Business, Economics & Law
January 2018
Law and violence
Christoph Menke in dialogue
by Christoph Menke, David Owen
Christoph Menke is a third-generation Frankfurt School theorist, and widely acknowledged as one of the most interesting philosophers working in Germany today. His work builds on Adorno and Horkheimer to show how the repressive features contained in the very promises of equality, autonomy and freedom from domination inevitably structure contemporary societies. But Menke argues that reflexive awareness of such antinomies can counter the hold they have on us. His lead essay focuses on the fundamental question for legal and political philosophy: the relationship between law and violence. The first part of the essay shows why and in what precise sense the law is irreducibly violent; the second part establishes the possibility and the possible form of the law becoming self-reflectively aware of its own violence. The volume contains responses to Menke's essay by a variety of influential interlocutors and concludes with Menke's reply to his critics.
