Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T23:18:34.953Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Toward an Oppositional Postmodern Understanding of Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 October 2020

Boaventura de Sousa Santos
Affiliation:
Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal
Get access

Summary

In this chapter, I argue that the conversion of modern law into scientific state-centered law went hand in hand with the conversion of modern science into a hegemonic rationality and a central productive force. I concentrate in the gradual process whereby modern law came to be dominated by science and the state. I claim that in this process law lost sight of the tension between social regulation and social emancipation that was imprinted in its roots in the paradigm of modernity. The loss was so thorough and irreversible that the recovery of the emancipatory energies called for in this book must involve a radical unthinking of modern law. The first section analyzes the original imprint of the tension between regulation and emancipation in modern law, selecting three of its major moments: the reception of the Roman law, the rationalist natural law, and the theories of the social contract. In the second section, I analyze the historical process by which this tension was eliminated by the collapse of emancipation into regulation, distinguishing among three periods of capitalist development: liberal capitalism, organized capitalism, and disorganized capitalism. Finally, I state the major topics for the unthinking of law in the transition between social paradigms.

Type
Chapter
Information
Toward a New Legal Common Sense
Law, Globalization, and Emancipation
, pp. 24 - 98
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×