. Can the label “law” apply to rules as amoral as the enactments of the Nazis? This question confronted the courts in Germany after 1945. In dealing with it, the judges had to take sides in the philosophical debate over the concept of law. In this context, the prominent voices of the legal philosophers Gustav Radbruch and Hans Kelsen could not go unheard. This paper draws on what could have been the “Radbruch‐Kelsen debate on Nazi Law.” In examining the (...) debate, it will argue for a substantive account of the morality of the law, as expressed in Radbruch's Formula. (shrink)

English summary: Marc Andre Wiegand analyzes the neo-Kantian premises of Gustav Radbruch's legal philosophy.

Gustav Radbruch, ein bekannter Rechtsphilosoph des Wertrelativismus, kam erst nach 1945 zu der Behauptung: Sowohl unerträglich ungerechte Gesetze als auch das Gleichheitsprinzip verleugnende Gesetze können keine Verbindlichkeit in Anspruch nehmen. Es ist nach wie vor umstritten, ob diese Behauptung, die später als die Radbruchsche Formel bezeichnet wurde, mit seiner wertrelativistischen Theorie vor 1945 kompatibel ist. -/- Viele Autoren verneinen diese Frage und vertreten die Umbruchthese. Einige Autoren stellen die Entwicklungsthese auf, die als eine Abschwächung der Umbruchthese verstanden werden kann. (...) Dagegen steht die Kontinuitätsthese. Auf deren Seite stellt sich die Arbeit, die den Versuch unternimmt, durch eine Verknüpfung der historischen mit der systematischen Analyse des Radbruchschen Gesamtwerkes die letzte These zu verteidigen. -/- Als Anhang enthält die Arbeit einen Zeitungsbericht über einen Vortrag von Radbruch aus dem Jahr 1923, durch den der Leser einen klaren Überblick über die Grundzüge seiner rechtsphilosophischen Auffassung gewinnen kann. (shrink)

Gustav Radbruch war Deutschlands beruhmtester Rechtsphilosoph im 20. Jahrhundert. Seine gehaltvollen, aber auch spannungsreichen Schriften pragen die deutschsprachige Rechtsphilosophie bis heute. Im Zentrum von Radbruchs Lehre steht sein neukantianisch gepragter Rechtsbegriff, der im Laufe der Zeit eine Reihe von Veranderungen erfahren hat. Die Beitrage in diesem Band sind Radbruchs Rechtsbegriff im Allgemeinen und den Wandlungen dieses Rechtsbregriffs im Besonderen gewidmet. Nach der orthodoxen Lesart vertrat Radbruch vor dem Kriege eine rechtspositivistische Lehre, wurde unter dem Eindruck der nationalsozialistischen Grauel jedoch (...) zum Naturrecht bekehrt. Zunehmend wird gesehen, dass diese 'Bekehrungsthese' zu Ungereimtheiten fuhrt. Verschiedene Beitrage dieses Bandes betonen demgegenuber die Kontinuitat nichtpositivistischer Elemente in der Entwicklung von Radbruchs Rechtsbegriff. Mit Beitragen von: Hidehiko Adachi, Martin Borowski, Horst Dreier, Ralf Dreier, An dreas Funke, Ulfrid Neumann, Stanley L. Paulson, Joachim Renzikowski, Hubert Rottleuthner, Marc Andre Wiegand. (shrink)

Este artigo faz uma análise substancial acerca da concepção do direito em Gustav Radbruch, procurando destacar, dentre outros aspectos, a “injustiça extrema”. É peremptório afirmar que para o grande jurista alemão, a questão da obediência à lei não se resolve pela força, como afirma a tradição. A pergunta essencial não é por que obedecer à “lei injusta”, mas porque se apoia na “lei injusta”, obedecendo-a. Ora, tudo isto significa a rigor, que a positividade no direito se contenta com a (...) validade formal das normas jurídicas, quando todo o problema se situa numa esfera mais profunda, correspondente ao valor ético do direito. Inclusive, a ausência de justiça não aflige apenas o sistema jurídico, mas outros sistemas sociais apresentam injustiças gritantes. (shrink)

L'auteur montre que, dans la philosophie du droit de Radbruch, l'idée de droit répond à trois paramètres qui interfèrent dans la pratique juridique quotidienne : le besoin de justice, l’exigence de garantie, le souci des fins. Le res-pect de ces paramètres est indis-pensable en toute société démocratique.

Le concept de « droit social » progressivement élaboré par le juriste social-démocrate Gustav Radbruch durant la République de Weimar ne saurait être réduit à un programme politique de législation sociale en faveur des travailleurs. Cet article entend montrer qu’il s’agit bien d’un concept théorique spécifique analysant la transformation structurelle à l’œuvre dans le droit, à savoir le passage d’un droit individualiste à un droit social considérant chaque individualité dans sa situation sociale au sein de la communauté – cette (...) transformation relevant elle-même de l’émergence d’une nouvelle conception de l’homme se substituant à celle de l’individualisme libéral. Cela permet à Radbruch d’envisager un droit adapté aux réalités de la société moderne et à même de penser la résolution de la contradiction entre égalité juridique et inégalités sociales. Si le droit social peut à ce titre apparaître comme un concept précurseur, l’insistance sur la nécessité de repenser l’articulation entre individu et communauté et les ambiguïtés que celle-ci engendre concernant le statut des droits individuels soulignent aussi l’ancrage de son discours dans les débats weimariens. (shrink)

According to German legal philosopher Gustav Radbruch, laws that are substantively unjust to an intolerable degree should not be regarded as legally valid, even if they were promulgated according to stipulated procedure. Radbruch’s Formula (as his position has been termed) contradicts the central tenet of legal positivism, according to which the existence of laws does not necessarily depend on their merit.1 While some legal positivists suppose that legal invalidity based on the content of particular laws is a central tenet (...) of natural law theory,2 natural law theorists such as John Finnis opine that the lex injusta non est lex3 maxim has been no more than a subordinate theorem of classical natural law theory.4 In Finnis’s view, unjust laws give rise to legal obligation “in a legal sense.”5. (shrink)

Legal positivism maintains a distinction between law as it is and law as it ought to be. In other words, for positivists, a law can be legally valid even if it is immoral. H. L. A. Hart hoped to defend legal positivism against natural law. This paper analyses Hart’s criticism of Gustav Radbruch, a natural lawyer, before suggesting that Hart’s account of legal positivism gives rise to a logical problem. It is concluded that this problem leaves logical space for (...) a theory of natural law based on moral authority rather than legal validity. (shrink)

. Gustav Radbruch is one of the most important German-speaking philosophers of law of the twentieth century. This paper raises the question of how to classify Radbruch's theories in the international context of legal philosophy and philosophy in general. Radbruch's work was mainly influenced by the southwest German school of Neo-Kantianism, represented by Windelband, Rickert, and Lask. Their theories of culture and value show an affirmative-holistic understanding of philosophy as a source of wisdom and meaningfulness. Kant, on the other (...) hand, belongs more to a fundamentally different, critical camp of philosophy. Although Radbruch has incorporated Kantian Elements into his theory, he is rather a member of the affirmative-holistic camp. In the end the question will be raised as to what ought to be preserved of his philosophy. (shrink)

Gustav Radbruch’s famous article Statutory Lawlessness and Supra-Statutory Law1 puts forward two key theses. The first of these, which will not concern me here, is a claim about the nature of law....

The small article “Statutory Injustice and Suprastatutory Law” published in 1946 by Gustav Radbruch is one of the most important texts in 20th century legal philosophy. Until recently, its importance was said to stem from its renewal of ‘natural law’ and from its ‘formula’, according to which the value of justice should override that of legal certainty in extreme cases. In this contribution, a close examination will show that Radbruch's text is less univocal than often suggested. I argue that (...) Radbruch deals here with the acute problems of apparent criminal legality during the Nazi-era rather than with problems of validity. In order to make this clear, I first briefly sketch Radbruch's personal history and the context into which the article fits. Secondly, I analyze the text itself and focus on how to understand the well-known grudge informer case. Finally, I pay some attention to the renewed topical interest of Radbruch's formula, owing to the fact that it was used in the trials against former-GDR soldiers who shot fugitives at the Berlin Wall,and their superiors. (shrink)

Many different kinds of professionals work with law, but often they seek to use law for particular governmental or private purposes, they focus on some specific areas or aspects of its creation, interpretation or application, or they study it for its interest judged by criteria that are given by fields of scholarly practice outside it. Is there a special significance for a role exclusively concerned with analysing, protecting and enhancing the general well-being or worth of law as a practical idea? (...) This article argues that such a role is important. Building on Gustav Radbruch's juristic thought, it asks how that role could be elaborated and how a professional responsibility for discharging it might be envisaged. Many professionals concerned with law adopt such a role incidentally or intermittently, but it needs more prominence and clear demarcation. The article suggests that it might be seen as the specialised role of the jurist, treated as a particular kind of legal professional. The term “jurist” would then have not just an honorific connotation. It would indicate a Weberian “pure” type that may approximate some current understandings of “juristic” practice; but it would also identify a normative ideal—something intrinsically valuable. Seen in this way, the jurist is one who assumes a certain unique responsibility for law. (shrink)

The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (French: Psychologie des Foules; literally: Psychology of Crowds) is a book authored by Gustave Le Bon that was first published in 1895. In the book, Le Bon claims that there are several characteristics of crowd psychology: "impulsiveness, irritability, incapacity to reason, the absence of judgement of the critical spirit, the exaggeration of sentiments, and others. Le Bon claimed that "an individual immersed for some length of time in a crowd soon finds himself (...) - either in consequence of magnetic influence given out by the crowd or from some other cause of which we are ignorant - in a special state, which much resembles the state of fascination in which the hypnotized individual finds himself in the hands of the hypnotizer. (shrink)

Vorschule der Aesthetik ist ein unveranderter, hochwertiger Nachdruck der Originalausgabe aus dem Jahr 1876. Hansebooks ist Herausgeber von Literatur zu unterschiedlichen Themengebieten wie Forschung und Wissenschaft, Reisen und Expeditionen, Kochen und Ernahrung, Medizin und weiteren Genres.Der Schwerpunkt des Verlages liegt auf dem Erhalt historischer Literatur.Viele Werke historischer Schriftsteller und Wissenschaftler sind heute nur noch als Antiquitaten erhaltlich. Hansebooks verlegt diese Bucher neu und tragt damit zum Erhalt selten gewordener Literatur und historischem Wissen auch fur die Zukunft bei.".

Magicians use misdirection to prevent you from realizing the methods used to create a magical effect, thereby allowing you to experience an apparently impossible event. Magicians have acquired much knowledge about misdirection, and have suggested several taxonomies of misdirection. These describe many of the fundamental principles in misdirection, focusing on how misdirection is achieved by magicians. In this article we review the strengths and weaknesses of past taxonomies, and argue that a more natural way of making sense of misdirection is (...) to focus on the perceptual and cognitive mechanisms involved. Our psychologically-based taxonomy has three basic categories, corresponding to the types of psychological mechanisms affected: perception, memory, and reasoning. Each of these categories is then divided into subcategories based on the mechanisms that control these effects. This new taxonomy can help organize magicians' knowledge of misdirection in a meaningful way, and facilitate the dialog between magicians and scientists. (shrink)

Der weit gereiste Henrik Steffens schildert im vierten Band seiner zehnbändigen Autobiographie Was ich erlebte eine Begegnung mit Fichte gegen Ende des Jahres 1793.

Der weit gereiste Henrik Steffens schildert im vierten Band seiner zehnbändigen Autobiographie Was ich erlebte eine Begegnung mit Fichte gegen Ende des Jahres 1793.

Throughout the ages writers have been concerned with contemporary problems. Their reflection became part of their literary works. By tracing and interpretating mathematical references in literature information can be obtained: on the attitude towards mathematics, on its prestige in society, its cultural recognition and its significance for education. This article analyses the implication of mathematics in some exemplary novels, essays and theoretical writings on literature of authors from the 17th to the 20th century.