Kant über Spontaneität und Selbstbestimmung im Denken

The concept of autonomy and its relation to the idea of freedom are among the most important and most frequently discussed topics in the research on Kantian philosophy. In contrast, there has been relatively little appreciation of the fact that Kant conceives of man as a free, self-determined being not only in his practical-moral but also in his theoretical cognitive relation to the world. This disproportion is probably also due to the fact that this thesis has neither been methodically elaborated by Kant, nor is it a philosophically innocuous one. The author undertakes a systematic location of the idea of epistemic self-determination in Kant's conception of human cognition and, on this basis, explores the structural relationship between epistemic self-determination and moral autonomy. The analysis clearly highlights the parallels and differences between the two domains and identifies autonomy as a general formal principle of reason that characterizes both cognition and action.

ACT OF 1981 �ON THE LEGAL STATUS OF FOREIGN CITIZENS IN THE USSR�: BASIC PROVISIONS AND APPLICATION

The article considers the peculiarities of the legal status of foreign citizens in the Soviet Union as a result of legislative changes in the early 1980s. The purpose of the article is to analyze the main provisions and features of the application �On the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens in the USSR� Act of 1981. The research methodology is defined by an interdisciplinary approach (history, law) and is based on general scientific and special scientific methods, first of all, retrospection and legal analysis. The study result that the adoption of the �On the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens in the USSR� Act in 1981 was, among other things, due to the need to regulate the main aspects of the stay of foreign tourists in the Soviet Union as there was a formal principle that foreigners enjoyed the same rights and freedoms and had the same responsibilities as Soviet citizens, unless otherwise provided by current legislation. Due to this provision, foreigners were endowed with a fairly wide range of socio-economic and personal rights and freedoms, as well as certain political rights and freedoms. At the same time, the use of rights and freedoms by foreign citizens and stateless persons in the USSR should not have harmed the interests of Soviet society and the state, the rights and legitimate interests of the citizens of the USSR. The conclusions emphasize that the legal status of foreigners in the USSR was based on the following principles: 1) foreign citizens in the Soviet Union could claim the same rights and freedoms and bear the same obligations as citizens of the USSR; 2) foreigners were treated as equal before the law, regardless of the origin, social and property status, race and nationality, sex, education, language, etc.; 3) certain special restrictions were allowed in respect of citizens of those states in respect of which there were restrictions; 4) the enjoyment of rights and freedoms by foreign citizens in the USSR shouldn�t have harmed the �interests of Soviet society�. At the same time, the formally guaranteed rights of foreigners were not always realized in practice due to the peculiarities of the political regime in the country.

LEGAL REALISM AS DIRECTION OF SOCIOLOGICAL JURISPRUDENCE

The article is devoted to the disclosure of features of legal realism as a special direction of sociological jurisprudence. The historical prerequisites for the formation of American legal realism are considered. It was emphasized that legal realism emerged as a reaction to the formal principle of adjudication, which insisted on the need for strict adherence to case law. The leader of American legal formalism, K. Langdell, viewed law as a combination of legal concepts derived by inductively generalizing previous court decisions. It has been proven that one of the first to disagree with this approach was judges of U.S. Supreme Court Justice O. Holmes and B. Cardozo. A comparative analysis of the views of K. Llewellyn and J. Frank, who are recognized leaders of the movement of legal realism, was done. It was established that K. Llewellyn considered that law is not only the judge decide but also any other persons with powers over the disputes. He paid particular attention to the study of the activities of the High Courts and emphasized the need to use the so-called Grand-style in the judicial decision-making process, which allows the law to be adapted to the real circumstances of the case and to contemporary social change. In contrast, J. Frank insisted that the judge was the creator of the law, and that the courts of first instance played a major role in the administration of justice. In his opinion, one of the decisive factors in the administration of justice is the personality of the judge, his individual and psychological qualities. It has been found that despite the lack of unity of positions of the supporters of legal realism, they are united by the underestimation of positive law as a factor of certainty and stability of legal relations, an instrumental approach to law and excessive psychologization of the judicial process. It is concluded that despite the significant shortcomings inherent in legal realism, this line of legal thought has made a significant impact on the general theory and philosophy of law through the combination of methods of sociological and psychological study of legal reality and the disclosure of internal mechanisms of formation judicial decisions.

Repetition

Spark’s The Only Problem recapitulates the sub-plot of Kierkegaard’s Repetition, in which a young man withdraws from society to study the Book of Job. Spark’s central character, Harvey Gotham, is writing a book about Job but finds that his life repeats aspects of Job’s when his wife is accused of being part of a terrorist organisation that police believe Harvey to be funding. Police interrogation becomes equivalent to Job’s confrontation with his ‘comforters’. Harvey, however, has discovered the image of his wife in a painting of Job’s wife completed hundreds of years previously, making repetition central to the structure of the novel. Spark regularly turns repetition into a formal principle that undermines temporal sequence by relating the same event or repeating the same words on a variety of occasions in her stories and novels. Thus her Symposium, with its discussion of the nature of modern love, recalls Plato’s Symposium, but is also a repetition of Kierkegaard’s restaging of Plato in his Stages on Life’s Way. It is a theme taken up in The Takeover, a novel which dramatizes the fact that it has become impossible to distinguish between the real and its many artful repetitions.

All Roads Lead to Rome: Discretionary Reasoning on Medically Objective Injuries at the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Offices

Discretion may challenge the formal principle of justice as it may involve unequal treatment of the same type of case. This article explores the discretionary reasoning exhibited by the frontline workers at different Norwegian Labour and Welfare offices (NAV) towards the same fictitious case. Frontline workers participate in a focus group where they are presented with a vignette concerning the case of a user with medically objective findings, that is, a severe head injury. The analysis focuses on the reasoning of the frontline workers before they come up with a suggestion as to how to proceed with the case. The findings demonstrate that while different avenues are pursued in the reasoning of the focus groups, the same conclusion is reached as to the treatment of the case. The article argues that the institutional logic which guides the frontline workers actions infers the reasoning process through a “norm of action” that states how it ought to be done.

Transformation Chains, Associative Areas, and a Principle of Form for Anton Webern’s Twelve-tone Music

Much of Webern’s twelve-tone music relies on conventional formal types to structure extended composition and long-range compositional strategy. This article describes how these forms were absorbed into his personal twelve-tone style through an exploration of three entwined techniques. His techniques of serial row chaining and associative organization create a deep musical hierarchy that is frequently navigated by a formal principle of large-scale complementation. The analyses appearing here are drawn from across Webern’s twelve-tone period and are elucidated through spatial representations that describe compositional potential and musical realization. In addition to providing a means for analytical interpretation, the analyses reveal how Webern’s fusion of form and twelve-tone technique resemble characteristics of the tonal system while amplifying basic axioms of serial composition.