The Legitimacy And Legality In The Modern Context: An Investigation Of The History Of Ideas

In the development of western politics and law history, it has been a classical issue of legitimacy and legality for many western scholars, who have been spending long time on this study and shown us their various opinions and different argumentations, while we Chinese are still standing outside the door and have not formed the very systematic theories in respect to this issue yet. With the philosophy background of modernity and adopted with the method of idea history, focusing on the theories of Weber, Kelsen, Schmitt, Habermas and Hayek, this thesis presents you with a clear picture and a frame of the German theories on legitimacy and legality, and exhibits the contradictions and harmonization with modern political and legal system. With the reference of classical liberalism, the current status and the trend of development of legitimacy and legality are demonstrated, and thus conclusion of this article is stated in the end.There are totally 7 Chapters in this article. The first Chapter is a Summary, which lays theoretic foundation and constructs the academic framework for the following contents. It set forth the meanings of legitimacy and legality, explores the sources of those explanations, introduces the theories of modernity and liberalism, and put forward the Germany issue and the mission of the thesis. The second Chapter presents the development of natural law and legal positivism, in which the legitimacy and legality issue was commenced by the declining of natural law theory and the rising of legal positivism. The Weber Theory is summarized and evaluated in the third Chapter, and the opinions and argumentations of Kelsen and Schmitt in Weimar period are illuminated in the fourth Chapter. The fifth Chapter details Habermas'efforts in transcending the achievements of the predecessors, and his great contributions. The six Chapter reveals the limits of rational-thought tradition through the observation on German ideals via the Hayek classical liberalism. And the last Chapter is the conclusion of the whole thesis.