Why the Law Matters to You

Citizenship, Agency, and Public Identity
1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-3-11-032395-5
Verlag: De Gruyter

Buch, Englisch, 267 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 570 g

Reihe: ISSN

This book presents an answer to the question of why modern legal institutions and the idea of citizenship are important for leading a free life. The majority of views in political and legal philosophy regard the law merely as a useful instrument, employed to render our lives more secure and to enable us to engage in cooperate activities more efficiently. The view developed here defends a non-instrumentalist alternative of why the law matters. It identifies the law as a constitutive feature of our identities as citizens of modern states. The constitutivist argument rests on the (Kantian) assumption that a person’s practical identity (its normative self-conception as an agent) is the result of its actions. The law co-constitutes these identities because it maintains the external conditions that are necessary for the actions performed under its authority. Modern legal institutions provide these external prerequisites for achieving a high degree of individual self-constitution and freedom. Only public principles can establish our status as individuals who pursue their life plans and actions as a matter of right and not because others contingently happen to let us do so. The book thereby provides resources for a reply to anarchist challenges to the necessity of legal ordering.

Zielgruppe

Scholars, institutes, libraries

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hanisch, Christoph

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
• Rechtswissenschaften Recht, Rechtswissenschaft Allgemein Rechtsphilosophie, Rechtsethik
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Rechtsphilosophie, Rechtsethik

Über Autor(innen)

Christoph Hanisch, University of Vienna, Austria.