The Legal Dimension of the Philosophy of Happiness. Summary of the Doctoral Thesis

Abstract

The scholarly monograph “Laimes filozofijas tiesību dimensija” (The Legal Dimension of the Philosophy of Happiness) is the first study in Latvian legal science to reconstruct the teaching of the Hellenistic thinker Epicurus as an autonomous legal doctrine. Justice in it is neither an eternal order of nature nor a sacral command, but syntheke, a mutual agreement neither to harm nor to be harmed, which remains in force only as long as it serves security, peace and the common good. The principal concepts of Epicureanism, lathe biosas, hedone, libera voluntas (through the clinamen), aponia, ataraxia, clarity of mind and knowledge, the canonicand prolepsis, are interpreted in the work as an alternative functional form of law, one that establishes a close link with the natural, positive and historical legal traditions and with the ideas of friendship, public benefit and security, and offers original answers to the questions of the nature of justice, the function of law, the role of the idea of the state and politics, and the significance of the paradigm of free will. A distinct third way thus emerges in legal thought, hedonist justice as a hybrid between the natural law school and legal positivism, in which justice is not an external ideal imposed upon the law but the very foundation of the internal structure of the legal norm, and the measure of a law's value is human peace and happiness. Combining legal theory and history, philosophy and the analysis of ancient sources, the work traces the path of this teaching from the Garden of Athens through the history of European thought to the constitutional language of the United States of America and to contemporary debates on the legitimacy of law and the protection of private life. The English version of the monograph, The Genesis of Ancient Justice, is forthcoming from Routledge (Taylor & Francis).