Artur Nowak-Far

Saussurean concept of signifie-signifiant agnation can be used to explain the EU law product-nomenclature referrals. The CJEU has an especially important role in developing detailed rules of product nomenclature interpretation in cases where ambiguities emerge. In its jurisprudence, the CJ pursues preservation of the predominant intuitive model of that interpretation even in cases involving composite products. Only in cases where the composition can easily be identified, the Court relies on the concept of the defining element—i.e. it takes the dominant element of the product as a product nomenclature determining one. With respect to novel products, the CJ applies the same general penchant. Therefore, with respect to such products, the Court attempts to establish their signifié-signifiant match by referring to analogous features and characteristics of already existing products. Such an approach is an evidence of the CJ’s self-constraint of its otherwise Demiurgic power concerning the product nomenclature. This argumentation implies that even the CN classification offers a catalogue of relatively rigid designators and that their rigidity is respected by the CJ. The CN designators are not perfectly rigid because the CJ takes into account not only the logical values of respective CN positions, but also the practical aspects (including transactional costs) of the CN classification, as well as the general objectives of EU rules underlying the CN position identification.

The article investigates the significance of syntax in the multilingual EU law. It attempts to respond to the question whether syntax is apt to contribute to the uniformity of that law and how, with regard to this function, it relates to the (widely disputed yet uncontested) semantic and pragmatic methods of achieving such a uniformity. In order to respond to this question, the article firstly, recalls fundamental concepts which would help conceptualize the endeavour and, secondly, presents examples of analysis of syntax arrangements which can be deemed representative for the study of the said problem of contribution. The study finds that EU law (expressed in 24 official languages which have equal authentic status) relies on diversified syntax of its respective constitutive languages. Syntax structures used in respective language versions of EU law represent narrower, law-specific, form of syntax structures available in these languages. Its specificity is determined mostly by legislative traditions of respective EU member states. Syntactic structures of EU law produced in different official languages do not represent a single pattern because of diversified mode of producing illocutionary value of provisions in which strongly idiomatic modal verbs (modal operators) and even special modal structures (not necessarily containing modal verbs) are used to express legal norms. They also differ when it comes to their law-specific compositionality, i.e. flexibility of different syntax structure to produce the same meaning and, in the same time, to preserve their genre/register informational value. Notwithstanding, these structures have well pronounced and system-significant common features within respective Germanic, Romanic, and Slavic families of languages in which EU law is mostly reproduced. The sentence structure and the relevant register of EU law provisions are the same for respective versions of EU texts of law expressed in the languages belonging to the respective three language families which were examined for the sake of this study. These common features are re-enforced by the synoptic mode of producing EU law which imposes formal resemblance of provisions reproduced in respective EU official languages to each other. The multilingual EU legislator also uses patterns which grant legal text the relevant register, yet its specific EU character ultimately transpires through semantic aspects of EU texts rather than their mere syntax. The unity of the system is achieved most strongly through the EU specific interpretation, where the teleological methods (which can be conceived as a language means to achieve EU law goals and objectives at the pragmatic level) are of utmost importance. Thus, there is no EU-specific syntax which would, as such, contribute to unity of EU law. Instead, unity is achieved in the area of semantics and pragmatics. The well exposed anaphoric character of EU law (as any other type of law) may contribute to narrowing down possibility for differentiation of respective language versions of EU law.

One of the important arguments adduced on the existence of God is the cosmological argument, which has been introduced and explained in different ways and under various titles such as the motion, causality, contingency and necessity arguments in Islamic and western schools of philosophy.In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant views the arguments of proving the existence of God in the supernature as a product of the debates of the pure reason, coming into being as a result of applying the pure concepts of understanding to the ideas of reason. In his view, the mo.st important arguments adduced on the existence of God consist of ontological, cosmological and natural-theological arguments. When criticizing these arguments, he reduces the second and third arguments to the first one and then rejects it. This is because, firstly, existence is not a real predicate, and, secondly, predicating existence on the concept of God presents a synthetic propisition that could be considered neither an a posteriori synthetic proposition, nor an a priori one.In this article, first a summary of Kant's critical approach to the cosmological argument will be presented on the basis of his critique of pure reason. Next, reference will be made to the ideas of some of his commentators and critics in this regard. Finally, in order to portray a clear picture of this argument, some of the related explanations given by Islamic philosophers will be presented and, among all of them, the ones provided by Mulla Sadra and Mutahhari will be dealt with in more depth.