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Article
Intellection and Indiscipline
Journal of Law & Society
  • Peter Goodrich, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
Publication Date
1-1-2009
Abstract

A discipline will usually become the object of study and its relationship to other disciplines a moment of concern when its borders are precarious and its definition in dispute. Law, ‘the oldest social science’, is arguably both prior to discipline — it emerges initially and most forcefully as a practice — and without discipline, its object being potentially all human behaviour. If law is necessarily between and among disciplines, both prone to moonlighting and everywhere homeless, it will also always be in some mode of scholarly crisis. Certain conclusions follow. Law is paradoxically dependent upon other disciplines for its access to the domains that it regulates. The greater its epistemic dependency, however, the slighter its political acknowledgment of that subordination. Which allows a positive thesis: the epistemic drift of law can carry the discipline to a frank acknowledgment of the value of indiscipline both to novelty and intellection.

Publisher
Wiley
Disciplines
Citation Information
Peter Goodrich. "Intellection and Indiscipline" Journal of Law & Society Vol. 36 (2009) p. 460
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/peter-goodrich/83/