Debatten über das Vergleichen

Debates about Comparison. Journeys between Comparative Law and Comparative Literature. Many academic fields look to comparative methods in pursuit of insight, with scholars debating how to proceed and what they hope to learn from the comparison. This article explores what comparative law stands to gain from interdisciplinary dialog with other fields of comparative inquiry. By way of example, it evaluates the potential gain from several journeys into the field of comparative literature. At first, these journeys back and forth between disciplines reveal a number of parallels: a striking resemblance between each field's narrative of its own becoming; both fields' exposure to fundamental criticisms; both fields ethicizing along similar trajectories; each one's encounter with related dilemmas. At the same time, these journeys into comparative literature reveal implicit hierarchies and orientations in comparative law. But these cursory journeys through the history of comparative literature also counsel that comparative law would do well to avoid letting its own debates over the direction of the field veer into polarization and name-calling, into a kind of struggle that is mostly unwinnable and unproductive.