The Research On Franz Neumann's And Otto Kirchheimer's Philosophies Of Law And Politics In Their Early Stage

Franz Neumann and Otto Kirchheimer were important legists and politicians of the Frankfurt School during its early period.They reached intellectual maturity during the Weimar Republic's last years when falling into breakdown.They formed their own manner of studying social problems from the standpoint of law and politics based on historical materialism,which just corresponded to the need of the Institute of Social Research's interdisciplinary and comprehensive discussions about the rising fascism,and then they joined the Frankfurt School which was rising sharply during the wartime.Facing to the historical tragedy that Nazi exterminated legal institutions of the liberal state and established totalitarian rule directly and entirely, Neumann and Kirchheimer seriously studied the philosophy of Law, the former from the perspective of the function of bourgeois rule of law and the latter from the perspective of historical changes of criminal system, which laid the foundation for the School's critique of totalitarian society in theory.Based on their research of the philosophy of law, Neumann and Kirchheimer critiqued the reality of National Socialism's domination in Germany.For example,Neumann pointed out the inevitable trend that the rule of law in Germany must go to collapse, and Kirchheimer,on the basis of Neumann's theory,analysed the great change of German legal system through the specific study of the criminal system.Besides,they researched totalitarian political system in Germany.In a word,the theory of Neumann and Kirchheimer critiqued National Socialism's direct rule of terror in terms of political and legal system,which laid a solid foundation of political and legal institutions for Horkheimer's and others'researches,from the viewpoint of psychology and ideology,for National Socialism's unconscious domination of people,and was the model of philosophy of law and philosophy of politics in the Frankfurt School's critical theory in early stage.