotti, Culture. From complexity to impoverishment (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 20196).
21 Luigi Pareyson, Estetica. Teoria della formatività (Torino: Edizioni di «Filosofia», 1954).
22 Cf. Paul Ricoeur, Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1966), 9.
23 Ibidem.
24 Cf. Jean-Luc Nancy, Corpus (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 15.
25 Cf. Paul Ricoeur, Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1966), 9.
26 “It is the moment when we feel that we are”.
27 Sergio Moravia, “The Enlightenment and the Sciences of Man,” History of Science 18, no. 1 (1980): 247–68.
28 James Boyd White, When Words Lose Their Meaning: Constitutions and Reconstitutions of Language, Character, and Community (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
29 Cf. Aldo Masullo, Paticità e indifferenza (Genova: Il melangolo, 2003), 50–1.
30 Henri Maldiney, “L’esthétique des rythmes,” in Regard, Parole, Espace (Paris: Les éditions du Cerf, 2012), 201–30.
31 Cf. Roberto Calasso, The Celestial Hunter (London: Penguin, 2020).
32 Cf. Franco Crespi, Imparare ad esistere (Roma: Donzelli, 1994), 41.
33 François Ost, Le droit, objet de passions? (Bruxelles: Académie royale de Belgique, 2018).
34 Paolo Heritier, “Giustizia affettiva, metodo retorico, neuroscienze: un itinerario tra Aristotele e Vico a partire da Alessandro Giuliani,” in Deontologia del fondamento (Torino: Giappichelli, 2016), 91–34.
35 Cf. Daniele Cananzi, Estetica del diritto. Sul fondamento geologico del giuridico (Giappichelli: Torino, 2017), 15.
36 Ibidem.
37 Ivi: 65.
38 M. Paola Mittica, “Ritmo e trasformazione. Sulla via dell’estetica giuridica,” Materiali per una storia della cultura giuridica XLVII, no. 1 (2017): 67–85.
39 Henri Maldiney, “L’esthétique des rythmes,” in Regard, Parole, Espace (Paris: Les éditions du Cerf, 2012), 201–30.
40 Cf. Angelo Andreotti, Il nascosto dell’opera. Frammenti sull’eticità dell’arte (Ancona: Italic, 2018).
41 Cf. Jean-Luc Nancy, The Muses (Redwood, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), 60, 61.
42 Cf. Sergio Givone, Prima lezione di estetica (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2003).
43 Cf. Henri Focillon, The Life of Form in Art (Cambridge, MA and London: Zone Books, 1992).
44 François Jullien, L’écart et l’entre (Paris: Galilée, 2012).
45 Rainer Maria Rilke, Annunciation to Mary in The Life of the Virgin Mary: A Cycle of Poems, translation by Christine McNeill's (Dublin: Dedalus Press, 2003). We don't know if he really wrote this poem inspired by Beato Angelico's fresco, but he seems to have this image in his eyes.
46 Jean-Luc Nancy, The Muses (Redwood, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
M. Paola Mittica
M. Paola Mittica is Professor in Philosophy and Sociology of Law at the Law Department - University of Urbino. She coordinates the ISLL - Italian Society for Law and Literature with Carla Faralli (University of Bologna). She is interested in problematical aspects of the origin and essence of formal and informal law, taken from ancient Greek sources. She has written on the Odyssey, the Oresteia, the value of mousiké at the origin of Western legal culture and on other issues. In recent years she has been dealing with the intersections between Law, Aesthetics and Law and Humanities.