Artigo Revisado por pares

Dürfen Gesetze unglücklich machen? Sprache, Gewissen und Gesetz bei Moses Mendelssohn

2012; De Gruyter; Volume: 22; Issue: 1-2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1515/asch-2013-0014

ISSN

1865-9438

Autores

Hans Kruschwitz,

Resumo

Moses Mendelssohn’s philosophy of language and his use of the term »Gewissen« are not fully coherent. Whereas language appears in his early writings as a necessary medium for developing good sense and founding morality on reason, i.e. for setting up universal moral laws, positive law appears in his later writings as all but reasonable and worth being taken too literally. It rather proves the unfeasibility of setting up universally valid statutes. Hence, he proposes that Jewish law has never been intended to be taken literally, but incessantly interpreted, drafting it as an indispensable rampart against the aberrations of »literalness «. By doing so, however, he reverses the original hierarchy of language, reason, and law – and also alters his definition of »Gewissen«. Originally defined as the faculty of deciding what’s right, he now confines it to the faculty of deciding what’s true and substitutes the former with Jewish law.

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