Joseph Raz

Joseph Raz ( b. 1939 in Palestine) is an Israeli philosopher who works primarily on political, ethical and legal philosophical problems. He is one of the most prominent contemporary representatives of legal positivism.

Biography

Joseph Raz studied law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he graduated in 1963 with the academic degree of Magister Juris. At a conference in Israel, he met with H.L.A. Hard together. Hart later wrote that Raz had pointed him to a contradiction in his argument during this conference, which had previously eluded him. Then, encouraged Joseph Raz hard to continue his studies at Oxford.

Raz followed this advice Harts and obtained in 1967 at Balliol College the title of a DPhil without - as is normally required - previously to acquire the title of a Bachelors and a Masters of Philosophy. Then Joseph Raz spent most of his academic career as a professor of legal philosophy at Oxford University. At the same time, he was Professor of Law at the Law School of Columbia University.

Among the most prominent students of Raz include the legal philosopher John Gardner, successor Ronald Dworkin at the University of Oxford, and the philosopher Leslie Green. In 2006, Joseph Raz became Professor Emeritus.

Work

As a student of H.L.A. Hart Joseph Raz contributed in a significant way to continue the argument towards the defense of legal positivism ' even after the death of his mentor. This increase was driven his posthumous publication of a second edition of HLA Hart's main work, "The Concept of Law " (the title of the German translation: " The concept of law " ) in 1994 at. This second edition contained an edited by Joseph Raz epilogue HLA Harts in which these arguments with the criticism of other philosophers - apart sat down at his right positivist theories - especially Ronald Dworkin.

Hart and Joseph Raz represent different forms of legal positivism. Raz is representative of the exclusive positivism and defends the thesis that there is no necessary connection between law and morality is. He goes beyond the positions of Hart, Hans Kelsen and Jules Coleman. Those authors represented as including the so-called positivists Trennbarkeitsthese. Although they claim as Raz that there is no necessary connection between law and morality, confess, however - unlike Raz - one that is dependent on the respective positivist legal system connection between law and morality is possible.

For Raz, the task of the law is to provide in a pluralistic society for clarity. This presupposes that law authoritatively determine what is right. If the concept and the application of the law of moral flawlessness would be made dependent, then lose the right to the necessary authority, which is necessary for a functioning pluralistic society.

Since the mid- 1970s, Joseph Raz has mainly employed in addition to the philosophy of law in the narrow sense of political philosophy and general theory of argumentation. As part of his political philosophy Raz represents the position of a " perfectionist " liberalism, which he developed in his policy - major philosophical work The Morality of Freedom ( 1986). In his moral philosophical works, he defends a pluralism of values. His central thesis in this regard is the assertion that different value systems philosophical principle equivalent because epistemologically are incommensurable with each other.