Decisionism
Decisionism is a political and legal theory that puts the decision and the decision maker at the center of considerations. She considers the content and the justification of a decision to be less important than the decision itself. According to her, there can be no generally binding justifications for values or moral positions. Therefore, the decision of people for this or that action is ultimately arbitrary and cannot be justified with the means of logical analysis or on the basis of ethical criteria.
The term “decisionism” is derived from “decision” (Latin for decision). Carl Schmitt in particular introduced the term into the state and constitutional theoretical discussion.
history
Decisionism is based on the opinion, already formulated in the medieval universality controversy, that ethical and moral postulates are not based on “platonic” eternal beings that we have to recognize and recognize, but are spiritual ideas, for or against which a decision can and must be made : “The good is the good because God in his omnipotence wanted it that way. He could have made a different decision, otherwise he would not be all-powerful, "wrote Wilhelm von Ockham .
Following on from this, Thomas Hobbes emphasized that the social validity of every norm is based on decision-making power. He assigned this to the state in the expectation of averting the danger of religious civil wars by a state decision: 'Auctoritas, non veritas facit legem' ('Authority determines the law, not truth') deprived anyone who defended “his truth” declared others to be deadly heretics or criminals.
The value-free, purely scientific “descriptive decisionism” of Panajotis Kondylis states that in interpersonal life all ethical, moral-philosophical and legal-theoretical demands are based on the decision of specific people for or against their validity. There are no higher powers or authorities that can relieve us of the burden of decision and freedom of decision.
Effect and reception
The basic decisionist thesis was used as a building block in the history of ideas in very differently ambitious ideologies. This was possible because it is eo ipso (by itself) value-free and can even be integrated into antagonistic worldviews. Self-contradictions always arise when such an ideology is formally decisionist, but contains normative components in terms of content. An existentialist or voluntarist theory, for example, which says: “All norms only apply to them as a decision, so we should decide”, contains a contradiction in terms, because the decisionist thesis (everything is a matter of decision) with the normative component (“so we should decide ") is incompatible.
Carl Schmitt is one of the many who applied decisionist assumptions in their theories . His views are based on a primarily Catholic worldview, the contents of which Schmitt assumes as truths and does not subject them to any decisionist decision. That is why Schmitt was not a consistent decisionist in any of his creative phases, but used decisionist arguments at times to support the respective content-related positions. Especially in the context of his Christian postulates he used decisionist arguments and, following Juan Donoso Cortés, despises the compromise-ready "debating class" with their liberalism and parliamentarism, because from a religious point of view it is absurd to discuss established truths or to expose them to a compromise.
Incidentally, decisionism appears in different contexts: the legal-theoretical , the moral-philosophical and the social-scientific context.
In legal discourse
In the legal discussion , decisionism states that legal norms never apply to "supra-legal" norms that have been withdrawn by human setting, but are only put into effect through a legislative act by a concrete, human legislature, i.e. ultimately through arbitrary, free decision. Decisionism is therefore exposed to the accusation of ultimately being subjective and arbitrary. However, it is by no means the content of decisionist theory that laws should be set arbitrarily, but only the statement that it is in fact so. According to critics, legal decisionism shortens the concept of law to individual rules. Rather, one has to understand the law as a unit of rules and underlying legal principles. The user of the law only needs to find a decision based on the rules and principles that can be justified with the means of legal argumentation . Decisionism counters this by stating that there are no "underlying legal principles" apart from those that were previously established as legal principles as an act of will.
In moral philosophy
In the moral-philosophical discussion , decisionism states that every attempt to justify morality must ultimately revert to decisions that cannot be further justified on your part. He thus agrees with the thesis put forward by the Schmitt student Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde , according to which the modern constitutional state is based on conditions that it cannot guarantee itself (the so-called Böckenförde dictum ).
In the social and political sciences
In the sociological and politological discussion (especially Habermas ), decisionism is less oriented towards Carl Schmitt. Here it describes a separation of roles between experts and decision-makers. Scientists should leave the decision on goals and means of action to politics and limit themselves to providing knowledge to achieve these goals.
In Bonnie Honig's hermeneutic decisionism , the focus is on the interpretative application of law rather than law-making. She uses the example of Louis F. Post as Assistant Secretary in the Department of Labor in the United States as an example of successful subversion through legal hermeneutic decision.
literature
Primary literature
- Carl Schmitt : Law and Judgment , 2nd unchanged. Ed., Munich 1969.
- Carl Schmitt: Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Doctrine of Sovereignty. Duncker & Humblot, Munich / Leipzig 1922.
- Carl Schmitt: About the three types of legal thinking. Hanseatische Verlags Anstalt, Hamburg 1934.
- Jürgen Habermas : Scientific politics and public opinion (1963), In: Jürgen Habermas: Technology and science as 'ideology'. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1968, p. 120 ff.
Secondary literature
- André Brodocz : The political theory of decisionism: Carl Schmitt. In: André Brodocz, Gary S. Schaal (ed.): Political theory of the present I. An introduction. Opladen 2002, pp. 281-315.
- Eckard Bolsinger: What is decisionism? Reconstruction of an autonomous type of political theory. In: Politische Vierteljahresschrift 39 (1998), pp. 471–502. (A comparison of Carl Schmitt, Hermann Lübbe and Panajotis Kondylis)
- Panajotis Kondylis : Power and Decision. The formation of world views and the question of value. (1984), Ernst Klett Verlag / JG Cotta'sche Buchhandlung, Stuttgart 1984.
- Christian Graf von Krockow : The decision. An investigation on Ernst Jünger, Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger . Stuttgart 1958 (see dissertation).
- Klaus Kunze : Courage for freedom, legal philosophy on the fine line between fundamentalism and nihilism. Uslar 1995, ISBN 3-933334-02-0 .
- Katja Langenbucher : The decision argument in German and US American legal theory. In: Archive for Legal and Social Philosophy. Volume 88 (year 2002), p. 398 ff.
- Hermann Lübbe : Decisionism - a compromised political theory. In: Schweizer Monatshefte (55), 1976, pp. 949–960.
- Romano Minwegen: Equality in the Light of Legal Logic - A Synthesis between Cognitivism and Decisionism? In: Legal Theory. Journal for logic and legal methodology, legal informatics, communication research, norms and action theory, sociology and philosophy of law. 36 Vol. (2005), pp. 529-546.
Web links
- Wolfgang Ludwig-Mayerhofer : Decisionism. In: Internet lexicon of the methods of empirical social research. May 11, 2003, archived from the original on June 5, 2016 .
- Micha H. Werner: Decisionism In: Jean-Pierre Wils, Christoph Hübenthal (Hrsg.): Lexikon der Ethik. F. Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, pp. 52-59.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Oliver W. Lembcke : Decisive undecidability. Variants of decisionist theory of democracy , in: Oliver W. Lembcke et al .: Contemporary Democratic Theories , Wiesbaden 2012, p. 344.