ILUZJE PRAWNICZEGO ROZUMU. O SPOŁECZNYCH WARUNKACH PRAKTYK (BEZ)REFLEKSYJNYCH
ILLUSIONS OF THE LEGAL MIND ON THE SOCIAL CONDITIONS OF NON-REFLEXIVE PRACTICES

Summary/Abstract: Reflexivity is one of the main narratives in the contemporary scientific and legal discourses. A common characteristic of thus oriented approaches is their purely theoretic character. Pierre Bourdieu’s empirically grounded reflexive sociology questions the alleged reflexivity of an ‘ordinary’ agent’s actions, while attempting to explain the social conditions that need to occur for a real reflexivity of the intellectuals to come about. The purpose of this paper is to present conditions that hinder, or prevent the carrying out of fully reflexively oriented research of law. Firstly, it explains that individuals acting in the world almost always employ an embodied ‘practical sense’ – mental schemata and schemata of action developed in the process of socialisation. Secondly, the paper proves that subject’s (also a lawyer-researcher) way of thinking is a result of his or her position within a social structure (in the field of law). Thirdly, it is shown that the illusion of a fully distanced mind is a special kind of disposition of an intellectual – a disposition that prevents him or her from recognising the social conditions of her thinking. It is stipulated that what reflexively oriented research of law needs is not only the objectification of the research subject, but also a critical analysis of the researcher’s standpoint. For a lawyer his would mean, among others, the awareness of their entanglement in dogmas acquired in the course of their education, objectification of practice-derived experiences, or confrontation with subjects from outside of the legal field (eg. sociologiests).

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