This article contains a summary of selected theses of the theory of the state developed by Hermann Heller, who was one of the leading representatives of the so-called Weimar Theory of the State. State theorists of the Weimar era formed an independent, formally unrelated group of scientists who had often opposing views, but were united by a common effort to conduct even philosophical investigation of the nature of the state, the European, continental state, as well as its internal ratio and (...) mission. In addition to Hermann Heller, this group included Carl Schmitt, Rudolf Smend, Erich Kaufmann and Heinrich Triepel. They asked questions which are absent in today’s science, such as: “What is a state?”, “What kind of being is it and what is its nature?”. The answers determine many issues, including our perception of the durability and strength of the state, our understanding of its structure and development, the relation between the state and the individual and the relation between politics and history, etc. No settlement of this basic issue is not only simple negligence, but – as can be judged – it stems from today’s tacit assumption that the state is not a being, but only an artificial human construct, a combination of elements and a set of institutions. Heller perceives the state substantially: as particular organization of social affairs; organization of specific areas of public life: economy, law and public opinion. These were created in the modern era and have been specific to Europe from the sixteenth century to modern times. The matter of these areas is transformed into a state order by sovereign authorities. Therefore, their policies and their law have their concrete object whose reality they face, and they need to demonstrate that they are capable of organizing this reality. The ethos of the state and at the same time the legitimacy of its power require that elementary principles of justice are ensured, or at least injustice is eliminated from social life. (shrink)

Imagination has recently attracted considerable attention from epistemologists and is recognized as a source of belief and even knowledge. One remarkable feature of imagination is that it is often and typically agentive: agents decide to imagine. In cases in which imagination results in a belief, the agentiveness of imagination may be taken to give rise to indirect doxastic control and epistemic responsibility. This observation calls for a proper understanding of agentive imagination. In particular, it calls for the development of a (...) semantics of imagination ascriptions. In the present paper an earlier suggestion by Ilkka Niiniluoto for a logic of imagination is considered. This proposal does not capture the agentive nature of imagination, and an alternative semantics is suggested. The new semantics combines the modal logic of agency with the neighbourhood semantics from alethic modal logic. (shrink)

This paper deals with various substructural propositional logics, in particular with substructural subsystems of Nelson's constructive propositional logics N– and N. Doen's groupoid semantics is extended to these constructive systems and is provided with an informational interpretation in terms of information pieces and operations on information pieces.

The paper provides a uniform Gentzen-style proof-theoretic framework for various subsystems of classical predicate logic. In particular, predicate logics obtained by adopting van Behthem''s modal perspective on first-order logic are considered. The Gentzen systems for these logics augment Belnap''s display logic by introduction rules for the existential and the universal quantifier. These rules for x and x are analogous to the display introduction rules for the modal operators and and do not themselves allow the Barcan formula or its converse to (...) be derived. En route from the minimal modal predicate logic to full first-order logic, axiomatic extensions are captured by purely structural sequent rules. (shrink)

Reprint. Originally published: T'ubingen: C.F. Osiander, 1822.

"Die Grundlage... ist... ein Programm, welches ich im vorigen Jahre unter dem Titel: "Historische und philosophische Beitr'age zur Erl'auterung des Spinozismus' ausgegeben habe. Aber... hier... sehr erweitert.".

book I. The nature of the state.-- book II. The social foundations of the state.-- book III. The constitution of the state.-- book IV. The administration of the state.-- book V. The state in international intercourse.

Band 1. Stellenindex und Konkordanz zu Johann Nicolaus Tetens' Über die allgemeine speculativische Philosophie.