Homo Iuridicus versus Zoon Politikon — Legal dogmatics and the production of the (political) subject

Abstract

The reflection on the political nature of law and jurisprudence seems to be dominated by the view that the political precedes (chronologically or structurally) the law. Hence the antagonisms of the political sphere, shape the law and its phenomena (legal practice and jurisprudence). How-ever, the thesis about the primacy of the political can be verified by means of an analysis initiated by the perverse question about juridical conditions, without which the political par excellence is not possible. The reflection on the icon of Zoon Politikon reveals the condition of the political in the form of subjectivity of participants of the political sphere, while reaching for the psychoanalytical theory of J. Lacan allows the capture of the psychodynamics of the subjectivity genesis in the case of the “talking animal” (Zoon Logon Echon). The introduction of the Prohibition (Symbolic as coded in law) turns out to be a sine qua non condition of human subjectivity. According to Pierre Legendre, in contemporary society legal dogmatics reproduce the subjectivity-making prohibition, and thus “produces” man: Homo Iuridius, and “establishes his life”. At the end, law and legal dog-matics must be recognized as the condition for the emergence of the (political) subject, and thus the political itself.