In the context of our increasingly global legal order, Pierre Legendre’s God in
the Mirror reconsiders the place of law within the division of existing bodies of
knowledge. Navigating the texts of Ovid, Augustine, Roman jurists, medieval
canon lawyers, Freud, Lacan, the notebooks of Leonardo de Vinci, and the
paintings of Magritte, this third volume of Pierre Legendre’s Lessons focuses
on the relation of the subject to the institution of images. Legendre tracks the
origins and vicissitudes of the specular metaphor within western history, carrying
out a critique of its dependence on the discourse of the Imago Dei. A crucial
landmark within Legendre’s ongoing reconsideration of a medieval ‘revolution
of interpretation’, this book dissociates the western normative tradition from
its mythic foundation, separating theology and law. It thereby documents the
advent of modern rational doubt, as a new legal foundation or ground: one that,
for Legendre, was not only a revolutionary invention, but one that produced the
modern European idea of the State.