Irony and Metaphor in the Philosophy of Law

Abstract

The present text seeks to develop the idea that the legal discourse – here rhetorically assumed as being at the same time the reflex and the constitution of the legal thought – is constructed, in several features, ironically and metaphorically. What is aimed, thus, is the comprehension, with the study of the figurative language, of the roles of metaphor and more specifically of irony in the practical and theoretical juridical discourse, i.e., in the dogmatic, theoretic and philosophic fields of law. The thesis here to be presented is that the jurist is necessarily an ironist and that judicial thinking is a special form of ironic thinking. The law’s metaphor, thus, must be understood as the irony that presents the certain when there is the doubtful; the predictable when there is only the probable. To think law is to understand it ironically as the metaphor that denies its figurative character.