Law, Ideology, and Society

Let’s stipulate some definitions. Let us consider law as formally stated norms that have either been legislatively enacted as in the case of statutes or that have been developed by successive court rulings as in common law. In either case these norms, those which are stated as law, are considered compulsory and therefore enforceable. Human activity as it develops an awareness of its forms behavior abstracts those forms of behavior to reconstitute them in thought as legal, moral, logical-mathematical, psychological, social, scientific, religious, etc., norms, laws, principles, or whatever. But is only some of those norms of human activity that take on a legal character and enforceability.

These forms of human activity, the norms, principles, concepts, moralities, customs, laws, serve to organize the content and specifics of behaviors as it is applied in situations. By abstraction, we can pull out the form of human activity and distinguish it from the content of that activity. Thus to refer to an object as a “cat” entails a meaning that consists of some content or properties we are conceiving in our representation of this physical object, but less obvious is that this representation is also a mental activity that has an organization, a form that of a logical-mathematical classification system. We can abstract this logical-mathematical form and make it an object of thought eventually developing a formalized representation of it.

This distinction between form and content operates at all levels of behavior whether the forms consist of simple repeatable and generalizable schemes of sensory-motor behavior that operate without cognitive awareness or whether forms develop in mental activity to operate at all levels including the highest levels of scientific activities as these are expressed in theoretic frameworks generating explanations of objects. Anything, including the forms of previous activities, can abstracted and made the content of thought by developing more advanced forms that them make the earlier forms or contents richer elements of the content of thought at the higher level.

Thus, the object of thought may consist of objects that are concrete or with development may consist of more abstract content abstracted with from the previous content or the previous form.
When forms do begin to free themselves from concrete notions, these abstractions develop into scientific, ideological, moral, and other kinds of frameworks by comparisons one to another, their reciprocal assimilations, and their increasing integration in larger wholes or frameworks.

As these frameworks, arising as they do out of the development of abstractions and by inclusions of various simpler norms into larger wholes, take on a characteristic general stance or perspective regarding human affairs, they also carry with them their valuation aspect that gives them their energy, the go-juice like gasoline in the tank of the car, that provides the energetic motion propelling the thoughtful activities of the framework. Any framework thus takes on the character of an ideological framework. It becomes recognizable as people display their thinking regarding a public policy issue or in the analysis of some problem of explanation and possible actions. Adults can sometimes more or less see these ideological frameworks at work in others’ thinking and actions. ideological frameworks arise out of intellectual development, and they are not present at birth or even among young children. Only with the development of more advanced thought of the adult do the larger, more abstract wholes of ideological frameworks appear.

Now what is interesting is what happens when norms in the form of ideological frameworks take on a matter of necessity for people because when they do, they seem to lead to seeking some means of enforcement and compulsory compliance. Obviously legal norms and laws are abstractions of forms from their expression in human activity which at lower levels operates without conscious awareness; it is only later that forms are abstracted, made elements of thought, and then seen as proper forms of conduct. It may appear that without these proper forms of conduct, human interactions would break down leading to negative results. It is the ideological framework that defines the nature of the positive an negative results of human activities, and it is the ideological framework that leads to the need to enforce and compel compliance with certain norms, and, of course, law and government is the mechanism by which some ideological framework attempt this expression and compliance of norms.

There is no a priori reason why ideological frameworks necessarily lead to government action; the resort to government action only comes from some ideological frameworks. This particular feature of the relationship of government to society seem to rest on how the ideological framework itself understands how social order is possible, how it develops, how society and human action overcomes problems. Since these norms or frameworks for interpreting human activity develop in thought in such a manner as to include and organize more and more individual forms of behaviors, those ideologies that understand government as an essential means for developing social order, may quite naturally see more government in human affairs as necessary and inevitable.

On the other hand, those ideological frameworks that locate the origins of social order and the development of solutions to social problems in the general, non-governmental activities of society appear to see less role for government. The incompatibility of these two rest not in governments role but in something deeper that undergirds each interpretation of government’ role in human affairs. To simply assert a role for government is not enough for these assertions come out of an ideological framework. It is the ideological framework that must be justified, and for this justification of one ideological framework over another, there must be some justification for the foundational principles. The justification must rest in showing some epistemic access to the foundational and defining principles of an ideological framework.

Thus, for an ideological framework to show its desirability over another ideological framework it must both abstract and represent its foundational norms sufficiently so that the specific actions can be shown to derive from the principles and these norms and actions compared and demonstrated superior to other ideological frameworks. An ideological framework must contain its own principle of epistemic access such that it can derive justification for its norms in the face of challenge from other ideological frameworks. Of course other ideological framework accept different foundational norms as superior and assert different means of epistemic access to its first principles. The ideological frameworks must take on the reflexive problem of how to justify its foundational norms since these operate like axiomatic principles supporting the ideological framework. Thus, every ideological framework not only makes assertions of value and norms, it also contains its own epistemology as more or less expressed in its means of epistemic access. It uses its own form of thought to explain itself and other forms of thought, and in doing so necessarily contains a self-referential epistemology. In general, all the human sciences contain within themselves their own epistemology both in how to explain their object of study and in their methods of attempting access to their object of study.

The challenge then is to explain how exactly an ideological framework comes to use one form of epistemic access to another, a problem itself subject to the problem of choosing one ideological framework over another. We can begin to see the nature of this problem in political economy by looking at the specific forms of epistemologic access we find among the various ideological frameworks. Once identified, the challenge of explaining how each particular form of epistemology arises in human activity such that its particular expression in epistemologic access appears in conscious thought. We can see there are several such forms of epistemologic access as to be expressed and given priority in organizing ideological frameworks. Since ideological frameworks need foundational principles upon which to organize themselves, these always require some form of epistemologic access. It answers the problem of how we know to accept certain norms and more or less insures they are acceptable and proper, and for that matter, why according to our framework they should be acceptable and proper for everyone. The problem is solved (or at least appears to be solved) by the means of epistemologic access to foundational norms we have from within our ideological framework even though our framework itself derives from its own interpretations. Ideological frameworks in this sense of containing their own epistemologies are closed systems although some are more exclusive or inclusive than others.

Let’s take some examples. We might assert the founding principles expressed in our Constitution come from God, that we are a Christian nation, and that our form of governance must reflect and preserve God’s laws in our society. When questioned about how we know why certain principles are foundational, we can simply reply that these are God given rights of all man. In this case, our epistemologic access rests in having access to God’s laws.

Or we might assert that the founding principles come from nature, that these are derived from natural law. To justify them, we can assert that these express a priori forms present in natural human activity. Our epistemologic access in this case requires that we rationally see and attend to the obvious forms of natural rights inhering in human activity since these present themselves (at least to us) as obvious, a priori, and as such, necessary foundations in our thought about governance.

Or we might assert a form of social construction in which order arises out of democratic debate and the ensuing government action imposing the will of the people. Government is the expression of ideals of the state taken as sort of the collective of society. Government then become the way we as a people come together to solve our problems. Our epistemologic access rests in democratic action, and this action is learned from childhood through education for democracy necessarily preserved in public schooling. We socialize children in democratic participation by making schools, which necessarily must be public schools, be the agents of training for democratic participation and change. The epistemologic access is social process of coming together and discussing such as to find the consensus of the adults in society. The epistemic access is through the social process, not some a priori principle from either God or natural law, and the moral norm is what, via democratic action, emerges as the group consensus. Foundational principles change since principles are not actually foundational but are only the current outcomes of democratic action that somehow is expressed in the consensus among citizens.

As a final example of epistemic access, we might envision foundational principles not as fixed but as arising out of human activity in an emergent, self-organizing process such like evolution. Now in this ideological framework this process of self-organizing emergence out of human activity requires that the emergent process of free activity be allowed to happen. Government not only inhibits constructive activity, it may even produce evil. As such it may not even be necessary to constructive activity which addresses problems and overcome them, even problems of lack of coercive governance. Our epistemic access to foundational principles rests in observing how over time systems develop and emerge and what impedes or blocks that process. To have epistemic access requires we let the evolutionary process of social construction operate, that we remove roadblocks to the fundamentally constructive nature of human activity by making human freedom of foundational importance since it is only via free activity that social order emerges and can be observed.

Now, to conclude, the problem is not to prove which of these ideological frameworks is the correct or best. That task is impossible since every ideological framework contains its own justification in its particular means of epistemic access. The only possible method by which to transcend the disputes among the ideological frameworks is by some framework which not only compares the various frameworks, but itself does not distort or depend on an exclusive method of epistemic access. That is, we must not only find a framework that can encompass all the ideological frameworks, it also must allow us to properly frame a statement of the problem and formulate a method for solving the problem acceptable the various ideological frameworks.