The requirement of the state. About the legacy of Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde

Peter Schallenberg

doi:10.21697/CSP.2021.25.1.07

Published: 2021-08-27

No. 25 (2021)

The requirement of the state. About the legacy of Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde

Peter Schallenberg

Christianity-World-Politics

Section: Articles

https://doi.org/10.21697/CSP.2021.25.1.07

Abstract

In this text, the author shows how natural law thinking is derived from fundamental Christian teachings about man and his relationship to God. In a first detailed train of thought, he makes it clear, primarily with reference to the thinking of Augustine, that although human beings also have within themselves the ability and longing for the good, they tend by their nature to choose not the good but what is pleasant for them. Therefore, from a Christian point of view, the state order is justified, on the one hand, to protect people from their destructive potentials and, on the other hand, to force education towards the good, so that people are enabled to use their freedom for the good and not for what is only pleasant for them. In a second step, he relates this to the founding of the European Union and its associated canon of values on the one hand and, in connection with this, to Catholic social teaching and Christian humanism or personalism on the other. He then concludes by focusing on the great German state theorist Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, who, influenced by Catholic social teaching and Christian humanism, made the considerations developed in the text fruitful for thinking about law and statehood in modern democracies.

Keywords:

Natural law, Christian Humanism, Augustine, European Union, Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, Ritter-School

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Schallenberg, P. (2021). The requirement of the state. About the legacy of Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde. Christianity-World-Politics, (25). https://doi.org/10.21697/CSP.2021.25.1.07

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