Essence of Matters

Abstract

In the XX century, the classic rational representations about the world and the place of the human Being in such world, including the representations about the natural law and human rights, were destroyed. In response, the legal philosophers and practical lawyers in the second halfof the XX century made an attempt to reanimate the ideas of natural law and the human rights by the way of its development on the methodological ground of the contemporary philosophical doctrines. We speak primarily about the phenomenological philosophy, existential philosophy,hermeneutical philosophy. The similar trends became the ground for the legal-philosophical researches. The example of the attempt to think law in the light of the human Being – existentia –and Being as such became the book of the famous German legal philosopher Werner Maihofer, which was received the title “Essence of Matters”. In polemics with the traditional point of view, when the natural law is considered as the value phenomenon only, Werner Maihofer tried to understand law as the ontological event, which is existed not in the deontic world of the Ought, but in our everyday social Being with one another. By the same way the individual rights transformitself from the pure intellectual construction in the being qualities of the human. The origin of the existential law is not the positive norm of law, which was approved by the official power. Also, it’s not the “living” circumstances. The one and only that man, who exists as the man responsible, can stand in front of the situation of the free choice. The one and only similar human being can decide, what natural law as existential law is. As the consequence of the similar decision human being replace the subject of authority, such as God, Natural reason or Sovereign. This human being has not the freedom of will only, but also has to response for his deeds, which were committed on the ground of the free choice. In this case, man, which is participated in the legal event, stands face-to-face with the world, when his mission is consisted in the self-realization and at the sametime in the realization of law. Thus, the ontological conditions of the co-existence with another people are not the aprioristic coordinates of our existence on the Earth, but present itself as the true natural law – law of existence.