Die Institutionalisierung des Nichtinstitutionellen

The volume examines the relation between law, reason, and discourse in Robert Alexy’s legal philosophy. The examination follows Alexy’s own description of his greater project. In his “Theorie der juristischen Argumentation” [Theory of Legal Argumentation] of 1978, Alexy speaks of the Kantian idea of designing a “Code of Practical Reason”. Today, Alexy is prepared to rest his entire case on the idea of an “Institutionalization of Reason”. The work undertakes the reconstruction of the concept of practical reason underlying this idea. To this end, it examines both the roots that go back to Kant’s practical philosophy, as well as the system represented by Alexys’s legal philosophy, which has grown over a period of more than 40 years. At its center is the thesis of the necessity of a realization of reason through rational practical discourse in law – in short, Alexy’s attempt to institutionalize the non-institutional.