Description
In the context of our increasingly global legal order, Pierre Legendre’s God in the Mirror reconsiders the place of law within the division of existing bodies of knowledge. Navigating the texts of Ovid, Augustine, Roman jurists, medieval canon lawyers, Freud, Lacan, the notebooks of Leonardo de Vinci, and the paintings of Magritte, this third volume of Pierre Legendre’s Lessons focuses on the relation of the subject to the institution of images. Legendre tracks the origins and vicissitudes of the specular metaphor within western history, carrying out a critique of its dependence on the discourse of the Imago Dei. A crucial landmark within Legendre’s ongoing reconsideration of a medieval ‘revolution of interpretation’, this book dissociates the western normative tradition from its mythic foundation, separating theology and law. It thereby documents the advent of modern rational doubt, as a new legal foundation or ground: one that, for Legendre, was not only a revolutionary invention, but one that produced the modern European idea of the State.
Table of Contents
Prologue. To fabricate man so that he resembles man: The question of images and the reproduction of humanity Chapter 1. The constitutive alienation of the subject: Prolegomena to every theory of the image Chapter 2. The relational nature of identity and society: Remarks on the deployment of the mythological function Aside Chapter 3. ‘Id efficit, quod figurat’ (The efficient is the symbol): Social constitution of the word and the normative emergence of images Conclusion. The link of the image: link to the foundations of the image
