Abstract

I wish to bring to the question of the legal subject an interpretative structure, which I imagine as follows: at the centre of this structure is a ‘violent concussion of the substance of the brain’. It emanates along the radius of the ‘optic nerves’, engorging the ducts of the eyes with ‘lachrymal humidities’; and its repercussions are communicated to the entire muscular envelope of the diaphragm. At the surface of this structure are tears of laughter, which are the index not of the equivalence of these affects, but of an ambivalence whose profile is articulated in a very specific polarity: these tears of laughter resemble ‘Democritus heraclitising and Heraclitus democritising’.

How to Cite:

FitzGerald, M., (2007) “Law, play and the self in Aristotle and Vivès”, Law Text Culture 11(1).