My Love-Hate Relationship with Hans Kelsen

I'm pretty sure the title of this post gives it all away. I both love and hate Hans Kelsen. The man is brilliant. His definition of "justice as social happiness" is so rational and acceptable that his further argument that "Our happiness very often depends on the satisfaction of needs which no social order can satisfy" is hard to argue against.

His general theory, which follows from this point, "The answer to these questions [of justice] is a judgment of value, determined by emotional factors, and therefore, subjective in character––valid only for the judging subject, and therefore relative only", basically undoes everything we studied up to this point. With this, Kelsen kinda undermines our study of justice. No longer is it the search for some objective answer, some key concept that we've been missing all this time. Justice is a discussion.

And that's exactly why I both hate him and love him. He's a badass (am I allowed to say that?) for undermining the system using the system's own principles. Second, he understands the true nature of collective action, something I myself have started to confront. Kelsen realized long before I did that collective action, especially collective agreement, is difficult. And this is why I would have his babies. Because from this, Kelsen gives us the opportunity, in fact he calls us, to take the problem of collective agreement and attempt to make it work. Also, I think in one of my early comments, I said something to the effect of justice is discussion. But, I'll have to dig that up.