The author singles out various conceptions of rationality used in practical legal discourse: formal and substantive rationality, instrumental goal‐ and means‐rationality, communicative rationality. Practical rationality is expressed in decisions justified by epistemic and axiological premises according to the rules of justificatory reasoning. Five levels of analysis of this justification are identified. Rules, principles and evaluations are used as justifying arguments and their characteristics determine the dimensions of rationality of decision depending on the features of rules, various conceptions of principles, and (...) kinds of relativisation of evaluations. The dimensions of legal rationality depend mainly on three singled out conceptions of rationality, i.e., formal rationality dealing with the deep structure of justification, instrumentally oriented rationality as content of justifiability, and communicative rationality linked with the pragmatics of human interaction. Legitimacy, according to the presented analysis, appears as a subclass of external justification dealing with axiological premisses in terms of instrumental rationality and/or communicative rationality. (shrink)

The author asks whether the danger of an imminent ecological crisis affects the problems of cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism, absolutism vs. relativism and naturalism vs. non-naturalism. The ecological crisis is assumed in order to make the contrast between the above metaethical and general axiological oppositions more pronounced.

Conceptions deducing the rules of behaviour from nature are analysed on the basis of a model involving three assumptions: the existence of nature, the deductibility of rules from nature, and natural rules as a criterion of valuation. Three basic constructions of nature are distinguished: „real nature”, two kinds of „ethical nature”, „logical nature”.

The author analysed the notion of moral act from the standpoint of materialist philosophy after having distinguished moral norms and values from other social norms and values, ethics from metaethics, and after having described the connection between moral norms and values.

. The author discusses the conditions necessary to accept the one right answer theory. The argument is based on an analysis of the deep structure of the justified fractional decisions pertaining to the substantive decisional model of the judicial application of law within the statutory law system. The role of evaluative choices is needed to justify the decisions in question at least in hard cases. This makes the theory of one right answer unacceptable in a noncognitivist axiological framework.

There are three kinds of nature singled out according to the physical contact with the man: “nature immune from man”, “nature touched by man”, and “nature transformed by man”. The latter type is of highest relevance for the man’s present dilemmas. The extrapolation of present tendencies of the man-nature relations is summarized in the two basic dilemma: ecological dilemma/either the development of the modern technologies or the destruction of human ecological environment/, and peace dilemma /either to continue the nuclear arms (...) race or the total nuclear disarmament/. There are four types of situations facing the man when avoiding the negative results of trends in the transformation of nature, which are linked with legal phllosophy. The man-nature relations are axiologically ambivalent because the transformed nature is the challenge, but calls for looking at nature as apart of our life, and to exist with it in in it. (shrink)

There are three kinds of nature singled out according to the physical contact with the man: “nature immune from man”, “nature touched by man”, and “nature transformed by man”. The latter type is of highest relevance for the man’s present dilemmas. The extrapolation of present tendencies of the man-nature relations is summarized in the two basic dilemma: ecological dilemma/either the development of the modern technologies or the destruction of human ecological environment/, and peace dilemma /either to continue the nuclear arms (...) race or the total nuclear disarmament/. There are four types of situations facing the man when avoiding the negative results of trends in the transformation of nature, which are linked with legal phllosophy. The man-nature relations are axiologically ambivalent because the transformed nature is the challenge, but calls for looking at nature as apart of our life, and to exist with it in in it. (shrink)

There are five basic types of ontology of law identified in relation with the singling out simpIe ontological objects in a strong or weak sense, dualist ontological objects, and complex ontalogical objects in a strong or weak sense. The conceptians of law far mulated in the theories/philosophies/ of law are ascribed to these five types.