Idee einer Apodiktik

On the threshold of the Middle Ages and the modern era, there was a revolutionary idea: The claim that all human beings have rights is regarded as the normative basic idea of modernity. Kirstin Bunge analyses Francisco de Vitoria's (1483-1546) philosophy of law which ambiguously oscillates between subjective rights and natural law. Based on the terms of dominium and aequalitas, she reconstructs an impressive conceptual network as the basis of subjective rights and systematically defines Vitoria's relationship between law and liberty, equality and justice, common and private property, war and peace. Kirstin Bunge thereby convincingly demonstrates the constitutive complexity and the challenges of the modern philosophy of law in the work of Vitoria.

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Kant's critical writings were met not only with unconditional admiration, but also provoked criticism and even raised the demands made on philosophy altogether in a unique manner. Bouterwek (1766-1828) believed that Kant's philosophy was inadequate for resisting skepticism because it was not fundamental enough, and in analyzing Kant's rejection of traditional early modern justification strategies he searched for new forms of justifying the possibility of knowledge. He developed an antiskeptical, apodictic ultimate justification of all self-understanding made possible by critical philosophy and in doing so turned against the systems of Schelling and Fichte, which he criticized as being one-sided and incomplete. Bouterwek also developed his own strategy for justifying all criticism by establishing a transcendental "elementary principle."