Law & Philosophy

Academic [insider]  joke:

What happens when philosophers turn bad?

                -They become lawyers and politicians.

 

So it is quite true that in professional, practical disciplines, such as (and not limited to) law, business, medicine, and of course politics, as a prerequisite for theory you must learn rhetoric/argument so as to give a foundation for communicating certain elements. But now, more than ever, theory is insufficient. Rhetoric seems to lack an ethical dimension, as it only teaches you how to dress up, so to speak, your argument, allowing you to say something in many different ways (in some instances, warping the entire meaning). So now in addition to learning the basics of say, marketing strategies, business schools now offer a a required course of so-called “business ethics”. I do not mean (at least, not directly) to poo-poo the marketing industry, but really that’s just BS. There is no such things as “ethics” in marketing. When all else narrows down, monetary profit is what really drives the industry. 

Anyways. So what I was trying to get at, is really that when students of philosophy get tired of the seemingly endless formulations and reformulations of life and its phenomena, they drop out and go into law. Really, what law is, is a more practical form diverged from philosophical theory. This can be traced back to Ancient Athens and the establishment of the city-states. Socrates was the paradoxical epitome of this division between the philosopher and the political arena. 

It is interesting to note that students of law and politics all read the same basics as those in philosophy: they have to read Plato’s Republic where Socrates discusses what constitutes the perfect state, and Aristotle’s Rhetoric of how to formulate a good argument. This is not an accident. 

I dare to venture that it is philosophers that know how to make a better, more well-rounded argument than lawyers. At the same time, there is a great difference between them. That is, I truly believe that philosophy has intrinsically an ethical dimension to it. That is not to say that lawyers do not, but because they have to argue for both sides of the case, there is bound to be something lacking of truth–it is more flowery rhetoric than genuine understanding.