Why the Law Matters to You : : Citizenship, Agency, and Public Identity / / Christoph Hanisch.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DGBA Backlist Complete English Language 2000-2014 PART1
• VerfasserIn: Hanisch, Christoph,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2013]; ©2013
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Language: English
• Series: Practical Philosophy , 16
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (267 p.)
• Other title: Frontmatter --; Contents --; Introduction --; Part 1: A Challenge for Citizenship --; Chapter 1: Kukathas’s Challenge to Contemporary Liberalism --; Chapter 2: The Liberal State and Liberal Citizens --; Chapter 3: Initial Ad Hominem Reply to Kukathas --; Part 2: Public Identity and Self-Constituting Action --; Chapter 4: Korsgaard’s Two Arguments --; Chapter 5: Public Actions and Public Identities --; Chapter 6: Clarification and Objections --; Part 3: Self-Constituting Action and the Law --; Chapter 7: Action and the Law --; Chapter 8: The Nature of Law Revisited --; Chapter 9: Reply to Kukathas --; Conclusion --; References
• Format: Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
• ISBN: 9783110324563; 9783110238570; 9783110238488; 9783110636949; 9783110317350; 9783110317329; 9783110317312
• ISSN: 2197-9243
• DOI: 10.1515/9783110324563
• Access: restricted access
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: Christoph Hanisch.

This book presents an answer to the question of why modern legal institutions and the idea of citizenship are important for leading a free life. The majority of views in political and legal philosophy regard the law merely as a useful instrument, employed to render our lives more secure and to enable us to engage in cooperate activities more efficiently. The view developed here defends a non-instrumentalist alternative of why the law matters. It identifies the law as a constitutive feature of our identities as citizens of modern states. The constitutivist argument rests on the (Kantian) assumption that a person’s practical identity (its normative self-conception as an agent) is the result of its actions. The law co-constitutes these identities because it maintains the external conditions that are necessary for the actions performed under its authority. Modern legal institutions provide these external prerequisites for achieving a high degree of individual self-constitution and freedom. Only public principles can establish our status as individuals who pursue their life plans and actions as a matter of right and not because others contingently happen to let us do so. The book thereby provides resources for a reply to anarchist challenges to the necessity of legal ordering.