Suchergebnisse

A look at the penetrating and encompassing nature of Dooyeweerd's political and legal philosophy makes it understandable why Georgio Del Vecchio, a reputable Italian philosopher of law, appreciated Dooyeweerd as "the most profound, innovative, and penetrating philosopher since Kant". Dooyeweerd's Inaugural address laid the foundation for uncovering the deepest dialectical motivation of modern philosophy, namely the (dialectical) basic motive of nature and freedom (science ideal and personality ideal). Dooyeweerd rejected the idea of a "pure theory of law" because in spite of its uniqueness, the meaning of the jural aspect of reality comes to expression only in its coherence with other irreducible aspects. In opposition to the relativistic claims of historicism, Dooyeweerd emphasises the irreducibility of each aspect of reality. Dooyeweerd exercised immanent criticism on the impasse of a theory of the state without the state and a theory of law without law. Despite his continuing an element of natural law, Dooyeweerd's approach avoids the antinomous stance of historicism by realising that change can only be established on the basis of constancy. The article concludes with a brief sketch of his systematic programme, as it unfolds in his multi-volume Encyclopaedia of the science of law.

The Theory of justice advanced by Rawls must be understood within the context of factual legal approaches (such as positivism and pragmatism) that eliminated normative considerations. By contrast, Rawls argues for an account of the role of normative legal principles by proceeding from an idea introduced during the Enlightenment, namely that of a social contract. However, the way in which he speaks about law, morality and virtues clearly demonstrates his indebtedness to Ancient Greek and Medieval conceptions as well. His assumption is that it is possible for normal human beings to arrive at a rational consensus by assuming that these individuals not only do have a normative (moral) awareness but that they are also capable to take distance from their factual societal position and relations (the veil of ignorance) in order to be open to moral principles acceptable to every normally developed human being. This article sets out to investigate the historical roots of the idea of a just society by contrasting the classical Greek and Medieval ideals with that of modern approaches since the Renaissance, particularly the account found in natural law theories about the supposed social contract lying at the foundation of an ordered and just society. The open-ended problems present within this legacy — particularly regarding the inherent shortcomings of both atomistic and holistic orientations implicit in the mainstream views on being human and on the place of the latter within human society and the state — are then related to the mixed assumptionsunderlying Rawls's theory at a basic level. It will be argued that although his intention is to advocate the basic elements of a constitutional democracy, this aim is threatened by the latent holistic undertones accompanying his entire theory.

This article focuses on the formal similarities between Christianity and the Islam resent during the later middle ages — a period in which both legacies subscribed to a relatively totalitarian societal condition manifested in the existence of their respective empires. The ideal of the Corpus Christi as the societas perfecta of medieval Christianity is explained in the light of the contest between church and state during the later middle ages. This legacy was eventually challenged by an intellectual movement initiated by John the Scott and William of Ockham that caused the breaking apart of the former ecclesiastically unified culture. The alternative development within the Islam world is sketched before the spirit of modernity is explained as a secularization of biblical Christianity. Humanism initially inspired explicitly totalitarian theories of the state. It was only within the Protestant countries of Europe that the modern constitutional state under the rule of law emerged, accompanied by a process of societal differentiation unparalleled in world history. Although the more recent attempts of Islamic countries to benefit from the fruits of the modern natural sciences inspired them to introduce the teaching of the natural sciences within the Muslim world, these countries did not succeed in benefiting from the significant transformation of the medieval empires into modern democratic states. Since the Muslim world is still embedded in the relatively undifferentiated embrace of a societal setting guided and integrated by the Muslim faith it did not succeed as yet to transcend the inherent limitations entailed in a typical empire in the classical sense of the word.