| Rumbi, thank you for your thoughtful comments. I think your first paragraph is an excellent characterization of my fear - given how easily and successfully I can bullshit, I am afraid that if I am complacent about the kind of work I do in the future, bullshit will be the only thing I'll learn to do well.
I agree with you that the unconscious is a freaky place to dip in, but I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "[the unconscious] doesn't seem to leave us with much ground to stand on." The unconscious doesn't seem to me to be less abstract of a concept than logic. The difference is that we've been socialized to think logically, but we haven't trained ourselves to "harness" the unconscious. The unconscious is what moves us; people remember things emotionally. I think the challenge is training ourselves to be not only "deeply cognizant of just how limited, fragile, and incoherent legal logic is," as you say, but also to be cognizant of how the unconscious drives us. I am only beginning to grasp what this means for us on a personal level as lawyers, who happen to be humans. But I'm not quite sure how to apply these ideas to the institution of law, where bullshit seems to be a particularly strong force.
-- MichelleLuo - 21 Apr 2012 |