Law As Symbolic Form: Ernst Cassirer and the Anthropocentric View of Law

388 Pages·2007·3.324 MB·English

by  Deniz Coskun (eds.)

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LAW AS SYMBOLIC FORM
Law and Philosophy Library
VOLUME 82
Managing Editors
FRANCISCO J.LAPORTA,Department of Law,
Autonomous University of Madrid,Spain
ALEKSANDER PECZENIK†,Department of Law,University of Lund,Sweden
FREDERICK SCHAUER,John F.Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University,Cambridge,Mass.,U.S.A.
Former Managing Editors
AULIS AARNIO,MICHAEL D.BAYLES†,CONRAD D.JOHNSON†,
ALAN MABE
Editorial Advisory Board
AULIS AARNIO,Research Institute for Social Sciences,
University of Tampere,Finland
ZENON BAN´KOWSKI,Centre for Law and Society,University of Edinburgh
PAOLO COMANDUCCI,University of Genoa,Italy
ERNESTO GARZÓN VALDÉS,Institut für Politikwissenschaft,
Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz
JOHN KLEINIG,Department of Law,Police Science and Criminal
Justice Administration,John Jay College of Criminal Justice,
City University of New York
NEIL MacCORMICK,European Parliament,Brussels,Belgium
WOJCIECH SADURSKI,European University Institute,
Department of Law,Florence,Italy
ROBERT S.SUMMERS,School of Law,Cornell University
CARL WELLMAN,Department of Philosophy,Washington University
LAW AS SYMBOLIC FORM
Ernst Cassirer and the
Anthropocentric View of Law
DENIZ COSKUN
Radboud University of Nijmegen,
The Netherlands
A C.I.P.Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-1-4020-6255-1 (HB)
ISBN 978-1-4020-6256-8 (e-book)
Published by Springer,
P.O.Box 17,3300 AA Dordrecht,The Netherlands.
www.springer.com
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved
© 2007 Springer
No part ofthis work may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted
in any form or by any means,electronic,mechanical,photocopying,microfilming,
recording or otherwise,without written permission from the Publisher,with the
exception ofany material supplied specifically for the purpose ofbeing entered
and executed on a computer system,for exclusive useby the purchaser ofthe work.
To the memory of my great-grandmother Meyrem Özcan
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks go out to many. From an intellectual and aspirational point of
view I want to thank Norman Redlich and Paul Kahn for their support
throughout the process. My thanks go out also to Bruce Ackerman and
our many interactions during the Justice course at Yale. My advisor
Thomas Mertens has teached me a lot, professionally and personally.
Paul Cliteur I want to thank for teaching me to write an essay. This book
is written on a Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research Scholar-
ship. Furthermore, this book has benefited from my visit to Yale Law
School and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale
University. In addition, this book has benefited from my stay at
Georgetown University Law Center, and my frequent visits to the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum Library (for the Center of Advanced
Holocaust Studies) in Washington, D.C., because of a Fulbright Scholar-
ship. Finally, I want to thank my grandfather, Ali, my grandmother,
Dilber, my mother, Kezzi, my father, Noman, my brothers, Bilal and Ali,
and my sister, Dilber Meyrem, for the emotional structure and suste-
nance in my life that has made it possible for me to write this book.
I have chosen to leave the citations and references to Cassirer’s
work unabbreviated, because the Cassirer scholarship is central to this
book. Thusly also the separate lists of primary and secondary literature
that specifically pertain to Cassirer and his works.

New York, November 6, 2006
Deniz Coskun
TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION.................................................................................1

PART I: CASSIRER AS A PUBLIC PERSON........................................25
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................25

CHAPTER 1. CASSIRER’S PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
WITH WEIMAR............................................................27
I. INTRODUCTION.................................................................27
I. 1. WHAT WAS THE SOCIO-POLITICAL CONTEXT THAT
MARKED THE TRANSITION TO WEIMAR?.........................29
I. 2. WHAT WAS THE POLITICO-HISTORICAL CONTEXT
OF THE WEIMAR CONSTITUTION?.....................................34
I. 3. WHAT WAS CASSIRER’S CONSTITUTIONAL
ENGAGEMENT?.................................................................45
II. CONCLUSION.....................................................................55

CHAPTER 2. CASSIRER AND HEIDEGGER. AN INTERMEZZO
ON MAGIC MOUNTAIN (1929).....................................57
I. INTRODUCTION.................................................................57
I. 1. WHAT WAS THE CASSIRER–HEIDEGGER DEBATE?...........58
I. 2. WHAT WAS THE CASSIRER–HEIDEGGER DEBATE
FROM A JURISPRUDENTIAL PERSPECTIVE?......................72
II. CONCLUSION.....................................................................82

CHAPTER 3. CASSIRER IN EXILE: AN ESSAY ON THE RECOVERY
OF INDIVIDUAL MORAL JUDGMENT...........................87
I. INTRODUCTION.................................................................87
I. 1. WHAT WAS THE CAMBRIDGE SCHOOL
OF PLATONISM?................................................................90
I. 2. WHAT WAS THE CONTRIBUTION OF GREEK
CULTURE?.........................................................................98
I. 3. WHAT WAS THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE CAMBRIDGE
SCHOOL OF PLATONISM?................................................107
I. 4. WHAT WAS THE PHILOSOPHICAL FRIENDSHIP
BETWEEN SCHWEITZER AND CASSIRER?........................114
x TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. 5. WHAT ARE THE HUMANISTIC PREMISES
OF CASSIRER’S PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE?...................123
II. CONCLUSION...................................................................132

CHAPTER 4. THE POLITICS OF MYTH. CASSIRER’S
PATHOLOGY OF THE TOTALITARIAN STATE.............135
I. INTRODUCTION...............................................................135
I. 1. WHAT WAS CASSIRER’S CRITIQUE OF LIFE
PHILOSOPHY?.................................................................138
I. 2. WHAT WAS THE CULTURAL CRISIS PERCEIVED
BY CASSIRER?.................................................................143
I. 3. HOW DID THE TECHNOLOGICAL AGE
CONTRIBUTE TO THE CULTURAL CRISIS?.......................151
I.4. WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MYTH
OF THE STATE?...............................................................157
I.5. WHAT IS THE POLITICS OF MYTH?.................................162
II. CONCLUSION...................................................................169

CONCLUSION TO PART I................................................................173

PART II: LAW AS SYMBOLIC FORM ...............................................179
INTRODUCTION.........................................................................179

CHAPTER 5. THE PHILOSOPHY OF SYMBOLIC FORMS..................181
I. INTRODUCTION...............................................................181
I. 1 WHAT ARE THE OBJECTIVES OF THE PHILOSOPHY
OF SYMBOLIC FORMS?....................................................182
I. 2. WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF
SYMBOLIC FORMS?.........................................................188
I. 3. WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE INTERPLAY
BETWEEN MYTH AND LANGUAGE?................................200
I. 4. WHAT IS THE HERMENEUTICAL DIMENSION
OF CASSIRER’S PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE?...................205
I. 5. WHAT IS THE ETHICAL DIMENSION OF CASSIRER’S
METAPHYSICS OF CULTURE?..........................................208
II. CONCLUSION...................................................................220

CHAPTER 6. CASSIRER’S POSITION IN RELATION
TONEO-KANTIANISM?.............................................223
TABLE OF CONTENTS xi
I. INTRODUCTION...............................................................223
I. 1. WHAT WAS NEO-KANTIANISM?.......................................223
I. 2. WHAT WAS THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE MARBURG
SCHOOL OF NEO-KANTIANISM?......................................227
I. 3. WHAT WAS THE CRITIQUE EXERTED UPON
NEO-KANTIANISM?.........................................................234
I. 4. WHAT WERE CASSIRER’S ACHIEVEMENTS
ABOVE AND BEYOND NEO-KANTIANISM?........................238
II. CONCLUSION...................................................................243

CHAPTER 7. LAW AS A SYMBOLIC FORM.......................................245
I. INTRODUCTION...............................................................245
I. 1. WHAT EXPLAINS CASSIRER’S ENGAGEMENT
WITH LAW AS SYMBOLIC FORM?.....................................246
I. 2. WHAT IS CASSIRER’S CRITIQUE OF SCANDINAVIAN
REALIST JURISPRUDENCE?............................................250
I. 3. WHAT ARE THE EXPRESSIVE, THE REPRESENTATIVE,
AND THE SYMBOLIC PHASES IN LAW?............................256
I. 4. WHAT IS CASSIRER’S PHILOSOPHICAL
JUSTIFICATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS?..............................267
II. CONCLUSION...................................................................273

CHAPTER 8. THE LINGUISTIC TURN OF SOCIAL
CONTRACT THEORY..................................................277
I. INTRODUCTION...............................................................277
I. 1. WHAT IS THE SOCIAL CONTRACT FOR CASSIRER?..........278
I. 2. WHAT ARE THE CONDITIONS FOR THE
POSSIBILITY OF A PROMISE?...........................................286
II. CONCLUSION...................................................................296

CHAPTER 9. CASSIRER’S POSITION IN RELATION
TONEO-KANTIAN JURISPRUDENCE.........................299
I. INTRODUCTION...............................................................299
I. 1. WHAT WAS NEO-KANTIAN JURISPRUDENCE?................302
I. 2. WHAT WAS THE JURISPRUDENCE OF THE
MARBURG SCHOOL?.......................................................307
I. 3. WHAT WAS THE JURISPRUDENCE HERMANN
COHEN ENVISIONED?.....................................................311
I. 4. WHAT IS THE SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY
OFHERMANN COHEN?....................................................316