Phenomenology of Law and Normativity

Against the widespread, mainstream take on the philosophy of law, this collected volume fills an important scholarly gap by introducing a phenomenological account of some of the major questions and themes of jurisprudence such as rights and norms. This volume argues that wherever there is a demand for grounding normativity, the phenomenological method can provide a priori-albeit corrigible-access to essential truths, with reference to beings and their social relationships. The present work reflects upon the place and potential impact on the theory of law and normativity stemming from the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl-largely overlooked by legal philosophers and legal theorists. Further coverage contains those who have built upon these ideas of Husserl such as Martin Heidegger, Alfred Schutz, Edith Stein, Emmanuel Levinas, and Adolf Reinach.

This text addresses new issues and questions from the general perspective of the phenomenology of law. It is a response to those critical of phenomenology by presenting sober arguments in support of its potential for achieving a deeper grasp of legal normative concepts such as rights, claims, obligations, promises, and apologies. Boundaries between law and morality as well as legal and social ontologies are approached from a phenomenological perspective. It appeals to students, researchers, and professionals working in phenomenology, ethics, legal philosophy, and human rights theory and practice.

Auteur

Panos Theodorou is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Crete (Greece). He is author of the books: Perception and Theory as Practices (Kritiki, 2006; in Greek); Husserl and Heidegger on Reduction, Primordiality, and the Categorial (Springer, 2015); Introduction to the Philosophy of Values (Kallipos 2016, in Greek); Martin Heidegger's "Being and Time": Phenomenological Reading of the Preliminary Existential Analytic. (Kallipos 2016, in Greek); and, co-authored with F. Vassiliou, Introduction to Edmund Husserl's Phenomenology: Genesis and Meaning of Logical Investigations (Nissos 2019, in Greek). He has translated in Greek and commented the corpus of the texts written by Husserl and Heidegger for the 'Britannica Artikel' project (Kritiki, 2005) and Husserl's Crisis of the European Sciences (Parts I and II) (Nissos, 2012). Articles of his, on phenomenology, philosophy of science, philosophical anthropology, and philosophy of emotions, values, and desires appearin international journals and volumes.

Pedro Alves is Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy of the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon and Research Fellow of the Center of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon. He had been President of the Portuguese Society of Phenomenological Philosophy (2002-2012). He is Editor-in-Chief of Phainomenon - A Journal of Phenomenological Philosophy. He translated into Portuguese several volumes of the Husserliana collection (namely Logical Investigations, with Carlos Morujão, Cartesian Meditations, The Kaizo Articles and the Vienna Conference) in the framework of a research project for which he was the principal investigator and the director of a team that translated nine texts. He published five books and many articles in journals. He collaborated in several collective books, of which five were published by Springer.

Anna Irene Bakais a Greek jurist, Legal Associate at the Greek National Commission for Human Rights and Postdoctoral Fellow at the Philosophy Department of the University of Crete, Greece. Her research is a critique on legal positivism and focuses on the idea of normativity and the philosophy of legal rights from the scope of Edmund Husserl's eidetic and transcendental phenomenology, as well as Adolph Reinach's work on the a priori elements of civil law. She holds a Ph.D. in legal philosophy from the University of Hong Kong, for which she was awarded a scholarship by the University of Hong Kong as well as the Hellenic National Scholarship. She is the recipient of a 3-year Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Fellowship on the philosophy of human rights to be carried-out at Harvard University and the Ca' Foscari University of Venice.