Introduction

pp. 1-18

in: William Hamrick, An existential phenomenology of law, Berlin, Springer, 1987

Abstract

The following pages attempt to develop the main outlines of an existential phenomenology of law within the context of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the social world. In so doing, the essay addresses the rather narrow scholarly question, If Merleau-Ponty had written a phenomenology of law, what would it have looked like? But this scholarly enterprise, although impeccable in itself, is also transcended by a more complicated concern for a very different sort of question. Namely, if Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological descriptions of the social world are correct—as I believe they largely are—then what are the philosophical consequences for an adequate understanding of law?