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Kantian Journal

2025 Vol. 44. №3

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Koda V. N.

The Question of Normativity in Emil Lask’s Philosophy of Right

DOI
10.5922/0207-6918-2025-3-5
Pages
130-149
Lask Neo-Kantianism philosophy of right normativity pre-scientific concept formation

Abstract

Before Emil Lask wrote The Logic of Philosophy (1911) he outlined the main theses of his future philosophical project in The Philosophy of Right (1905): critique of the “two worlds theory”, the problem of pre-reflective cognition, the emphasis on the role of “pre-scientific” pre-theoretical reality. But how, according to Lask, does the transition from “pre-legal” to “legal” reality take place? The Philosophy of Right criticises the “two worlds theory”, interpreted in the spirit of Platonism, as a mixing of value and reality in the natural law and historism. Lask claims that such a shift can be avoided in the critical philosophy of law. Instead of choosing between absolutisation of extra-historical legal norm and absolutisation of historical factuality the critical philosophy of law works with the real world as a “semi-finished product” (Halbfabrikat) which corresponds to the meanings of culture. In the “semi-finished product” the realm of right is partly “scientific” and partly “pre-scientific”, which makes the question of transition from the “pre-legal” to “legal” reality particularly important. The transition is revealed through the creation of legal concepts, in which their pre-scientific formation (vorwissenschaftliche Begriffsbildungen) and the teleological principle, which is responsible for the selection of the pre-legal empirical substrate of right that can become legal, play a significant role. The Philo­sophy of Right and The Logic of Philosophy are seen as keys to understanding each other. Therefore the “two-storied building” metaphor used in The Logic of Philosophy to explain the two levels of cognition can be applied to the concept of right. I arrive at the conclusion that the philosophical-legal practice of norm formation, according to Lask, involves “two necessities”: the necessity of recognising the pre-scientific element in right and the necessity of converting it into a “scientific” one. Thus, normativity in the philosophy of right, according to Lask, is not introduced from “above-outside”, but is formed in a “semi-finished product” of the right itself.

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