Whitehead´s Ideas Within Some Romanian Juridical Thinkers

• Author: Mihai Badescu
• Pages: 73-88

LESIJ NO. XXV, VOL. 1/2018

WHITEHEAD´S IDEAS WITHIN SOME ROMANIAN JURIDICAL

THINKERS

Mihai BDESCU

Abstract

Alfred North Whitehead (1861 – 1947) was a mathematician, logician and English

philosopher, being the most importa nt representative of the philosophical school of thought known as

“process philosophy,” which today has found application to a wide variety of disciplines such as:

ecology, theology, physics, education, biology, economics, psychology.The main ideas of Whitehead's

thinking can be cir cumscribed to the following:(i)every real-life object can be understood a s a ser ies

of events and similarly constructed processes;(ii)if philosophy is successful, it must explain the link

between the objective, scientific and logical discourses of the world and the present world of subjective

experience;(iii)all experience is a part of na ture;(iv)a good life is best thought of as an educa ted and

civilized life;(v)recognizing that the world is or ganic rather than materia listic is essential for a nyone

who wants to develop a complete description of nature and so on.Regarding Whitehead's work, we

apprecia te that, even in our country, there ha ve been and a re authors whose views, if not overlapping

with Whitehead's thinking, at lea st present a ser ies of common elements.As far a s the present study is

concerned, we propose to bring, from this per spective, in the analysis, th e conceptions of the most

important philosophers of Romanian law: Eugeniu Sperania and Mircea Djuvara . Eugeniu Sperania's

philosophical work is characterized by a strong biologica l, social a nd metaphysical tr ait. Sperania

admits that none of the fundamental philosophica l problems can be resolved unless life is taken into

account – which is the original principle of existence – a nd social reality. What seems to stand in the

way of the foundation of a single science that deals with both organic and psychic facts is individuality

or discontinuity, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the fluid continuity of states of the soul. What

chara cterizes every living being is unity and its synthesized activity, which assimilates amorphous and

dispara te elements, thus portr aying itself a s a continuous process of synthesis in a nalogous forms

(expansion, conquest, construction). Regarding the philosophy of la w, Sperania maintains – in an

obviously Kantian spir it – that it must investigate the a priori or tra nscendent foundations of law in

general. Because a philosophy of law must fit into a broad view of the world, it must be preceded by a

philosophy of the Spirit. The philosophy of law has a s an aim the spiritual justification of law which,

encompassing science, offers it the oppor tunity to rise to the principles or the first causes. Regarding

Mircea Djuvara, we agree with the statement that no one up to Mircea Djuvara brought the legal

phenomenon under the eyes of the philosophers, and no one offered the practitioners such a broad

horizon, the horizon he considers necessa ry: «the philosophy of law contains one of the indispensable

elements of a true culture». In short, Mircea Djuvara 's thinking can be qualified as dialectical idealism;

it is not a subjective idealism but obviously an idealism whose epistemological way requires experience,

a conception in which matter and spir it are mixed, forming two simple aspects of the experience, the

deontological result of which reduces everything to objective relationships. Mircea Djuvara is a str ict

relationa list: „it is a danger to believe that our lives can work without categories.” There is no human

consciousness without its own philosophy, the practical attitude towards life, the inherent attitude of

every human being. Reason, detached from subjectivity, predominates in every human being; the very

law – expression of social relations – has a predominantly ra tional char acter: attitude towards life

determines in any human consciousness a cer tain philosophical consciousness, the a ttitude towards

 Professor, PhD, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Permanent member of the Academy of Romanian

Scientists (e-mail: badescu.vmihai@gmail.com).

74 Lex ET Scientia International Journal

LESIJ NO. XXV, VOL. 1/2018

society determines a certa in philosophical consciousness, the attitude towards society determines a

certain lega l consciousness.

Keywords: Whitehead, Djuvara , Sperania, philosophy, legal thinking, subjective experience,

fundamentals of law, spirituality, social rea lity, organic being.

1. T he philosophy of law is the

philosophical reflection on the law, which

deals with the right in a dual sense: as an

objective law (in its sense), as a set of rules,

norms that or ganize social life and as a

subjective law (in its sense), respectively as

a faculty, as the possibility, the enabling, the

prerogative of a subject (of law) to have, to

capitalize and to protect themselves against

another a certain legally protected interest.

The Romanian philosophers of law

have made important contributions -

together with other thinkers of the world - to

the development and affirmation of the

philosophy of law in the world in an attempt

to explain and evaluate the principles on

which one of the major dimensions of human

existence is based, the nor mative dimension

(ethical and legal).For example, in this

regard the following can be taken into

account, Alexandru Vllimrescu, T raian

Ionaşcu, Petre Pandrea, Dumitru

Drghicescu, P.P. Negulescu, Gheorghe

Bileanu, Şt. Zeletin, Nicolae Titulescu. Out

of them, the following have made

themselves known through their own

conceptions: Eugeniu Sperania and Mircea

Djuvara. In their works are ideas that can be

appreciated as being close to W hitehead's

thinking, an aspect on which we will settle

on in the following passages.

2. A thinker of the greatest rank and a

true encyclopedic spirit, the author of an

impressive work in the field of philosophy of

law was Eugeniu Sperania.

Eugeniu Sperantia was born in

Bucharest on May 6/18, 1888. He attended

the secondary and university education in

Bucharest; in 1912 he completed his Ph.D in

law with the thesis called: „P ragmatic

Apriorism”.

He subsequently specialized in B erlin

and upon his co ming back in the country

(1914) he had a position in a department in

the secondary education after which he was

appointed lecturer (1921) and professor

(1923) in the philosophy of law and

sociology within the Faculty of Law and the

Orthodox Theological Academy, both from

Oradea.

Among the most important scientific

studies and researches we enumerate:

Pragmatic Apriorism (1912), Definition and

Prehistory (1912), The Philosophy of Magic

(1916), T he B eauty as Great Sufferance

(1921), The Philosophy of Thinking (1922),

The Ideal Factor (1929), Social Phenomenon

as Spiritual Process of Education (192 9),

Course in General Socio logy (1930),

Problems of Contemporaneous Sociology

(1933), The Historic Spiritualism (1933),

Judicial Encyclopedia, with an Historic

Introduction in the Philosophy of Law

(1936), Immanent Lyricism (1938),

Introduction in Sociology (1938).

Eugeniu Sperantia was one of the few

Romanian thinkers that attended the

international congresses of philosophy of the

time, collaborating at the same time with

foreign magazines of philosophy.

The thinker’s p hilosophical work is

characterized by a strong biological, social

and metaphysical feature.

None of the fundamental philosophical

problems can be solved, according to

Sperantia, if social reality and life, which is

the original principle of existence, are not

taken into consider ation. In other words,

there is a unique formula with the help of