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.)

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.

Table of Contents

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