Doctrinal Grounds Research Articles

Pajamų sąvoka ir pripažinimas gyventojų apmokestinimo kontekste: teoriniai pagrindai ir praktinės problemos

This article analyses doctrinal grounds for the definition of income, problems related to the recognition of income, as well as the related legal regulation and its application in case law.

Common Roots, Diverse Results: Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch on the Social-Political Consequences of the Protestant Reformation

The sociological studies of the role of Puritan ethics in the creation of modern rational Western capitalism by Max Weber and of the influence of Protestantism on the development of modern world by Ernst Troeltsch both gain new actuality today due to the discussions of the multiple modernities and the dynamic changes in comparative-historical political sociology. These outstanding German scientists (among the first who in their works on the history of Protestantism given the common religious and doctrinal grounds of Protestant Reformation in Germany, on the one hand, and Northern Europe and America on the other) asked why this process led to such different political, social and cultural results in these countries. In answering this question, both German academics not only realized that the basic typological distinctions between churches and sects must be taken into account in the analysis of Western religious movements of modernity, but also formulate the principle of the dependence of forms of government and political culture of the countries and regions of Western Europe and Northern America on the dominant confession, the particular organization of religious life. and the corresponding ethos of religious-ethical everyday lifestyle. It is suggested in the article that the conceptual apparatus elaborated by Max Weber in the course of his comparative-historical investigation of the ways of appearance and the spreading of modernity in Germany, America, and Russia and the Ernst Troeltsch in the course of his comparative studies of Western Christianity may be successfully used together in the revealing of actual contemporary political problems, and in an analysis of contemporary models of political culture relative to the religious and cultural contexts of their formation and evolution.

Equal Treatment and the Free Speech Clause

The traditional Free Speech Clause burden is a law that directly impedes speech interests and that courts can remedy through invalidation. This model is simple in theory and remedy, but it accounts for surprisingly few cases. Instead, a substantial – and growing – number of cases involve what this Article calls “layered speech regulations”: laws that first impede speech broadly (layer 1), and then exempt some speech or speakers (layer 2). As the Court recently made clear in Barr v. AAPC, challenges to layer 2 attract scrutiny under the Free Speech Clause just like challenges to layer 1. In its analysis, however, the Court has brushed over the fact that such layered speech regulations allow rather than restrict speech with their layer 2 provisions. As a result, layer 2 challenges create a Free Speech Clause paradox, as invalidating the law does not allow the challenger to speak, while leaving it in place authorizes censorship through artful drafting. This Article resolves the paradox of layer 2 challenges by showing that such challenges rely on a mandate of equal treatment within the Free Speech Clause, and links that mandate to broader issues that plague freedom of speech law. After demonstrating the Court’s reliance on the equal treatment mandate, the Article provides two doctrinal grounds for the mandate: one concerned with coercion, and one concerned with how the Equal Protection Clause changed the shape of First Amendment protections. With the speech right in layer 2 cases triggered by unequal treatment, the remedy is equal treatment – striking layer 2 to vindicate the speech right and using legislative intent to determine if layer 1 can be severed. This approach resolves the Free Speech Clause and the Article III problems created by layer 2 challenges. It also has substantial implications for the Free Speech Clause more broadly. Specifically, it demonstrates how much room remains to legislatures to correct unequal treatment, including through redistributive regulation beneficial in today’s environment of digital speech, contrary to the common trend of comparing the Free Speech Clause to Lochner. Finally, it reveals the doctrinal changes required to bring the prohibition against content-based regulations in line with the Free Speech Clause’s equal treatment mandate.

Campaign Speech and the Universal Dilemma in the Common Law of Elections: A Lesson from the Anglo-American Divide

On first – or second, or third – glance, the courts of the United States and the United Kingdom have adopted hyperbolically divergent responses to state regulation of campaign speech. In both nations, highest levels of government have variously sought wide-ranging control over campaign practice. Courts have subsequently had to weigh how such legislation can be reconciled with individual speech rights and legitimate democratic process. While the House of Lords and Supreme Court in the UK (hereinafter, the UKSC) has declined to strike down campaign speech legislation, the US Supreme Court has so aggressively intervened that one leading election law scholar has characterized the result as “a regulatory structure created by the Court.” The scholarship offers a diverse array of explanations for this trans-Atlantic divide, ranging from constitutional doctrine to differing cultural commitments. Yet through a close analysis of select cases from each jurisdiction, this chapter argues that investigation of the underlying doctrinal divergence reveals a deeper conceptual parallel: democratically determined electoral procedure may pose certain insoluble paradoxes for judicial review. The extensive, norm-peddling approach of American campaign finance law and the legislature-trusting reluctance of the UKSC to strike down campaign regulation both reveal a basic problem that courts confront when reviewing democratically selected law. Where legislation does not grossly contravene a higher constitutional instruction, courts can only strike down electoral legislation through ultimately adverting to normatively independent principles. Advancement of such principles extends beyond the legal analysis that is characteristic of constitutional interpretation. The divergent reactions of the UKSC and Supreme Court to this problem affirm its centrality to electoral regulation in general and campaign speech in particular. The interventionist posture of the US Supreme Court has taken the form of a (critically savaged) assessment of the corrupting effects of campaign financing. Leaving aside the wisdom of transmuting the campaign finance query into a corruption query, this chapter observes that this analytic framing simply confirms that robust engagement with the regulation of campaign speech necessarily involves advancing stand-alone normative principles. By approaching the topic through a reflection upon corruption – a richly political concept that expresses substantive moral commitments – the Supreme Court affirms the richly normative character of the endeavour. Conversely, the UKSC has been perhaps more plaintive in recognizing the fundamental challenge posed by a standing government advancing a vision of how future campaigns should unfold, but has declined or evaded robust engagement with the problem. The UKSC’s retreat to the narrowest doctrinal grounds to resolve disputes reveals its aversion to normative engagement regarding foundational democratic principles. Ultimately, both courts reveal the judicial discomfort with engaging in core democratic reasoning, even if they adopt differing strategies of reframing or declining. Neither approach can resolve the incompatibility between the electorate’s autonomy to set procedures for its own governance and the judiciary’s obligation to review such terms; and both courts are haunted by this tension. This chapter explores this problem by first establishing the differing characters of judicial approaches to campaign finance speech. It then considers the obvious explanations for the differences between the US and UK treatments of constitutional speech and observes that such explanations cannot explain the divergent qualities of the jurisprudential traditions. Finally, it considers the broader tension between the legal interpretation and democratic self-determination to explain the presence of maximalist and minimalist development in the two jurisdictions.

CONSERVATIVE IDEOLOGY IN THE U.S. SUPREME COURT IN THE 21ST CENTURY

At the beginning of the new millennium, the United States entered a new Republican Party cycle. The competition between the two leading parties in the 2000 elections was more acute than ever. It even resulted in a protracted constitutional and political crisis, when the U.S. Supreme Court had to stop the prolonged recounts in Florida (five votes in favor, four against), which was beneficial to the Republican parties. However, the Republicans managed to strengthen their future positions, and Democrat Barack Obama replaced Republican George W. Bush in the White House only after his two presidential terms. Should understand American constitutional judicial lawmaking primarily as the Supreme Court’s lawmaking as the activity of processing, interpreting, applying, and repealing regulations. Lawmaking activities aim to fill the gaps in legislation and reflect the objective needs of public life. Hence the importance of constitutional judicial lawmaking in human rights and other areas of legal regulation. As a legal tool, the U.S. Supreme Court uses procedural requirements and arguments in relatively (and specifically) undeveloped and unmodified legislation. The basis of constitutional lawmaking is the U.S. Supreme Court’s role in overseeing the implementation of judicial procedures. The requirement to comply with the procedural guarantees included in the U.S. Constitution’s text, which coincides with common law’s procedural requirements, is given the meaning of constitutional principles by the U.S. Supreme Court. Thus, there was no reason for conservatism’s full triumph in the early 21st century, as in the last decade of the 20th century. This celebration is not visible in the activities of the Supreme Court. Due to the death of W. Rehnquist in 2005, John Roberts, whose biography was very similar to Rehnquist’s in terms of close ties to the Washington bureaucracy, filled the Chairman’s vacancy. The Supreme Court of the United States in national minorities’ rights until the 2000s, despite the turn to constitutional judicial conservatism, did not move to a complete activism revision. The Court’s main goal was not to attack affirmative measures but to interpret state regulation’s doctrinal grounds, such as equal protection by law and due process. Still, conservative courts failed to change the role and reformat the meaning of doctrines. Keywords: conservative ideology, conservatism, U.S. Supreme Court, constitutional judicial doctrines, U.S. Constitution, dissenting opinions of U.S. Supreme Court justices, conservative decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court.                                                                          

Order of statutory inheritance in the Polish legal system

This article presents a comprehensive analysis of the order of statutory inheritance in the Polish legal system. Undoubtedly, the issue of inheritance has always aroused interest among representatives of legal scholarship and executors of the law. Death is an integral element of every person’s life. For this reason, it seems justified to consider the issue of the grounds for inheritance, especially given that Polish legal provisions provide for two grounds for inheritance — by will and by law. The introduction of the article outlines the main provisions that manifest the principle of “universal succession” in Polish inheritance law. Next, the doctrinal grounds of statutory inheritance in Polish civil law are considered. Statutory inheritance, comprehensively regulated by the Civil Code of Poland, is based on the so-called “concept of the implied will of the testator”, the justification of which is the assertion of justice in society. It is believed that heirs by law are both the most suitable heirs from the point of view of morality of a given society, and the most suitable heirs from the point of view of the alleged will of the testator. Thus, a group of persons entitled to inheritance is established. However, such an approach is more logically explained by the socalled “theory of debt” and “theory of social interest” than by the “concept of the implied will of the testator”. The purpose of this article is to present the prerequisites for calling for inheritance, as well as a way to determine the group of subjects entitled to inheritance by law, indicating the size of the shares to which heirs are entitled. The author separately examines the grounds and procedure for calling spouses, children and other descendant testators, as well as his parents and other ascenders, as well as brothers and sisters and some other categories of heirs to inheritance. The issue of inheritance by a local community or State Treasury is considered separately. The article concludes with a summary in which the author evaluates the current legislative decisions.

Penal and Legal Doctrine as a Legal Category and a Metalanguage Means to Shape the Penal and Legal Policy

So far, the science of penal law has not looked closely into the term “doctrine”, and, in particular, “penal and legal doctrine” from the theoretical point of view. Thus we find it necessary to eliminate this gap, since the use of these terms and their synonyms varies greatly in the scientific and educational activities of penal institutions. Understanding the doctrinal grounds is also important for assessing the current situation and prospects for development of the science of penal law. The article analyzes the usage of the terms “penal and legal doctrine”, “criminal-executive doctrine” “doctrine of criminal-executive law”, “penal doctrine”, “correctional doctrine”; penal and legal doctrine is considered as part of legal doctrine; we study the notion of “legal doctrine” in its relations with adjacent categories (science, concept, position); we also investigate the effects of penal and legal doctrine on the penal and legal policy. We conclude that the term “penal and legal doctrine” is the core one and acts as a necessary prerequisite for scientific analysis. We also provide recommendations for the use of the term “doctrine” in the penal law sphere and put forward our own definition of the term “penal and legal doctrine”. In the course of our research we used general scientific, sectoral (social narrative) and level methodology (methods of theoretical and metatheoretical levels of cognition in science). Key words: penal and legal doctrine, legal doctrine, criminal-executive doctrine, correctional doctrine, doctrine of the criminal-executive law, penal and legal policy, metalanguage tool.

HUMAN RIGHTS OF THE FOURTH GENERATION IN A SINGLE EDUCATIONAL AREA

The relevance of the issue under study is determined by human rights appearance at the end of the XX the beginning of the XXI centuries that cannot be attributed to any of the three generations of human rights known to scholars; the doctrinal grounds of the necessity to unite them within the fourth generation of human rights; the lack of a universally recognized understanding of human rights of the fourth generation, and the ambiguous practice of their recognition and implementation on both the domestic and international levels.
 The purpose of the article is to develop the authors’ model of understanding the concept and classification of human rights of the fourth generation and to make suggestions aimed at getting more acquainted with them representatives of different peoples, to recognize them as quickly as possible and to ensure the most effective application in real life. The key method applied in the fourth generation of human rights research is generalization of the existing concepts of their interpretation within national law of different states, within international law, in the European Court of Human Rights practice, and in the doctrinal views of scientists. This title can be extended to rights not belonging to the first, the second and the third generations of human rights that have arisen at the end of the XX the beginning of the XXI centuries, as well as to human rights that will be revealed and interpreted in the future. As the fourth generation of human rights is in the process of its settling, the approaches to the classification of human rights based on exhaustive lists cannot fully reflect its real state. The content of this article may be of use to scholars studying human rights of the fourth generation, to lecturers teaching subjects dedicated to human rights, to students studying human rights, and to representatives of states and international organizations. involved in the development, recognition and practical implementation of human rights issues.

Doctrinal grounds of ideology of Slavophiles: European intellectual tradition and its Russian modification

The subject of this research is the conceptual grounds of Slavophilic ideology that formed under the influence of European sociopolitical thought of the late XVIII – early XIX centuries, and undergone substantial transformation in the process of adaptation to the Russian sociocultural reality. The article analyzes such concepts as nation, collective subject, national spirit (Volksgeist), special path (Sonderweg), etc., which were partially borrowed by Slavophiles from intellectual production of the German national romanticism, and gained further development having become the theoretical framework for studying different problems of Russian society and the state. Methodology is based on the comparative and historical-genetic methods, which allowed determining and examining the elements of similarity between the ideas of European and sociopolitical thought and Slavophilic conceptual ground, as well as their modification within the Russian intellectual environment. The main conclusion consists in the thesis that Slavophilism cannot be unequivocally attributed to liberal or conservative ideology. It combined the principles and postulates of both philosophical systems that acquired new synthesized content within the framework of Russian intellectual space. Slavophilic attitude toward Russian society, which marked the defining meaning of spiritual beginning of social life, also drastically differed from the national patriotism in the context of the theory of official nationalism, with its vividly expressed statist principle.

“Social Credit System”: historical prerequisites and doctrinal grounds of the phenomenon

This article is dedicated to identification and examination of doctrinal grounds and historical prerequisites of the" Social Credit System (trustworthiness)” – a project introduced in the People’s Republic of China in the early 2000s, and currently being “exported” from People’s Republic of China to other countries. In the course of this research, the author analyzed the specific Chinese sources and prerequisites for the creation of modern social rating and control system, as well as non-national sources mostly attributed to the history of Western European political legal thought and Western social institutions. Viewing "Social Credit System" as a technique for exercising social control and oversight, the authors discover its origins in J. Bentham’s project" Panopticon ", Taylor’s philosophy of management, Confucian and legalistic traditions of Imperial China, ideas and institutions of the era of Chinese cultural revolution, as well as U.S. credit scoring systems. This article is the first within Russian science to study the historical and doctrinal prerequisites of China’s "Social Credit System”, taking into account the works of foreign scholars dedicated to the history of its establishment.  A new perspective is given on the Confucian ideas the ideas of Fajia (Legalism) School, which are interpreted as complementary sources of the modern system of social control developed in PRC. The authors believe that China’s “Social Credit System” and the related techniques of control represent a so-called “bridge” that connects “Western” history of the development of social institutions with typically “Eastern” political and sociocultural tradition. In conclusion, attention is turned to the positive aspects, as well as “shadow” side of implementation of the mechanism of “Social Credit System”, “reverse” of this process and all accompanying problems thereof.

The State of Exactions

In Koontz v. St. Johns River Water Management District, the Supreme Court slightly expanded the range of circumstances involving conditional land use permits in which heightened judicial scrutiny is appropriate in a constitutional “exaction” takings case. In crafting a vision of regulators as strategic extortionists of private property interests, though, Koontz prompted many takings observers to predict that the case would provide momentum for a more significant expansion of such scrutiny in takings cases involving land use permit conditions moving forward, and perhaps even an extension into other regulatory contexts, as well. Five years on, this Article evaluates the extent to which those predictions have come to pass via a review of the approximately 130 lower court cases to have cited Koontz to date. Based on this review, the Article offers two claims. First, on doctrinal grounds, it contends that Koontz’s footprint is rather light to date, in the sense that the decision has not prompted lower courts to extend the application of heighted scrutiny to a broad class of regulatory measures and, in those select instances where such scrutiny does apply, has not led lower courts to craft a far-reaching array of remedies. Second, on normative grounds, it asserts that the restraint evident in the lower court opinions that have wrestled with Koontz thus far is appealing in the sense that this course acknowledges that property necessarily involves context-driven allocative choices by the state, and focuses — as best these courts can, given the constraints explicit in prior doctrine — on whether those allocative choices are fair and just absent compensation.

A (possibilidade de) não execução do mandado de detenção europeu fundamentada no tratamento ou pena cruel ou degradante

O presente artigo tem por objetivo estudar o instituto do Mandado de Detenção Europeu, que surge como substituto imediato do mecanismo de extradição para as relações de captura e entrega de pessoas dentro do território da União Europeia. A partir da metodologia dedutiva, buscou-se embasamento doutrinário, legal e jurisprudencial para se alcançar as conclusões presentes. Para tanto, deve-se analisar o seu contexto de surgimento, suas principais diretrizes de funcionamento e seu alicerce fundamental, qual seja o princípio do reconhecimento mútuo. Por fim, com a análise jurisprudencial de dois casos expoentes da matéria, busca-se responder a problemática basilar: a possibilidade do sujeito-alvo sofrer tratamento cruel ou degradante no sistema prisional do Estado-Membro executor pode ser tratada como hipótese de não execução da entrega?

Euthanasia embedded in palliative care. Responses to essentialistic criticisms of the Belgian model of integral end-of-life care

The Belgian model of ‘integral’ end-of-life care consists of universal access to palliative care (PC) and legally regulated euthanasia. As a first worldwide, the Flemish PC organisation has embedded euthanasia...

O możliwości zastosowania polskich przepisów regulujących postępowanie mediacyjne przed sądami administracyjnymi na forum kościelnym

Problem badawczy niniejszego artykułu dotyczy możliwości zastosowania do rozwiązywania problemów administracyjnych na forum kościelnym przepisów polskiego prawa, które regulują postępowanie administracyjne przed sądami. Na początku tego tekstu poruszono ogólne zagadnienia, włączając w to przedstawienie podstaw doktrynalnych złączonych z Alternative Dispute Resolutions. Następnie zaprezentowano szczegółowe problemy, które bezpośrednio dotyczą mediacji administracyjnej regulowanej przez polskie prawo. Aby dać odpowiedź na pytanie badawcze, dokonano analizy norm z kanonów 22 KPK 1983 dotyczących recepcji na forum kościelnym prawa egzogenicznego. Wniosek z rozważań jest następujący: istnieje możliwość zastosowania przepisów prawa polskiego dotyczącego mediacji administracyjnej na forum kościelnym, jednakże w ograniczonym zakresie.

Violent Dynamics: Exploring Responsibility - Attribution for Harms Inflicted During Spontaneous Group Violence

Violent encounters between groups of individuals often leave one or more of the participants dead, and it may be clear from the evidence that the physical cause of death was set by the single, deliberate act of one of the participants only. When this happens, the question arises whether, and how, responsibility for the fatal act and/or for its consequences can be attributed to other participants in the punch-up. Criminal law has long sought – and found – ways of holding others apart from the direct agent responsible for the harms caused in such encounters, although the legal constructions used differ between legal systems and often change significantly over time even within the same jurisdiction. This paper investigates the appropriateness of different criminal-law responses to these cases from two directions: first, by exploring the possible doctrinal grounds within the criminal law for attributing responsibility for the fatal act/outcome to all participants; and then by investigating the extent to which these responsibility-ascriptions are supported or challenged by insights from psychological studies of group action.

SEC Revanchism and the Expansion of Primary Liability Under Section 17(a) and Rule 10b-5

An important issue in many enforcement cases brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission is the scope of primary liability under the two main anti-fraud provisions, Section 17(a) of the Securities Act and Rule 10b-5 of the Exchange Act. In Flannery, which was an administrative enforcement case, a bare majority of SEC Commissioners adopted broad positions on primary liability under Rule 10b-5(a) and (c) and Section 17(a)(1), (2), and (3). The Commission not only advanced expansive legal conclusions, but it also insisted that the courts accept the agency’s legal interpretations as controlling.This article discusses two issues that Flannery raises, both of them related to the role of administrative agencies in the development, enforcement, and adjudication of federal law. First, the article compares the Commission’s interpretations of the parts of Section 17(a) and Rule 10b-5 with the reasoning and analysis of a series of prominent Supreme Court decisions that imposed meaningful boundaries around aspects of primary liability under Rule 10b-5. That comparison shows that much about Flannery is not consistent with, and is antagonistic to, the Supreme Court’s decisions in Central Bank, Stoneridge, and Janus.Second, the article evaluates Flannery’s explicit demand for Chevron deference and concludes that a reviewing court would have doctrinal and precedential grounds for refusing to accept the Flannery positions as controlling. The reasons start with the text of the provision of the Administrative Procedure Act governing judicial review of agency actions and also cover the actual practice of the Supreme Court and courts of appeals when they review a legal conclusion in an agency adjudication. The precedents identify good reasons for not granting Chevron deference to Flannery. Giving controlling effect to the SEC’s decision would allow the agency both to avoid the teachings of leading Supreme Court authorities and to trump the Supreme Court and other federal courts on significant matters of statutory interpretation.

CHANNELING: SEARCH OF THE METAANTHROPOLOGIC MEAS-UREMENTS OF MIND BEING IN THE UNIVERSE (based on the World Wide Web)

The relevance of the study. In the context of religious and philosophical movements of the «New Age» gained channeling phenomenon – «laying channel», «transmission channel» information from the consciousness that is not in human form, to the individual and humanity as a whole. In the socio-cultural environment of the postmodern channeling reflects the problem of finding extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI; «ETC-problem»; SETІ problem) and to establish contacts with them, this problem has a different projection, important philosophical and anthropological measurements in culture. Investigation of mechanisms of constructing virtual superhuman personalities in the world web is not only of interest for further analysis of the problem of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI), but also to extend subject field of anthropology of the Internet as an important area of philosophical and anthropological studies. The purpose of the study. Analysis of the phenomenon of channeling as a projection of the fundamental problems of life ETI, its representation on the World Wide Web, the impact on the archaism of postmodern culture posing problems meta an-thropological dimensions of existence in the universe of reason and contact with him in the doctrinal grounds channeling. Analysis of research on the problem and its empirical base. Clustered nature of the problem of ETI and channeling its element involves the widespread use of radio astronomy paradigm works carriers solve CETI; work in anthropology Internet; works of researchers of the phenomenon of «New Age». Empirical basis of the study are network resources, as well as texts–representatives created and introduced into circulation by the channelers, their predecessors. Research Methodology. Channeling as an object of research, its network of representation – as a matter of methods involve the use of analytical hermeneutics and archaeographic commenting text fractal logic cluster analysis. The main body. The features of channeling as cultural practices aimed at solving the problem of finding meta an-thropological dimensions of existence in the universe of the mind, as an attempt to resolve the contradiction between the theoretical ideas about extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of empirically observable, the expected signs of their activities. The analysis of the solutions to the problems being ETI loci, its substrate base forms of activity in the Earth's socio-cultural space that offers channeling. Considered as a complete retrospective of channeling cultural practices that emerged in the western segment of the socio-cultural environment, especially its being presented in the form of postmodern religion, emphasized the role of channeling as an indicator cosmization archaism and modern culture. Scientific novelty. Channeling is one of the sociocultural system reactions on Earth absence of bilateral contacts with the ETC. Studying the mechanisms of constructing virtual superhuman personalities in the global network is one of the directions of further development of subject- thematic field of anthropology of the Internet as an important area of philosophical and anthropological studies. Conclusions. Channeling as a holistic, complex structure phenomenon connects the dynamics of transformation of humanity with establishing contacts with polymorphic ETI. Channeling is one of the sociocultural system reactions on Earth absence of bilateral contacts with the ETC. In the development of channeling manifest fractal effects associated with the reproduction of their previous ideas about the history of ETI. Retrospection channeling as cultural practices show his obedience to the law of the cultural series: a temporary phenomenon in the long-range specific chronotope culture is defined by its inclusion in the actually exist-ing set of genetically related forms.

A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age by Steven Nadler (review)

Reviewed by: A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age by Steven Nadler Matthew Homan A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age Steven Nadler. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011. xviii + 279 pp. Steven Nadler’s A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age is an elegantly written and enormously helpful introduction to one of Spinoza’s most important yet underappreciated works, the Theological-Political Treatise. While the importance of the Treatise is now beginning to gain recognition, it was initially abominated as “godless” and “soul harming” and banned throughout Europe. By placing the chief arguments [End Page 148] and objectives of the Treatise in both philosophical and sociopolitical relief, Nadler makes it possible to understand the severity of the backlash against it as well as the abiding interest the Treatise has for those living with the secular political arrangements on behalf of which it presents such a powerful plea. Nadler makes the point that the Treatise was written for a much broader audience than the work for which Spinoza is best known, the Ethics. Whereas the Ethics presumes a philosophically trained readership, the Treatise was intended to be accessible to most anyone with education and an open mind. In retrospect, however, it is the Ethics that has found the wider audience, at least over time, and that is because its arguments are timeless, composed as they were, to use Spinoza’s phrase, sub specie aeternitatis; the Treatise, by contrast, was written to achieve a specific agenda at a particular time, namely, to win the right “to think what one wants and to say what one thinks.” Designed to be accessible for seventeenth-century readers, the Treatise is less so for their twenty-first-century counterparts. Perhaps the biggest hurdle for today’s reader is understanding Spinoza’s hyphenated treatment of the theological and the political. Someone who picks up the Treatise to learn about Spinoza’s political philosophy, expecting something in the vein of Locke’s Second Treatise, will be surprised to find that much of it is devoted to biblical hermeneutics and extended analyses of biblical passages, right down to technical ambiguities in the original Hebrew. In a helpful chapter on “The Theological-Political Problem,” Nadler outlines the power struggles between religious and secular authorities that raged in Europe at the time and made the theological and political a hyphenated affair. If the Bible is the ultimate source of truth—a widely held view at the time—clerics can claim a vital role to play in propagating and safeguarding its authority. The question of ecclesiastic political power, therefore, is tied to how the Bible is interpreted. In the chapters “Gods and Prophets,” “Miracles,” and “Scripture,” Nadler places Spinoza’s biblical interpretation in context, making it possible to see clearly where its innovations (and provocations) lay. Spinoza rejected any interpretation of the Bible that made a priori assumptions about its truth. For Spinoza, the Bible has to be interpreted on its own terms. This means that determining the meaning of a biblical passage is not a matter of reconciling it with reason, for example (as it was for Maimonides and, interestingly, Spinoza’s friend, Lodewijk Meijer), but rather of understanding the times and language in which it was written, the character of its author, [End Page 149] his intentions, and so on. In this light, the Bible is seen to be a document composed mostly by men whose chief distinction lay not in their intellectual acuity but rather in the vivacity of their imaginations and in their ability to inculcate obedience and moral rectitude. Aside from simple precepts, such as love of neighbor and obedience to God, religious texts, for Spinoza, are not a source of philosophical or scientific truth. As long as their views do not undermine justice and charity, therefore, there is no cause to restrict what philosophers can say on any doctrinal grounds. Moreover, as a matter simply of obedience and moral behavior, religious faith is something that secular authorities can mind at least as well as ecclesiastic ones. Like Hobbes...

Чрезвычайные органы власти в советской государственной системе

The article describes the extraordinary authorities as a significant element of the Soviet State system in the first decades of its existence. It studies historical, structural and doctrinal grounds of its phenomenon, the activity of extraordinary bodies during the Civil war and the Great Patriotic War.

Famine: A Short History

Famine: A Short History