Teoria e Critica della Regolazione Sociale / Theory and Criticism of Social Regulation

Letture creative. Introduzione

Tommaso Gazzolo — 2024-04-15

Il diritto come civilizzazione della forza. Considerazioni su Freud e Kelsen.

Fabio Ciaramelli — 2024-04-15

In this paper, I would like to present a possible way of understanding law and its function in terms of “Kulturarbeit (work of civilisation)” or, in other language, “social technique”, according to which, within the process of civilisation, the specificity of law is characterised by the task of civilising force, limiting the excesses of power, regulating and governing its violence and thus removing human events from the inexorability of the fait accompli, which then inevitably underlies the so-called “law of the strongest”. The result is an explication of the historically and socially instituted character of law, and consequently the need to evaluate and justify its legality.

Speaking Truth to Power: Kelsen, Freud, and peace through law

Robert Schuett — 2024-04-15

Hans Kelsen and Sigmund Freud rank as path-breaking intellectuals and their ability to challenge the cultural status quo through social critique made them many friends, yet even more foes. Taking a fresh look at their biographical and intellectual relationship, this article recruits Kelsen as an important open society ally in today’s battles over the question of world order in international society. Rooted in what is called a sustained Freudian human nature realism in Kelsen’s international relations thinking, it is argued that a Kelsenian position of a peace through law is now as central for the social regulation of human and global affairs as it has ever been.

L’illusione del Super-Io. Riflessioni su Freud e Kelsen

Federico Lijoi — 2024-04-15

In this essay I propose to analyse Kelsen’s reading of Freud’s Massenpsychologie by showing how the Austrian jurist used Freud’s essay to highlight their shared struggle against the application of the theological method in the social sciences. The result of this analysis, beyond noting some punctual divergences between the two authors, is that both proposed the idea that the authoritarian state and its religious connotation should be replaced by a scientific form of government, i.e. one free from the illusion that responsibility for our life in common can be replaced by a knowledge that guarantees its subsistence once and for all.

Conceptualizing Religion (and Quasi-Religions): An elaboration on Freud in the “Light” of Kelsen.

Edoardo Fittipaldi — 2024-04-15

Sigmund Freud was one of the first thinkers to claim that some forms of Marxism have religious traits. This notwithstanding, in his Secular Religion Hans Kelsen discusses neither Freud’s treatment of Marxism nor his concept of religion. In Section 1, Fittipaldi briefly examines Freud’s treatment of the religious aspects of Marxism. Section 2 is dedicated to the reconstruction of Freud’s notion of religion as a polythetic conceptualization comprised of an ontogonical, a mellontological, a technological, a theistic, and a goneological component – a prototypical religion being comprised of all of them. Next, in Section 3, Fittipaldi discusses whether such a Freudian conceptualization involves the characterization of Buddhism, Marxism, and medicine as forms of quasi-religions – a characterization strongly rejected by Kelsen with regard to Buddhism and Marxism. Section 4 is dedicated to listing the differences between Freud’s and Kelsen’s notions of religion and – whenever possible – exploring their philosophical roots. Finally, Fittipaldi summarizes the results of this inquiry.

La forma del sociale: Kelsen, Freud e Thomas a confronto

Xenia Chiaramonte — 2024-04-15

How does the social take shape? Beginning with a joint reading of Kelsen’s and Freud’s thought, and in particular, from Der Begriff des Staates und die Sozialpsychologie. Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung von Freuds Theorie der Masse (1922) and Massenpsychologie und Ich- Analyse (1921) respectively, the question will be answered through the research and “method” of Yan Thomas. The comparison between the three authors allows us to illuminate the libidinal form of society as well as the legal form, both as attempts to respond to the still too naturalistic concept of the social bond. Here the concept of coercion (Zwang) plays a decisive role, particularly for Kelsen and Freud who propose a social model that has the features of the penal. By conflating the concept of coercion with a “civil” genealogy, however, Thomas can open up a new glimpse into the form of the social.

Soggetto Istituzione. Freud con Kelsen nella scienza del pensiero di Giacomo B. Contri

Maria Gabriella Pediconi — 2024-04-15

This article configures the intellectual encounter between three thinkers, Sigmund Freud, Hans Kelsen and Giacomo B. Contri: an encounter that gave rise to an unprecedented concept in the history of thought, the ‘subject as institution’. We will discover a Kelsen who, more Freudian than Freud, corrects him, and a Kelsenian psychoanalyst who renews psychoanalysis through the conception of law: this is the encounter that allowed Giacomo Contri to realise a normative foundation of the subject, an original and unique conception in the psychoanalytic field. In the hope that it would be fruitful for the law itself.

Kelsen e l’omosessualità maschile

Tommaso Gazzolo — 2024-04-15

The article is devoted to Kelsen’s interpretation of platonic eros. The analysis seeks to show how Kelsen’s confrontation with psychoanalysis is determined by his conception of homosexuality, inherited from the “style of reasoning” typical of late 19th-century psychiatry. The article seeks, finally, to show how, in Kelsen’s theory, the prohibition of homosexuality constitutes the material presupposition of any legal system.