Law and Philosophy in a Cross-Cultural Perspective
A.Y. 2020/2021
Learning objectives
The ability to detach themselves from a western-centric attitude when dealing with non-western or ancient legal phenomena as well as the ability to understand them in accordance to their own structure, principles, or institutions, without coercing them into our familiar categories.
Expected learning outcomes
A - Acquaintance with some non-Western legal institutions and ability to analyze them.
B - Ability to find - if any - comparable legal institutions in Western and non-Western legal traditions by searching for "family resemblances" (Wittgenstein) and/or "invariants" (Reinach).
C - Ability to assess critically legal institutions regardless of their Western or non-Western origin, along with the ability to analyze the same legal institution from different perspectives.
D - Ability to discuss legal institutions with people from all over the world without Western-centric biases.
E - The diversity of approaches that will be presented during this course will enable the student to better learn the functioning and the structure of new or alien legal institutions.
B - Ability to find - if any - comparable legal institutions in Western and non-Western legal traditions by searching for "family resemblances" (Wittgenstein) and/or "invariants" (Reinach).
C - Ability to assess critically legal institutions regardless of their Western or non-Western origin, along with the ability to analyze the same legal institution from different perspectives.
D - Ability to discuss legal institutions with people from all over the world without Western-centric biases.
E - The diversity of approaches that will be presented during this course will enable the student to better learn the functioning and the structure of new or alien legal institutions.
Lesson period: Second semester
Assessment methods: Esame
Assessment result: voto verbalizzato in trentesimi
Single course
This course cannot be attended as a single course. Please check our list of single courses to find the ones available for enrolment.
Course syllabus and organization
Single session
Responsible
Lesson period
Second semester
Teaching methods
Classes will be live-streamed on Microsoft Teams, following the lessons timetable. Live-streamed classes will be recorded and will be available to students on the same platform.
Relevant information about how to join the classes on Microsoft Teams and other instructions will be available on the Ariel website of the course. Please browse it regularly.
Course syllabus and Teaching Resources (reference material)
The course syllabus and reference material are unchanged.
Learning assessment methods
There will be no changes to the methods for assessing learning and the assessment criteria.
The examination will take place orally on Microsoft Teams.
Should the health situation allow it, subject to the availability of classrooms and the necessary safety conditions, the examination will take place in the classroom.
However, students who are unable to travel from their place of residence and/or domicile will be able to take the examination remotely.
Further information and updates will be made available on the course ARIEL website. It is therefore recommended that students check the Ariel website regularly.
Classes will be live-streamed on Microsoft Teams, following the lessons timetable. Live-streamed classes will be recorded and will be available to students on the same platform.
Relevant information about how to join the classes on Microsoft Teams and other instructions will be available on the Ariel website of the course. Please browse it regularly.
Course syllabus and Teaching Resources (reference material)
The course syllabus and reference material are unchanged.
Learning assessment methods
There will be no changes to the methods for assessing learning and the assessment criteria.
The examination will take place orally on Microsoft Teams.
Should the health situation allow it, subject to the availability of classrooms and the necessary safety conditions, the examination will take place in the classroom.
However, students who are unable to travel from their place of residence and/or domicile will be able to take the examination remotely.
Further information and updates will be made available on the course ARIEL website. It is therefore recommended that students check the Ariel website regularly.
Course syllabus
This course aims at training a jurist for a globalized world where the Western legal categories - chiefly those of civil and common law - often get exported or trans-planted into alien legal traditions not seldom with unintended consequences that are hardly predictable in advance. Further, in a legally globalized world the jurist will be often confronted with legal institutions that are completely incommensurable with Western institutions. By having recourse to a philosophical approach (understood as a search for questions rather than a search for answers, as well as an invitation to what Ancient Greeks called thaumázein, that is, being surprised by phenomena, in turn, understood as a preliminary stage to their critical understanding), students will be sensitized, on the one hand, to the relativity of some Western legal institutions, on the other hand, to the possibility of some human legal universals, some of which sometimes can be traced even among non-human animals. In this way the student will develop a non-Western-centric approach to new or alien legal problems.
During the course texts by legal philosophers as well as by legal sociologists, anthro-pologists, psychologists and ethologists, will be assigned and critically discussed. Attention will be devoted to relativism, in general, and, in particular, to some legal institutions like revenge, punishment, promise, property, person and status groups, as well as sexual and other taboos.
Analytical program
1. Western-centric vs. non-Western-centric conceptions of legal phenomena
2. Relativism
3. Revenge and vindicatory justice
4. Punishment
5. Promises
6. Property
7. Person and status groups
8. Sexual and other taboos
9. Physiology vs. pathology of legal phenomena: search for law outside legal courts
10. Non-human legal phenomena
During the course texts by legal philosophers as well as by legal sociologists, anthro-pologists, psychologists and ethologists, will be assigned and critically discussed. Attention will be devoted to relativism, in general, and, in particular, to some legal institutions like revenge, punishment, promise, property, person and status groups, as well as sexual and other taboos.
Analytical program
1. Western-centric vs. non-Western-centric conceptions of legal phenomena
2. Relativism
3. Revenge and vindicatory justice
4. Punishment
5. Promises
6. Property
7. Person and status groups
8. Sexual and other taboos
9. Physiology vs. pathology of legal phenomena: search for law outside legal courts
10. Non-human legal phenomena
Prerequisites for admission
None
Teaching methods
Classroom-taught lessons.
Teaching Resources
They will be provided by the instructors at the beginning of the course.
Assessment methods and Criteria
Presentations and discussions.
IUS/20 - PHILOSOPHY OF LAW - University credits: 6
Lessons: 42 hours
Professors:
Di Lucia Paolo Umberto Maria, Fittipaldi Edoardo
Professor(s)