Overview
- Synthesizes a vast amount of current Cassirer-literature and makes a contribution to jurisprudence
- First systematic elaboration on law as a symbolic form
- Sheds new lights on a still dark area of intellectual and jurisprudential thought
- New insights relevant for the Kelsen debate, in particular re the question of legal validity and its foundational underpinning
Part of the book series: Law and Philosophy Library (LAPS, volume 82)
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Table of contents (9 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
Jurisprudence, according to Cassirer, is not merely the systematic, conceptual pursuance of ethics. They are separate domains for Cassirer, and both direct their claims differently on the individual. Whereas ethics concerns the motives of the individual, law ultimately achieves a cosmos for our world of outward actions. However, they are not separated by a neutral line or a vacuum. For law to have effect as a symbolic form it is necessary that it reflects the law in the mind of people i.e., that one could and ought to have assented to it out of ethical principles and maxims. The conceptual analysis of law goes hand to hand with its genetic account. Both ethics and law are products of, spring forth from the formative or symbolic powers of man, and although, as any other symbolism, they might confront us as something objective, i.e., as part of reality that is beyond our immediate reach, ultimately we must always bring them to account to their very source: our independent and individual moral judgment. In this book we describe the rule of law as the reign of persuasion rather than the reign of force, and democracy as the reign by persuasion rather than the reign by force.
Reviews
From the reviews:
“Deniz Coskun is convinced that Ernst Cassirer’s work is vital for those legal and socio-legal scholars who … believe that philosophy is crucial to the study of law. … It is scholarly, careful, and thorough, detailing Cassirer’s position on human rights, ethics, and semiotics, and explaining his complex relations with German neo-Kantianism. … In sum, Coskun’s book will prove to be a valuable tool for those who want the law to be understood in terms of meaning and ethics … .” (Gary Wickham, International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, Vol. 22, 2009)Editors and Affiliations
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Law as Symbolic Form
Book Subtitle: Ernst Cassirer and the Anthropocentric View of Law
Editors: Deniz Coskun
Series Title: Law and Philosophy Library
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6256-8
Publisher: Springer Dordrecht
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Law and Criminology (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4020-6255-1Published: 06 July 2007
Softcover ISBN: 978-90-481-7584-0Published: 23 November 2010
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4020-6256-8Published: 17 July 2007
Series ISSN: 1572-4395
Series E-ISSN: 2215-0315
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 386
Topics: Fundamentals of Law, Theories of Law, Philosophy of Law, Legal History, Philosophy, general, Philosophy of Law, Political Science