Law – Force – Justice

Abstract

The old question of the possible empowerment of law or the justification of power – which Blaise Pascal particularly urged – is answered in (post-Hegel) German legal philosophy and the doctrine of the state predominantly in the sense of a public authority and state power based legal and constitutional order. Rudolph von Jhering, Max Weber, Carl Schmitt and Theodor Litt represent this approach up to the middle of the 20th century. Up to the present, there is a critical discussion of the „introverted“ thinking of the „Rechtsstaat“, the rule of law (by Ernst-Wolfgang Bockenforde), even oblivion of the state („Staatsvergessenheit“ and „Staatsverdrangung“ – by Josef Isensee). This the law devasting thinking of „power“ takes an intolerable philosophical exacerbation in the theses of Giorgio Agamben on „biopolitics“ and the „camp“ as the nomos of modernism. One of the most important antitheses has not yet found the necessary attention in the German doctrine – the voice of Hannah Arendt.