Every specific discipline has its philosophical components, though doctrinal studies often don’t explore it much – maybe for good reason, because philosophy often wanders through uncertain and distracting territory.
Stijn Voogt
Law and Philosophy
What do you do now?
I’m currently doing a PhD at Erasmus School of Law. My research explores the relationship between the rule of law, a complex normative ideal within legal and political theory, and the widespread phenomenon of bureaucracy.
Interesting subject. What do you think philosophy has added to your education?
Have you ever heard of the difference between hedgehogs and foxes that Isaiah Berlin wrote about? It’s based on a Greek allegory. The fox knows many little things, whereas the hedgehog knows one big thing. As a law student, I learned one main thing – how to distinguish between de facto and de jure. As a philosophy student, I learned to think from a variety of different perspectives. I learned to think like a fox.
Now a difficult one. What is philosophy?
Notoriously difficult, yes. If I had to come up with an answer, I would say: philosophy is the constant reformulation of questions. So, if I may reformulate your question, I would rather ask: What does philosophy do, rather than what it is.
Okay, what does philosophy do?
Well, personally, it urges me to think and helps me to think together. That is, thinking together with others, but also thinking together divergent disciplines, theories, and concepts. For example, my own research is the product of a thinking-together of two concepts that are somewhat at odds with each other and yet belong together.
Studying the rule of law in relation to bureaucracy makes me picture law as ‘a thing that rules’, just like bureaucracy can be perceived as a particularly legal type of rule – even the “purest type of legal rule” as Max Weber called it. Yet, the rule of law is often defended, and bureaucracy is mostly critiqued. Although most of us would probably like to see bureaucracy minimized from our daily lives and our legal, political, or social organization at large, I research why it creeps up in these domains in the first place.
Aren’t you ever annoyed by bureaucracy then?
Haha, of course I am, and that annoyance might even be one of the main drivers of the research. However, it is important not to have our annoyance misdirected. Complaints about bureaucracy are often mobilized for very different political and ideological causes – from demands for more democracy to less restricted markets and from politicians cutting off branches of public services to tech-giants who claim to propose more efficient alternatives to bureaucracy. It is important to differentiate between these complaints and identify how they generate different conceptions of bureaucracy.
Do you think there’s a special relationship between law and philosophy?
Every specific discipline has its philosophical components, though doctrinal studies often don’t explore it much – maybe for good reason, because philosophy often wanders through uncertain and distracting territory, especially for hedgehogs.
For me, there is a strong connection between law and philosophy. Law structures society, for better or worse. And philosophy provides us with a broad range of lenses through which these structures can be critically assessed.