{"product_id":"why-the-law-matters-to-you-citizenship-agency-and-public-identity-9783110323955","title":"Why the Law Matters to You: Citizenship, Agency, and Public Identity","description":"\u003cp\u003e • Author(s): Christoph Hanisch\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher: de Gruyter\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher Imprint: de Gruyter\u003cbr\u003e • BISAC: Political\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis book presents an answer to the question of why modern legal institutions and the idea of citizenship are important for leading a free life. The majority of views in political and legal philosophy regard the law merely as a useful instrument, employed to render our lives more secure and to enable us to engage in cooperate activities more efficiently. The view developed here defends a non-instrumentalist alternative of why the law matters. It identifies the law as a constitutive feature of our identities as citizens of modern states. The constitutivist argument rests on the (Kantian) assumption that a person's practical identity (its normative self-conception as an agent) is the result of its actions. The law co-constitutes these identities because it maintains the external conditions that are necessary for the actions performed under its authority. Modern legal institutions provide these external prerequisites for achieving a high degree of individual self-constitution and freedom. Only public principles can establish our status as individuals who pursue their life plans and actions as a matter of right and not because others contingently happen to let us do so. The book thereby provides resources for a reply to anarchist challenges to the necessity of legal ordering.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"de Gruyter","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":47575022567575,"sku":"9783110323955","price":16556.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0666\/3471\/1191\/files\/9783110323955.webp?v=1774896962","url":"https:\/\/atlanticbooks.com\/products\/why-the-law-matters-to-you-citizenship-agency-and-public-identity-9783110323955","provider":"Atlantic Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}