Economics of gift - positivity of justice : the mutual paranoia of Jacques Derrida and Niklas Luhmann

S.a. Deutsche Fassung: Ökonomie der Gabe - Positivität der Gerechtigkeit: Gegenseitige Heimsuchungen von System und différance. In: Albrecht Koschorke und Cornelia Vismann (Hg.) System - Macht - Kultur: Probleme der Systemtheorie. Akademie, Berlin 1999, 199-212. Auch auf unserem Server vorhanden. * Italienische Fassung: Economia del dono, positività della giustizia: la reciproca paranoia di Jacques Derrida e Niklas Luhmann. Sociologia e politiche sociali 6, 2003, 113-130. Portugiesische Fassung: Economia da dádiva ? posividade da rustica; ?assombracao?? mutua entre sistema e différance. In: Gunther Teubner, Direito, Sistema, Policontexturalidade, Editora Unimep, Piracicaba Sao Paolo, Brasil 2005, 55-78

Is metaphor a natural kind?

In Metaphor Studies, metaphor is considered as a “form of understanding one thing in terms of something else.” It is assumed that, despite their differences, metaphors share many properties and that a theory of metaphor should capture these essential properties. In short, it is assumed that metaphor is a natural kind. We call this view the Natural Kind Assumption. In this paper, we will challenge it and show that metaphor is not a natural kind. Finally, we will discuss the main philosophical consequences of this view

The King's many bodies: the self-deconstruction of law's hierarchy

The article connects two strands of the recent sociolegal debate: (1) the empirical discovery of new forms of spontaneous law in die Course of globalization, and (2) the emergence of deconstructive theories of law that undermine the law's hierarchy. The article puts forward the thesis that law's hierarchy has successfully resisted all old and new attempts at its deconstruction; it breaks, however, under the pressures of globalization that produced a global law without the state, as self-created law of global society that has no institutionalized support whatsoever in international poliucs and public international law. Consequently, the article criticizes deconstructive theories for their lack of autological analysis. These theories do not take into account the historical condicions of deconstruction. Accordingly, deconstructive analysis of law would have to look for new legal distinctions that are plausible under the new condicions of a doubly fragmented global society. The article sketches the contours of an emerging polycontextural law

Antinomicity and the axiom of choice. A chapter in antinomic mathematics

The present work is an attempt to break ground in mathematics proper, armed with the accepting view just described. Specifically, we shall examine various versions of antinomic set theory, in particular the axiom of choice, keeping the presentation as intuitive as possible, more in the manner of a nineteenth century paper than as a thoroughly formalized system. The reason for such a presentation is the conviction that at this point it should be the mathematics that eventually determines the logic, rather than the other way around

Study of logical paradoxes

By a paradox we understand a seemingly true statement or set of statements which lead by valid deduction to contradictory statements. Logical paradoxes - paradoxes which involve logical concepts - are in fact as old as the history of logic. The Liar paradox, for instance, goes back to Epimenides (6th century B.C.?). In the late 19th century a new impetus v/as given to the investigation of logical paradoxes by the discovery of new logico-mathematical paradoxes such as those of Russell and Burali- Porti. This came about in the course of attempts to give mathematics a rigorous axiomatic foundation. Sometimes a distinction is maintained between a paradox and an antinomy. In a paradox, it is said, semantical notions are involved and a certain "oddity", "strangeness", or what may be called "paradoxical situation", resides in its construction. The resolution of a paradox is therefore not simply a matter of removing contradiction, but also requires clarifying and removing the "oddity". On the other hand, an antinomy is said to consist in the derivation of a contradiction in an axiomatic system and its resolution lies in revising the system so as to avoid the contradiction. In discussing paradoxes and antinomies, we shall not be strictly bound by this usage of these terms: we use "paradox" and "antinomy" interchangeably. Indeed, from our point of view, even antinomies in an axiomatic system ultimately need semantic clarification and thus removal of paradoxical situations