Gustav Radbruch’s Concept of Law

2021 ◽  
pp. 107-118
Author(s):  
Robert Alexy

In the twentieth century, two legal philosophers in the German-speaking countries excelled over all the others and their philosophies remain topics of lively debate in the global discussion today: Hans Kelsen and Gustav Radbruch. Kelsen was a positivist. The classification of Radbruch is contested. According to the discontinuity thesis, Radbruch was a positivist before 1933 and became a non-positivist after 1945. According to the continuity thesis, Radbruch always was a non-positivist. I defend the continuity thesis in this chapter. The basis of the argument presented here is the distinction between super-inclusive and inclusive non-positivism.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 318-320
Author(s):  
Scott L. Taylor

Saccenti’s volume belongs to the category of Begriffsgeschichte, the history of concepts, and more particularly to the debate over the existence or nonexistence of a conceptual shift in ius naturale to encompass a subjective notion of natural rights. The author argues that this issue became particularly relevant in mid-twentieth century, first, because of the desire to delimit the totalitarian implications of legal positivism chez Hans Kelsen; second, in response to Lovejoy’s The Great Chain of Being and its progeny; and third, as a result of a revival of neo-Thomistic and neo-scholastic perspectives sometimes labelled “une nouvelle chrétienté.”


Author(s):  
Quentin Letesson ◽  
Carl Knappett

Urban settlements are often presented as a prominent feature of Bronze Age Crete (McEnroe 2010). And yet, summarizing what is actually known about Minoan towns is much more challenging than one would expect, especially for non-palatial settlements. Many studies are narrowly focused and often take one urban element out of context in all communities (e.g. villas, classification of houses, street system, etc.), hence undermining an understanding of the urban environment as a whole. Furthermore, research on Minoan urban contexts has long been characterized by a strong focus on polite or palatial architecture and very specific urban features related to it (such as the so-called west courts, raised walks, theatral areas, etc.), while most case-studies have often had a rather limited dataset. There are clearly exceptions but, to date, our knowledge of Minoan urban settlements is partly built on a large collection of heterogeneous and disparate information. As already noted some fifteen years ago, the ‘nature and character’ of urban settlements ‘has seen much less discussion, particularly at a generalized level’ (Branigan 2001a: vii; but see chapters 7 and 9). Of course, this situation is also inextricably linked to the nature of our datasets. Research is clearly constrained by the low quality of work in the initial decades of Minoan archaeology when somany of the larger exposures of townscapes on the island were made. And yet, for more than a century now, the archaeology of Bronze Age Crete has thrived:many excavations initiated at the beginning of the twentieth century have either continued or been revived, providing descriptions of numerous settlements of various sizes; new projects have unearthed fascinating buildings and sites; and many regions of the island have now been systematically surveyed. As a consequence, Minoan archaeologists have at their disposal a solid and varied dataset. Of course, sampling issues do exist. Firstly, remains of Neopalatial urban settlements clearly outnumber those of other periods.


Author(s):  
Michael Rembis

Eugenics is central to the history of disability in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Recently, scholars in a number of disciplines have debated whether the biopolitical regime that emerged in the waning decades of the twentieth century can be called “eugenic.” Some scholars claim that although distinctions can be made between an “old” eugenics (1860s–1950s) and a “new” eugenics (1960s–present), the basic tenets of eugenics have endured. Other scholars, Nikolas Rose being the most prominent among them, assert that the biopolitics at the turn of the twenty-first century is significantly different from the “old” eugenics and must be analyzed on its own terms. The question of whether one can write a “long” history of eugenics has animated a lively debate among historians. When viewed through the lens of disability, important continuities emerge between the history of eugenics and the current biopolitical regime.


1988 ◽  
Vol 153 (S3) ◽  
pp. 11-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Pichot

The publication by the American Psychiatric Association in 1980 of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition (DSM-III) - a text whose influence has been felt throughout the entire world and whose system of classification, particularly within the context of depressive disorders, has now been adopted by the majority of research work, no matter in what country it is implemented or published - has given the impression that an ‘American perspective’ has been substituted for the ‘European perspective’ that was predominant up to that point. However, this is a simplistic view of a complex history. Certainly, the basic methods of DSM-III originated from within those traditions which are particularly rooted in the USA, such as the quantitative approach to diagnostic criteria; these derive in the final analysis from the ‘statistical psychology’ devised by James McKeen Cattell at the University of Pennsylvania in 1887, and subsequently taught by him at Columbia University. But even among those factors which appear to be characteristically American, European origins can be detected: when he was in London, Cattell was the pupil of Galton, the founder of biometry. Furthermore, there has never existed in Europe any unanimity of opinion with regard to the problems of nosology: concepts supported in the German-speaking countries, in France, in the UK, or in the Scandinavian countries have only been partially adopted elsewhere and occasionally have remained specific to their national tradition. This paper will examine two of the fundamental points in the classification of depression which are linked to European perspectives - the notion of affective disorder and the endogenous/non-endogenous dichotomy - and will discuss the present situation created by the discordance which exists between the European and American approaches.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document