http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/793912438

Songs without music aesthetic dimensions of law and justice

"Songs Without Music is about the aesthetic dimensions which lie at the heart of law and justice. Aesthetics is the faculty which reacts to the images and sensory input to which we are constantly exposed, and which. by their symbolic associations, significantly influence our values and our society. 'Legal aesthetics' suggests that legal discourse too is fundamentally governed by rhetoric and metaphor, form, images and symbols. This argument involves three steps. First, an aesthetic methodology, sensitive to the form and imagery of legal texts, can illuminate both the meaning and force of law. Second, an aesthetic epistemology helps illuminate the social values which find expression in law as well as the form they take. Social conflict is not just an argument about reasons; it is also a battleground of symbols. Third, taking aesthetics seriously has normative implications. [...] I attempt to develop my argument by aesthetic as well as rational means. Music is the focus for this. Each chapter is based on a different musical form, and each uses music as comparison and metaphor. But more than this, in different ways and in different styles, each chapter embodies a complex of aesthetic resonances which relate to the argument the thesis develops. Songs Without Music has been designed not only to talk about aesthetic meaning, but to embody it." --

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