Hasso Hofmann

Hasso Heiner Hermann Hofmann (born August 4, 1934 in Würzburg ) is a German legal philosopher and constitutional lawyer.

biography

Hofmann did legal and philosophical studies in Heidelberg , Munich and Erlangen with Karl Löwith , Hans-Georg Gadamer , Wolfgang Kunkel and Ernst Forsthoff, among others .

At Alfred Voigt in Erlangen, he received his doctorate with a thesis on Carl Schmitt , which at the beginning of the sixties made the first attempt to interpret Carl Schmitt's work in terms of development history, with Hofmann's concept of legitimacy serving as a (philosophically compatible) guiding category. In some respects he took up thoughts that his teacher Karl Löwith had first formulated in exile.

After the first and second state exams , Hofmann also completed his habilitation in 1970 at the Law Faculty of the University of Erlangen with a study of the word and conceptual history of “ representation ”.

From May 1976 until his appointment at the Humboldt University in Berlin in 1992, Hofmann taught in Würzburg. 1989/1990 he was a fellow at the Berlin Wissenschaftskolleg. For a short time he was Vice President of the Humboldt University.

He became known to a broader legal public when he described the constitutional dimension of atomic energy in the 1980s (legal questions of nuclear waste disposal).

Hofmann is married and lives in Berlin and Würzburg.

Honors

• Philosophy of Law and Constitutional Theory. Birthday symposium for Hasso Hofmann (Festschrift), Berlin 2000
• Legal and political theory key terms: legitimacy - representation - freedom; Symposium for Hasso Hofmann on the occasion of his 70th birthday (Festschrift), Berlin 2005
• Emeritus full member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences
• Elected full member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in 1992 (corresponding member since 1993).
• Honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Law at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main
• 2009: Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany

Publications (selection)

• Legitimacy versus legality. The path of Carl Schmitt's political philosophy. Luchterhand, Neuwied 1964; 5th edition: Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-428-10386-7 .
• Representation. Studies on the history of words and concepts from antiquity to the 19th century. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1974; 4th edition 2003, ISBN 3-428-11244-X .
• Legitimacy and validity. Constitutional theoretical remarks on a problem of the doctrine of the state and the philosophy of law. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-03911-4 .
• Legal issues of nuclear waste disposal. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-12-971810-9 .
• Law - Politics - Constitution. Studies in the history of political philosophy. Metzner, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-7875-5337-1 (collection of articles).
• Constitutional Perspectives. Articles from 1980–1994. Mohr, Tübingen 1995, ISBN 3-16-146365-X .
• Introduction to legal and state philosophy. WBG, Darmstadt 2000; 5th edition 2011, ISBN 978-3-534-24305-1 .
• Law and culture. Three speeches (= scientific treatises and speeches on philosophy, politics and intellectual history. Volume 55). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-428-13203-4 .
• Philosophy of law after 1945. On the intellectual history of the Federal Republic of Germany. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-428-13803-6 .

literature

• Alexander Hollerbach : laudation for Hasso Hofmann. In: Horst Dreier (Hrsg.): Philosophy of Law and Constitutional Theory. Birthday symposium for Hasso Hofmann (= scientific treatises and speeches on philosophy, politics and intellectual history, Volume 26). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2000, pp. 9-23.
• Horst Dreier: Hasso Hofmann 70. In: Juristenteitung 59 (2004), p. 788 f. ( online ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Hasso Hofmann in the catalog of the German National Library