Zugl.: Göteborg, University, Diss., 2008.

Gießen, Univ., Diss., 2003 / Erscheinungsjahr an der Haupttitelstelle: 2002

Ideology and Law Abstract In the presented work, I examine in depth the concept of ideology in its historical changes. Afterward, I relate these various forms to law. My work aims to analyze how law and ideology interact and whether there is an inherent relationship between them. I am therefore concerned with answering the question whether law is ideological, or under what conditions law and the application of law are influenced by ideology. The work is divided into three parts. In the first part, I address the notion of ideology. Here I examine how Karl Marx and his followers grasped and elaborated on this notion. I show the transformation of the Marxist conception of ideology in the works of Lenin, Gramsci and Althusser. In the second chapter of the first part, I present a different, historically relevant tradition of understanding ideology that I call, for the purposes of this work, conservative-democratic. In the second discussed tradition, I describe the ideas of Arendt, Popper, Scruton, and Pithart. Subsequently, I compare the two negative concepts of ideology to each other. The second part is devoted to how these negative concepts of ideology can be applied in legal theory. In the first chapter, I focus on the Critical Legal Studies movement, whose proponents were inspired by the previously mentioned...

Zugl.: Basel, Univ., Diss., 2002

Diss. Göteborg : Göteborgs universitet, 2005.

Human Rights: Universality vs. Regionalism Jalal Naji Abstract The basic idea of the existence of certain rights that human beings are entitled to has been present, in some form or another, throughout the history of mankind long before their universal recognition and codification in 1948. The revolutionary work of the United Nations in adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948 was the coronation and completion of all the earlier attempts of mankind in identifying the safeguards of humanity. Of course, the current shape, structure and context of international modern-day human rights never existed on the international sphere before 1948 as all the earlier efforts to identify human rights can be characterized as sporadic, localized, flawed, incomprehensive and even discriminatory as they only recognised certain rights to particular categories of people, such as ascribing rights only for citizens, for believers of a religion, or only for freemen and aristocrats. Conversely, UDHR's human rights standards are ascribed to everyone without discrimination. The foundation of international human rights is premised on the universality concept which indicates that all human beings are equal and that human rights are universally enjoyed by all mankind without discrimination. However, this majestic...

Thesis abstract This thesis, "Dialogical Approach to Truth in the Plurality of Cultures and Religions" has two main goals, theoretical and applied one. It defends the importance of contextual relativism and perspectivism for the dialogue of two different discourses using a theory of language games. An individual lives in his or hers own special historical and geographical situation, in particular psycho-physical condition with a limited perspective through which he perceives the surrounding world. Only if the individual could be aware of these limits, to be able to renounce a tendency to generalize his own point of view without confronting the others within a dialogue. It is possible to judge the truthfulness, functionality and the level of development of any discourse only in the context and within the categories of the discourse itself. This approach is reflected in the field of interreligious dialogue by the idea of post- pluralism. It stresses the uniqueness of each independent religious discourse, while refusing both superiority of any particular religion on one hand and merging all religions into one common group on the other. One cannot discover the ultimate truth due to the lack of "general perspective" over all religious traditions and, therefore, he cannot judge ("This religion is the only true",...

Meiner nichtreduktionistischen Lesart Gadamers, derzufolge eine wechselseitige konstitutive Relation zwischen „Sprache“ und „Erfahrung“ besteht, ist es gestattet, den Vorwurf, die Sprachphilosophie Gadamers führe in den Relativismus, den man häufig gegenüber sprachphilosophischen Positionen erhebt, abzuweisen. Manchen Denkern zufolge haben die Philosophen der Postmoderne, zu denen auch Gadamer gezählt wurde, eine einfache Umkehrung der beiden Pole des modernen Verhältnisses „Sprache“ – „Erfahrung“ vollzogen: Während die Sprache in der Moderne in ihrer Bedingtheit zur Erfahrung und als bloßes Ausdrucksmittel verstanden wurde, wurde dieses Verhältnis in der neueren Philosophie nur umgekehrt, insofern die Philosophie in der Sprache das Fundament für die Erfahrung sehe, wonach die Erfahrung als ein Ausdruck der Sprache erscheine. Die vorliegende Arbeit setzt sich mit diesem Relativismusvorwurf auseinander und beabsichtigt, eine wechselseitige Abhängigkeit zwischen Sprache und Erfahrung ausgehend von Hans-Georg Gadamers Werk zu entwickeln. Um das zu erreichen, wurden zunächst eine doppelte negative-positive Erfahrungsstruktur und dann einige phänomenologische und transzendentale Merkmale der Erfahrung auf dem historischen Hintergrund für Gadamers Erfahrungsbegriff herausgearbeitet. Somit machte sich die konstitutive Sprachlichkeit der Erfahrung erkennbar. In einer Auseinandersetzung mit dem Sprachbegriff auf der anderen Seite wurde sein dialogischer und welterschließender Charakter veranschaulicht, so dass auch seine Angewiesenheit auf die Welterfahrung offenkundig wurde. / This work deals with a particular relativistic objection on Gadamer’s hermeneutic philosophy of language, according to which the position of language has such a prior status so that human experience is solely dependent on the language people speak. That is a reductionist approach to Gadamer’s hermeneutic, which ascribes language an exclusively explanatory and foundational status. I am taking this objection to a close examination and develop a double argumentation line: On the one side I show how the concept of world experience is language determined, and on the other side how the language itself is determined by our experience of the world. In order to argue for this interdependence, I first examined the positive and negative structure of experience, some phenomenological and transcendental features and offered a short historical background of ties to selected philosophical heritage. In the second part of the work I developed a concept of language that argues for its dialogical and not absolutely transsubjective character, also for its world-disclosing alongside its communicative and representational dimension. Gadamer’s hermeneutic philosophy of language, belonging to the continental philosophy or HHH Theories represents an antireductionist approach to language after the linguistic turn, which is often criticized for a linguistic reductionism and relativism.

The thesis studies the human rights in Islam and evaluates them in concrete comparison of Muslim women's position in two different Muslim countries. It approaches two main human rights concepts: universalism and cultural relativism and describes the system and structure of Islamic law which determine all Muslims and Muslim society and therefore human rights perception itself. The diploma work follows two main goals:1) analysis of human rights from Islamic perspective, namely by its confrontation with prevalent universal model of human rights and 2) comparison of the status of Muslim woman in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The thesis is logically divided into four consequential parts. First two chapters introduce to theoretical issues of human rights and Islamic religion, the two other pivotal parts are concentrated on the above mentioned set goals. The objectivity of the thesis should be ensured by using various foreign-language sources of information from which studies and reports of international organizations such as United Nations, Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International form a considerable part.

This thesis focuses on the rights of the child in respect to the inter-country adoption. It aims to seek the notions of cultural relativism within those fundamental rights which are immediately applicable on the process of adoption. The thesis bases its theoretical framework on the current discourse on the universality of human rights. The theory of the three levels of cultural relativism is applied on the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Inter-country Adoption to demonstrate the cultural relativism of the Convention itself.