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praktiskegrunde
Praktiske Grunde . Nordisk tidsskrift for kultur- og samfundsvidenskab
Nr. 1-2 / 2010 . ISSN 1902-2271 . www.hexis.dk
Kampen om retsstaten
Bourdieu, Luhmann og oplysningstidens
magtdeling
Gorm Harste
Abstract: The article describes how the most important social theories have founded their analyses of
the legal constitution of modern society on ideas about the early Enlightenment. The central question
is whether the modern social order differentiates what Pierre Bourdieu calls fields and Niklas Luhmann
calls functional systems. Hence, the discussion is about the form of separated powers. To Bourdieu,
lawyers have always had interests in the separation; to Luhmann however, the communication system
of law establishes its own second order observation of rules about rules. To both theories, and Habermas,
Foucault and others could be invoked as well, what is in question is the French constitution of
separated powers up until Charles Montesquieu’s famous legal sociology of L’esprit des loix from
1748. The article examines the activities and writings of the French legal scholar and chancellor
Henri-François d’Aguesseau who in the early Enlightenment dominated legal life during half a century
in the French superpower. The argument is that Bourdieu’s analysis does not in a satisfactory way describe
the disinterested reasonability invoked by d’Aguesseau’s activities and his indeed very extensive
legal philosophy. The perspective for today’s legal, political and sociological thought is that such a
second order description is imperative for a criticism of recent reinvented forms of despotic abuse of
power practice.
Key words: Bourdieu, Luhmann, rule of law, separation of powers, law, entlightenment
Det er påfaldende, at generationen af nye klassikere i samfundsteorien næsten alle er
født indenfor en ganske kort årrække fra 1926-1930. Lige så påfaldende er det, at de
også næsten alle er kontinentale europæere. De nye klassikere er velkendte, det er
Michel Foucault, Niklas Luhmann, Jürgen Habermas og Pierre Bourdieu. Deres sam-
fundstænkning repræsenterer højder, som ingen siden har kunnet nå, og som er på
niveau med de store klassikere, Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, Georg Simmel og Max
Weber. Andre, filosoffer, historikere og jurister fra samme generation kunne tilføjes,
lige som en lidt ældre og lidt mere spredt generation født i årene omkring 1900
kunne tilføjes. Med de fire store nyklassikere, hvis forfatterskab kan siges at være