Werner Maihofer’s Understanding of Law as a Research Problem in the Post-soviet Philosophy of Law

Abstract

Legal existentialism holds a prominent place in the center-of-human philosophical and legal concepts. One of the most widely recognized representatives of legal Existentialism is the eminent German jurist Werner Maihofer.The article is dedicated to contribution of post-Soviet jurists to understanding the concept of W. Maihofer’s legal thinking and to identifying in their work underlined issues that need further philosophical and legal development.The results of the study revealed that contemporary Ukrainian law philosophers mainly rely on an intersubjective approach as a means of explaining the existence of law and its cognition, which may explain both the relevance of the ideas of the German jurist and its role for the philosophical thought of the present. It was found that in independent Ukraine, S. I. Maximov was the first one to address views of W. Maihofer. He adopted Maihofer’s phenomenal logic of his ideas in developing the concept of legal reality. Based on the author’s classification of ways of understanding was determined the place of the Maihofer’s concept in non-classical law philosophy. The most significantcontribution to the study and popularization of legal views of W. Maihofer in the post-Soviet space was made by O. V. Stovba. He first introduced the main publications of the German jurist to scientific circulations; systematized and summarized the critical remarks of foreign researchers regarding thelegal ideas of the German jurist; outlined his own vision of the main advantages and disadvantages of the Maihofer’s concept and suggested ways of its further development; analyzed and implemented the original reinterpretation of his understanding; demonstrated the heuristic potential of his ideas as part of the methodological basis for the concept of temporal ontology of law. The prospects of further elaboration of philosophical and legal problems of W. Maihofer’s work are determined. They are conditioned by the need to answer the questions posed by critics of his concept; the existence of conflicting assessments of commentators; lack of research in certain aspects of the concept.