Dogmatization Processes in Law and Religion

Dogmatization processes are historical processes in which binding epistemic assumptions concerning basic concepts, patterns of interpretation and world-perception, and normative beliefs are stabilized as a framework in which normative arguments can be made. In a historical-comparative approach, the essays collected in this volume discuss such processes for legal and theological discourses. In doing so, they reveal structural similarities as well as obvious differences between legal and theological thinking and writing. The contributions focus on the methodological standards of the normative arguments, whose purpose, particularly in law, is often to limit the pertinent arguments or to put them into a hierarchy. In addition, the authors analyse institutional processes and structures in which dogmatization takes place, for example the differentiation between the law and its description or application, procedural mechanisms such as a transfer of the power to decide normative questions to councils or courts, or the rationalization of dissent in academic institutions.

Literature: Jansen, Nils, and Georg Essen (eds.), Dogmatisierungsprozesse in Recht und Religion, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2011.