Zucca on Seeing Law Feelingly--Humanistic Jurisprudence, Poetic Wisdom, and the Future of Law

Lorenzo Zucca, King's College London, School of Law, has published Seeing Law Feelingly-Humanistic Jurisprudence, Poetic Wisdom, and the Future of Law. Here is the abstract.

Legal philosophy faces an existential crisis. As populism surges, social fractures deepen, and democratic institutions strain under unprecedented pressure, jurisprudence remains paralyzed by what I call the "Barbarism of Reflection"—an excessive rationalism that dissects law while becoming disconnected from its moral and imaginative foundations. Drawing on Giambattista Vico's concept of "poetic wisdom" (sapienza poetica) and Shakespeare's insight that one must "see feelingly," this article proposes Humanistic Jurisprudence as a synthetic framework that transcends the limitations of analytical, critical, and historical approaches to law. Humanistic Jurisprudence operates on three principles: (1) the primacy of creative imagination in shaping legal concepts and institutions; (2) critical reflection on the stories we tell about justice; and (3) genealogical understanding of how power structures have shaped our legal traditions. Rather than privileging analytical clarity as the foundation of legal thought, this approach recognizes that grand visions—born from imaginative engagement with human complexity—precede and inform analysis. The article argues that law's power lies not merely in its logical precision but in its capacity to articulate visions of justice that inspire collective action. Through synthesis of philosophical, literary, and legal historical sources, I demonstrate how jurisprudence can reclaim its poetic dimension without sacrificing intellectual rigor. This transformation is not merely academic: it offers practical frameworks for addressing climate crisis, technological disruption, and the erosion of democratic values—challenges that resist purely analytical solutions. The stakes are clear: either law recovers its imaginative power to shape collective futures, or it risks irrelevance in an age where narrative and myth increasingly determine political reality. Humanistic Jurisprudence provides the theoretical foundation for this recovery, offering legal philosophy a path beyond conceptual puzzles toward engagement with the profound moral and existential questions of our time.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.