Law in the Existence according Sergio Cotta and Late Modernity according Günther Anders
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Abstract
The present work aims to remember and celebrate Professor Sergio Cotta, who died in May 2007. This philosopher was one of the most important 20th century scholars of natural law doctrine. His ontological-phenomenological path in the field of law, as developed in Il diritto nell'esistenza, is characterized by some fundamental questions: "What is the law like? ", "Why law?" and, eventually, "Why law instead of the lack of law?" In addition to these, the Author poses another question: "Why is the law the way it is today, in post-modern age?” Cotta believes that the onto-phenomenological structure of human being, a being in relation, gives a whole understanding of law, of its both synchronic and diachronic presence. Among his most important contributions in favour of the often disputed 20th century natural law doctrine, we can mention, first of all, his convincing rebutting of the charge of "naturalistic fallacy" (David Hume) to natural law, by means of an innovative elaboration of the onto-phenomenological perspective of the human being considered as the basis of law. We can also mention his overcoming of the narrow-minded reductionist views about law, like policy-and-state-oriented law and economy oriented law. Keeping close to Antonio Rosmini, even if from a different philosophical background, Cotta believes that the just law origins from the onto-phenomenological and co-existential structure of the human being. In the second paragraph, referring to Günther Anders, the Author highlights the signs of contemporary decadence, related to post-modern age, where the unique and powerful subject of worldwide history is pluto-tecnocracy. Essential symbols of this new and decayed existential condition may be considered Auschwitz and Hiroshima. The most evident outcomes of post-modern age on social and normative (legal and moral) order are both the dissolution of an authentic co-existence within a common world and the spread of forms of colonization and submission of human being, defined by Anders as mass-hermit. The Jew-German philosopher describes the profound transformations of traditional law and morality in terms of moral agnosticism (which is not ethical indifferentism) and normative scepticism. His philosophical anthropology in the age of technology is irreversibly directed from the already obsolete not-yet, as getting ready and waiting for a possible change, towards the apocalyptic no-longer. The Author's question: "Why is the law the way it is in post-modern age?" refers to the research of a concrete re-orientation towards the not-yet, in order to redeem Anders' pure apocalyptical perspective. Indeed, we cannot deny that today the just law is being replaced by another kind of law, which may have contents, forms and aims diametrically opposed to those of the just law. This different kind of law is a shadow of the former one. The Author refers to Paul Ricoeur's attempt to combine a though difficult dialectic (mediation) between love, in the sense of beyond-measure, and justice, in the sense of procedural form aimed at the application of the rule-measure. In this path, coming back to Sergio Cotta and his opus maius, the Author views charity and love in their highest axiological projection which, even if with difficulties and effort, might involve and positively contaminate justice itself. In the end, the waiting for a change, that is the not-yet, fills and overwhelms with the contents of charity, a theological virtue, poured off into justice, a cardinal virtue.
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