Christoph Horn

Kant discusses the value of marriage in the context of his Doctrine of Right from the perspective of a mutual contract. Although this approach has been widely criticized since it was first published, this procedure seems to have some advantages: it seems to leave teleological naturalism behind and to emphasize the juridification of personal relationships. But at a closer look, Kant’s theory of the value of marriage suffers from several serious shortcomings. The fundamental problem is that he derives it from the perspective of our duties towards ourselves.

According to a rather simplified view, Nietzsche hated and rejected Plato in a fundamental and radical way. But at a closer look, we should differentiate between, on the one hand, the basic elements of Nietzsche’s refusal of Plato and, on the other hand, a number of perspectives under which Nietzsche also appreciated and even praised him. Whereas he is highly critical towards the major part of Plato’s ethics, his attitude to Platonic political thought is much more friendly. The important point is to look at the philosophical backgrounds, including the early classicist Nietzsche from the Basel period as we meet him in the lecture notes and in some of the unpublished fragments edited by Colli and Montinari. In volume II/4 of the critical edition (KGW) e.g., we have almost 190 pages of material on Plato Nietzsche used for his university lectures.

Kant formuliert nirgends ein individuelles Recht auf Leben, auf körperliche und psychische Integrität, auf Eigentum, Meinungsfreiheit, Religionsfreiheit, Freizügigkeit usw. Wenn es aber zutrifft, dass Kant keine Konzeption der Menschenrechte in unserem modernen Sinn besitzt, stellt sich die Frage nach den Gründen. Im vorliegenden Aufsatz wird gezeigt, dass sich auch der Versuch, ein Kantisches Menschenrecht im „angeborenen Recht auf Freiheit“ zu identifizieren, als aussichtslos erweist (I.). Sodann wird eine Erklärung dafür angeboten, weshalb es verfehlt ist, von Kant eine Konzeption der Menschenrechte überhaupt zu erwarten (II.). Diese Erklärung beruht auf zwei Punkten: (a) Kant wählt seinen theoretischen Ausgangspunkt bei den Pflichten, nicht bei den Rechten; und (b) er fasst das Haben von Rechten nicht als die Zusicherung oder Gewährleistung bestimmter moralischer Güter für das Individuum auf. Und schließlich (III.) wird der pflichtentheoretische Rechtsbegriff Kants näher charakterisiert, auf dem sein ‚deontologischer Liberalismus‘ beruht. In der Konsequenz zeigt sich, dass Kant die Menschenrechtsidee auf der Basis seiner eigenen Überzeugungen ablehnen muss (also keineswegs hinter seinen eigenen Ideen oder Vorgaben zurückbleibt).

This paper defends the view that in his Politics, Aristotle embraces ‘normative naturalism’, the view that nature serves as a criterion of goodness, and provides a standard against which success in the practical sphere can be measured. Accordingly, it is argued that the polis’ being ‘by nature’ brings with it teleological implications such as are familiar from Aristotle’s biology. It is also argued that at several points in the Politics, Aristotle actually presupposes this naturalist theory of norms, for instance in his discussion of constitutions that are ‘contrary to nature’.

The debate on the ontological foundations of Kant’s philosophy is usually focused on his theoretical and practical philosophy. Does Kant believe that there is an external world which pre-exists our constitution of spatiotemporal beings, as he describes it in the first Critique? Or is he an idealist concerning external reality? And does Kant think that we should assume the independent existence of moral values? Or do we ourselves ultimately create them? Whereas both scholarly discussions are complex and far from having an unambiguous solution, the question of realism and antirealism is rarely raised on the basis of his philosophy of history, although it is a promising approach. In this contribution, I defend the thesis that Kant, while he seems to introduce his theory of history in the sense of a mere projection, quite clearly develops the idea of an “objective progress.” Seen from this perspective, his philosophy of history can also help us better understand his putative antirealism in the theoretical and practical realm.

This article examines the foundations for the legitimacy of law from the perspective of Hegel’s philosophy. In a first step, Kant’s justification of law is discussed, as Hegel takes the Kantian model as a central point of reference. Then, in the Section 2, I discuss Hegel’s reasons for rejecting the main strategies of justification of the legal order: natural law, contractarianism and legal positivism. This is further followed by a discussion of the meaning and scope of Hegel’s contextualism, according to which there can be no practical normativity without a certain historical embedding. Finally, I describe a more traditional met-aphysical reading that I consider to be the correct solution, contrasting it with Honneth’s theory of recognition and Bran-dom’s pragmatism.

In many contemporary accounts of justice, both in moral and political philosophy, there is a tendency to give too much weight to the concept of justice. ‘Justice’, we often read, is at the center of our normative intuitions. I call this the ‘primacy thesis’, which, for the most part, seems to be inspired by J.S. Mill and by J. Rawls. I challenge the primacy thesis and its four basic convictions: (1) Cases of essential moral importance are always simultaneously questions of justice. (2) Cases of justice are always at the same time questions of essential moral importance. (3) Cases of justice have basically to do with aspects of the legal or political order. (4) Cases of justice are never morally neutral or indifferent.

Happiness is an episodic or periodical concept, which can describe both a subjective sentiment and an objective fulfillment. Against the background of today’s pluralism, this leads to the question as to whether one should follow a subjective understanding of happiness or measure it by objective standards. The rational desire model offers a solution: in order to rate happiness, the component of the fulfillment of desire is filtered by rational criteria. Meanwhile, most of the empirical attempts to systematize the quality of life collapse at the hurdle of describing the decisive point.

Under the term ‘the good’ (to agathon) Plotinus thematizes the first principle of reality. Unlike in modern Western languages, ‘good’ has no moral meaning here; rather, it denotes the highest in value. Plotinus thereby ties in with Plato’s definition of the ‘idea of the good’ in Republic 6 and 7, just as he draws on the Platonic Parmenides for the designation ‘the one’ (to hen). Plotinus considers it Plato’s genuine conception that the principle of reality is, on the one hand, the source of all aspects of value and ethical striving, as it is, on the other hand, the source of being and knowledge. For Plato, the idea of the good is located ‘beyond being’ (epekeina tês ousias: Republic 6, 509b9); Plotinus frequently refers to this formula affirmatively. Under the designation ‘the good’ Plotinus treats the first principle of reality especially in the two treatises VI 9 [9] and VI 7 [38]. Fundamental is his conviction that in everything that has arisen from the good there is a desire to return to it.