How to Use Philosophy When Being a (Comparative) Lawyer

The article focuses on the dominant understanding of law as being a pure, sealed discipline, mainly on account of law's normative, professionalized and institutionalized character. It challenges this view against the background of comparative legal studies and, in particular, from the perspective of the culturalist periphery which deploys an alternative epistemology leading to a complex understanding. Culturalism includes interdisciplinarity as a principle of its agenda, arguing that philosophy is part of law. The article analyses the need for philosophy within such a context, records the ways in which philosophy is used, offers an overview of the recurrent philosophical themes and philosophers and concludes on the dangers of such an enterprise.