SourcesThis book takes inspiration from some previous work, mainly my book Para uma Ética Constitucional, Lisbon, Coisas de Ler, 2010 and some miscellaneous articles.
PrefaceA most stimulating intellectual exercise, from the perspective of cultural history and philosophy, is to examine the main aporia of Law, that is, of legal thinking: Law and legal thinking seek to base themselves on the same human territory of legality and historicity from which, at this very moment, dare to reformulate or refound the bases of another illud tempus, an ought (Sollen) for which we do not have the ontological answer, though we may already formulate the ethical questions.Law and thinking about law are occurring in the present or the near future, and without such an aspiration these texts would remain a dead letter, thinking without thought. Between the world that is and the expected one, about which there are only outlines, lies a ravine of deep meanings. Approaching from the proper direction, but in order to build the bridges, it is recognized that the path is narrow and hard to run which, more properly, could be called here by philosophical operation.In this journey the traveler or investigator focuses on the primary question residing at the intersection of the fields of political philosophy and axiology. One of the warning signs, written by Cartesius and then implanted in the Aufklärung, warns that the land is undermined by the teleological perfection which the old theology and metaphysics were unable to explain. To brave it, we must demine the field, remove traps and secularize the envisioned promised land, in the careful limits of the ethical assumption of Being and its weight, that is, in an objectifying dimension of a political ethos.