Law and Politics as Play
Liberal theory fails to cope effectively with the common human tendency, and particularly in circumstances that humans perceive as zero sum games, to brutalize other humans. Liberal theory does not adequately accommodate the reality that humans contest concepts of rights, justice, and truth. The necessarily contextual, contested, and contingent character of substantive liberal principles necessarily prevents them, qua principles, from effectively inhibiting human brutality. Liberal theory also does not take adequate account of the passionate and non-rational character of the human animal. Giambattista Vico’s remarkably prescient and comprehensive eighteenth century vision of the human condition anticipates these two barriers to achieving liberalism’s pacific political and social vision. Vico suggests that the visceral experiences of competitive human play can, and in fact do, displace the political and social conditions and practices that commonly trigger brutal human behavior. Thus framed, the liberal tradition moves humans from righteousness to playfulness. * Professor, The Colorado College. The author earnestly thanks the Rockefeller Foundation and the staff of the Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio, Italy, the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Benezet Foundation at The Colorado College for their research support. Professors Susan Silbey, Thomas Pysczcynski, Robert Lee, the late Richard Rorty, and Jonathan Lee also made particularly important specific contributions to this analysis. Readers will see for themselves how greatly Professor Donald Verene’s writings on Vico contributed to it. Chicago-Kent Law Review Executive Articles Editor Hunter Hogan significantly improved this final product by insisting on substantive and expository precision without sacrificing his much-appreciated enthusiasm for the project itself. Only those who know Marilyn Vickers, a clinical psychologist, will appreciate the full extent of my wife’s immensely important contributions to all aspects of this project. 1334 CHICAGO-KENT LAW REVIEW [Vol 83:3 INTRODUCTION AND NORMATIVE FRAME [Caesar:] And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand. —George Bernard Shaw1 [T]he greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion,—all in one.
Introduction to Recalling Vico's Lament: The Role of Prudence and Rhetoric in Law and Legal Education
This Symposium marks the three-hundredth anniversary of Giambattista Vico’s famous address to the University of Naples, On the Study Methods of Our Time.1 In keeping with the tradition that a professor of rhetoric deliver the inaugural oration for the new school year, Vico delivered this address (his seventh) in 1708; it was published the following year. Vico is justly credited with providing in this address one of the most concise and incisive articulations of the peril of wholesale surrender to Cartesian methodologism, although by this time the intellectual die largely had been cast. Vico readily conceded that the battle of the ancients and moderns was over: the scientific method had proven its superiority in many areas of knowledge and undeniably was an engine for intellectual and technological development. Nevertheless, Vico urged scholars not to discard those elements of the classical tradition that fostered wisdom beyond the narrow confines of technical knowledge. Of greatest significance for this Symposium, Vico argued that the study and practice of law required a cultivation of the wisdom of the ancients regarding the rhetorical arts, and that it would be a great mistake to surrender law to the Cartesian method. As summarized by the translator of the Oration, the “antithesis Vico-Descartes is, at bottom, the contrast between the mentality of the jurist and that of the mathematician, between the spirit of erudition, and that fostered by the ‘exact’ sciences.”2 Vico also challenged the incipient knowledge-based educational methods that reduced education to a form of behavioral conditioning, arguing that education must be constructive, critical, and active. Combined with his attention to law, his Oration suggests that legal education must focus on the cultivation of common sense and prudence, develop the skills of eloquence in deploying this knowledge, ensure that students are engaged actively in this process rather than subjected to the dissemination of
Reconciliation and consolation among chimpanzees
Summary1.After agonistic interactions among chimpanzees, former opponents often come into non-violent body contact. The present paper gives a quantitative description of such contacts among the chimpanzees of a large semi-free-living colony at the Arnhem Zoo, in order to establish whether these post-conflict contacts are of a specific nature.2.Our data indicate that former opponents preferentially make body contact with each other rather than with third partners. They tend to contact each other shortly after the conflict and show special behaviour patterns during these first contacts. Data on contacts of the aggressed party with third animals indicate that such contacts are characterized by the same special behaviour patterns as first interopponent contacts. These patterns are: ‘kiss’, ‘embrace’, ‘hold-out-hand’, ‘submissive vocalization’ and ‘touch’.3.Such interactions apparently serve an important socially homeostatic function and we termed them ‘reconciliation’ (i.e. contact between former opponents) and ‘consolation’ (i.e. contact of the aggressed party with a third animal). According to our data, ‘kissing’ is characteristic of reconciliation and ‘embracing’ of consolation.