Legal And Political Philosophy

In this masterful work, both an illumination of Kant’s thought and an important contribution to contemporary legal and political theory, Arthur Ripstein gives a comprehensive yet accessible account of Kant’s political philosophy. Ripstein shows that Kant’s thought is organized around two central claims: first, that legal institutions are not simply responses to human limitations or circumstances; indeed the requirements of justice can be articulated without recourse to views about human inclinations and vulnerabilities. Second, Kant argues for a distinctive moral principle, which restricts the legitimate use of force to the creation of a system of equal freedom. Ripstein’s description of the unity and philosophical plausibility of this dimension of Kant’s thought will be a revelation to political and legal scholars. In addition to providing a clear and coherent statement of the most misunderstood of Kant’s ideas, Ripstein also shows that Kant’s views remain conceptually powerful and morally appealing today. Ripstein defends the idea of equal freedom by examining several substantive areas of law—private rights, constitutional law, police powers, and punishment—and by demonstrating the compelling advantages of the Kantian framework over competing approaches.

Legal and Political Philosophy, edited by Enrique Villanueva, is the first volume in the series Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy, published by Rodopi also under his editorship. It contains six original essays by leading political philosophers and philosophers of law (Waldron, Coleman, Postema, Shapiro, Sayre-McCord, and Kraus), along with critical papers on those essays, and replies. This is cutting edge work that elicits sharp responses already as it is published, with the debate joined as the authors reply. Social, Political, and Legal Philosophy is a new book series, edited by Enrique Villanueva, and published by Rodopi Publishers as part of Rodopi Philosophical Studies. The series will publish collections of new essays on topics in social or political or legal philosophy. New volumes will be published approximately every year or every other year.

This the first volume in the series Social, political, and legal philosophy. It contains six original essays by leading political philosophers and philosophers of law (Waldron, Coleman, Postema, Shapiro, Sayre-McCord, and Kraus), along with critical papers on those essays, and replies. This is cutting edge work that elicits sharp responses already as it is published, with the debate joined as the authors reply."

The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law brings together specially commissioned essays by twenty-six of the foremost legal theorists currently writing, to provide a state-of-the-art overview of jurisprudential scholarship.

This book combines philosophical, intellectual-historical and political-theoretical methodologies to provide a new synoptic reading of the history of German political philosophy. Incorporating chapters on the political ideas of Luther and Zwingli, on the politics of the early Enlightenment, on Idealism, on Historicism and Lukács, on early Twentieth-Century political theology, on the Frankfurt School, and on Habermas and Luhmann, the book sets out both a broad and a detailed discussion of German political reflection from the Reformation to the present. In doing so, it explains how the development of German political philosophy is marked by a continual concern with certain unresolved and recurrent problems. It claims that all the major positions address questions relating to the origin of law, that all seek to account for the relation between legal validity and metaphysical and theological superstructures, and that all are centred on the attempt to conceptualise and reconstruct the character of the legal subject.

Ripstein gives a comprehensive yet accessible account of Kant’s political philosophy. In addition to providing a clear and coherent statement of the most misunderstood of Kant’s ideas, Ripstein also shows that Kant’s views remain conceptually powerful and morally appealing today.

It has become a commonplace to regard nature and politics as the privileged sphere of Greet philosophy and to consider the thinking of Israel as exclusively attuned to the word of God. Yet an unbiased reading of the text of the Torah reveals a coherent biblical approach to the political. In Philosophy of the Law, Shmuel Trigano outlines the political theory of the Bible through a philosophical inquiry into the biblical text. Trigano claims that, far from advocating a theocracy, with all power in the hands of the Divine, biblical politics is based on human freedom. The Covenant in the Hebrew Bible may not be a "social contract," but the politics to which it leads can illuminate our thinking on the social contract model, which dominates the modern understanding of politics. Book jacket.

In Punishment and the History of Political Philosophy, Arthur Shuster offers an insightful study of punishment in the works of Plato, Hobbes, Montesquieu, Beccaria, Kant, and Foucault.