M. R. Haase

_English summary:_ Against the backdrop of the question of whether the sovereign state is still the appropriate form for human social existence, Marco Haase addresses the basic questions posed by the philosophy of law and of the state, starting with the epistemological question of what is meant by a social structure such as the state. In answering this question, he shows that the free, autonomous will is the reason that a state's legal system is valid and effective.The study focuses on Hegel's hermeneutic theory of law and the state, delimited on the one hand by Kelsen's positivist theory of law, and on the other by Kant's philosophy of natural law. In his analysis, Haase demonstrates the intrinsic connection between political philosophy and the other branches of philosophy, and the extent to which culture and law are mutually dependent._ German description:_ Vor dem Hintergrund der Frage, ob der souverane Staat noch die angemessene Gestalt ist, in der sich menschliches Zusammenleben organisieren kann, klart Marco Haase Grundfragen der Rechts- und Staatsphilosophie. Ausgangspunkt ist die erkenntnistheoretische Frage, was unter einem gesellschaftlichen Gebilde wie dem Staat zu begreifen sei. Dabei erweist sich, dass der Geltungs- und Wirkgrund einer staatlichen Rechtsordnung der freie, autonome Wille ist. Im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchung steht Hegels hermeneutische Rechts- und Staatstheorie, die einerseits von Kelsens positivistischer Rechtslehre, andererseits von Kants vernunftrechtlichem Ansatz abgegrenzt wird. Der Autor zeigt dabei die innere Denknotwendigkeit auf, die von Kelsen uber Kant zu Hegel fuhrt. Er weist nach, dass sich hinter Kelsens Begriff der Grundnorm das Problem des freien Willens verbirgt, und legt dar, dass die Frage, wie der freie Wille in der Welt wirken kann, zu Kants Theorie der Kunst fuhrt, die zugleich den Schlussel fur die Deutung der Kantischen Erkenntnis- und Sozialphilosophie bildet. Auf diesen Ergebnissen aufbauend lasst sich zeigen, inwiefern Hegels Begriff des freien, sich selbst bestimmenden Geistes Gestalt in der Rechtsordnung des souveranen Staates gewinnt. Die Untersuchung macht nicht nur deutlich, inwiefern Kultur und Recht sich wechselseitig bedingen, sondern auch, dass die Frage nach der Souveranitat des Staates und nach der Autonomie des Menschen zugleich die Frage danach ist, was den Sinn des Weltgefuges im ganzen begrundet.

The paper is devoted to a certain way of thinking of the action of another. The posture of mind is characteristically expressed by a specific use of what G. E. M. Anscombe calls stopping modals. On this use, the sentence, “You can’t do that; it is mine,” registers the necessity of justice. My question is: what is the relation between the status of a person, a bearer of rights, the recognition of others as persons, and the practice of addressing the demands of justice to one another? According to a certain strand in the tradition, the answer is: in the sphere of justice, a special union arises among language, mind, and world such that there is a sense in which addressing, recognizing, and being a person are one reality. The paper articulates the relevant sense of ‘one reality’ and offers an argument in support of the formula. In the course of the argument I suggest that this issue is central to understanding the philosophical significance of the second person and appreciating that it marks an irreducible and fundamental form of thought.

The contemporary debate on the metaphysics of language is dominated by two positions. According to the one, languages are not things in the world; they are abstract objects. According to the other, a language consists in the historical chain of causally interrelated acts and states of its speakers. The later Wittgenstein would reject both positions. A natural language is neither an abstract object nor a singular happening of any kind; it is something general that is actual or concrete. The difficulty to understand the peculiar kind of actuality of a language is, I argue, the source of the rule-following puzzle. Its solution consists in an investigation of the logical grammar of the statements with which speakers of a language describe their use of words.When we say what ‘we’ or ‘one’ says, the pronouns exhibit a kind genericity that cannot be treated within the quantificational model of generality.

The power to act intentionally is a power to change the world. It differs from other powers to affect change in that the change is of a particular kind. It is a change through thought. Paradigmatically, it begins with the negation of what is as not as it is to be and the setting of an action concept as to be realized. The pursuit of the end is the realizing of the concept. If all goes well, the process culminates in my knowledge that my deed is done. The power to act is, in this sense, the power of reason to change the world according to its concept and to recognize this change as its works. The traditional name for this form of cognition is “practical knowledge”. In the contemporary literature this notion is mostly discussed under the question how the agent knows, what she will do or what she is doing. This goes together with the tendency to conceive of practical knowledge under the title of self-consciousness in the sense of the transparency of thought. The paper argues that this is a mistake. The notion of practical knowledge is not intelligible as long as one focuses only upon the prospective perspective of intentions for the future or intentions in action and leaves knowing what one has done aside. With my knowledge of my done work a kind of self-consciousness enters the scene whose object is not myself, but another in which I see the reality of my will.

It has been suggested that a rational being stands in what is called a “second-personal relation” to herself. According to philosophers like S. Darwall and Ch. Korsgaard, being a rational agent is to interact with oneself, to make demands on oneself. The thesis of the paper is that this view rests on a logical confusion. Transitive verbs like “asking”, “making a demand” or “obligating” can occur with the reflexive pronoun, but it is a mistake to assume that the reflexive and the non-reflexive use exhibit the same logical grammar. The thesis that they do is in part motivated by the assumption that to show that my relation to you bears the same form as my practical self-relation is to show that, fundamentally, you are not an object for me to think about and act on, but a subject with whom to think and act together. I argue, to the contrary, that if my addressing you exhibited the same form as a relation I could literally be said to stand in to myself, then the nexus between us would be such that I am irretr..

Neo-Aristotelian ethical naturalism suggests that the sense of normative terms like “ought” and “good” as they appear in ethical discourse is to be elucidated in terms of the relation in which a living individual stands to the life-form or “species” of which it is an exemplar—in our case: the human life-form. A theory of this form has to provide a story about questions such as: What enables us to distinguish the different kinds of life within the theory? What makes them, despite those differences, all sorts of natural goodness? And where, in relation to those continuities and discontinuities, is the account of practical reason to be situated? In this paper, I investigate how a developed ethical naturalism has to conceive of the relation between the genus concept life and the concept of the specific kind of life characteristic of us: rational or practically self-conscious life. I argue that there is a deep ambiguity with respect to this question in the account Philippa Foot presents in Natural Goodness. An ambiguity that covers a dilemma. A properly developed ethical naturalism would have to develop the concept of reason out of the reflection on life.

The literature on agentive or practical knowledge tends to be focused on knowing what one is doing or what one is going to do. Knowing what one has done and has achieved thereby seems to be another matter. In fact, achievements are often taken to be beyond the ken of practical knowledge. I argue that this is a mistake. The intelligibility of the very idea of practical knowledge depends on the possibility of knowing one's achievements in the same manner. For if it is to be intelligible as knowledge of the actuality of one's action in the material world, knowing what one is doing has to include knowledge of what one has done so far.

Stanley Cavell vertritt die These, dass man nur verstehen kann, was eine Sprache ist, wenn man die Grammatik der Aussagen untersucht, mit der Muttersprachler ihre Sprache artikulieren: Es sind Aussagen in der Ersten Person Plural, die kein Beobachtungswissen, sondern eine Form von Selbstbewusstsein zum Ausdruck bringen. Während Cavells These, das Wesen von Sprache zeige sich in der Grammatik jener Aussagen, eine tiefe Einsicht darstellt, ist seine Analyse ihrer Form verfehlt. Cavell verwechselt verschiedene Formen der Ersten Person Plural und in der Konsequenz verschiedene Begriffe des Sozialen. Für eine angemessene Metaphysik der Sprache gilt es, das generische Wir von dem distributiven und dem kollektiven Wir zu unterscheiden

Der Gegenstand des Interviews mit Robert Brandom ist die Entwicklung seiner Theorie begrifflichen Gehalts ausgehend von „Expressive Vernunft“ bis zu den kürzlich gehaltenen Locke-Lectures und dem sich in Arbeit befindenden Buch über Hegel. Im Zentrum stehen folgende Fragen: Kann eine Bedeutungstheorie, wie sie Brandom vorschlägt, ohne den Begriff der Wahrheit auskommen und sich auf modale und normative Begriffe beschränken? Wie erfolgreich ist Brandoms Versuch, mithilfe des Begriffs der pragmatischen Meta-Sprache die in „Expressive Vernunft“ bestehende Spannung zwischen der Artikulation logischer Begriffe auf der einen Seite und der nicht-zirkulären Erklärung begrifflicher Normativität auf der anderen Seite aufzulösen? Welche Konsequenzen hat es für unseren Begriff der Bedeutung, wenn wir mit Brandom begriffliche Bestimmtheit als historischen Prozess fortwährender Bestimmung auffassen?

This paper provides examples of how a teacher and a principal construct their ‘ethical selves’. In doing so we demonstrate how Foucault's four-part ethical framework can be a scaffold with which to actively connect emotions to a personal ethical position. We argue that ethical work is and should be an ongoing and dynamic life long process rather than a more rigid adherence to a ‘code of ethics’ that may not meaningfully engage its adherents. We use Foucault's four-part framework of ethical practice as a framework through which an ‘ethical self’ can be purposely constructed. This is important work, as those who have authority over others must know how to monitor themselves against the misuse of the power of their positions