Legal Entelechies: Public Cognition and Emergencies of the Inquisitorial Model

Abstract

Entelechy is Greek for vital principle. To Aristotle, in De Anima, entelechy is the very definition of the soul, because the latter is nothing else than the vital principle of the being (to empsychon). In this article, I suggest the idea of legal entelechy to denote the kind of legal subject that comes defined as a soul, rather than as an actor or even a natural person—or a corporation. To begin the investigation into the legal entelechy I explore the affinity between the perhaps now expired science of the soul and the legal disciplines. I suggest, here, one particular aspect of the genealogy of this affinity, based on specific legal thinking in late antique and medieval Mediterranean sources from Jewish, Muslim, and Christian legal authors. Through them, we can see some of the ways in which the legal subject with a soul does political and social work.