著者

クリース ヨハネス・フォン 山田 吉二郎 江口 豊

出版者

北海道大学大学院メディア・コミュニケーション研究院

雑誌

メディア・コミュニケーション研究 (ISSN:18825303)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.60, pp.95-126, 2011-08-11

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In the part published here of his treatise "On the Concept of Objective Possibility and Some of its Applications" (1888), von Kries discusses the "Concept of Danger (Gefahr)," which was one of the most essential issues of the controversy between the "old" and "new" schools of German legal philosophers in the second half of the 19th century. They argued whether pre-criminal "social dangerousness" is enough to be regarded as the committed crime or not. Von Kries defines "danger" as "objective possibility of a certain harmful result." According to him, judgments of "objective possibility" presuppose "nomological" knowledge, that is, "certain empirical rules widely known to many people" (M. Weber). It is on the basis of them that we can generalize various concrete experiences which must be distinguished from each other. As for "danger," e.g., we can classify them into two groups at first: the "absolutely" dangerous ones and the dangerous ones "in the wider senses." Then we must try to devide the latter cases into "grades," although we can't attain to numerical exactness. Von Kries calls this a "principle of generalization" (Prinzip der Generalisierung) which has methodologically great importance to Weber.