Philosophical backgrounds of the rights in rem

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University in Bratislava

Philosophical backgrounds of the rights in rem

Meszaros Tomas, Assistant Professor at the Department of Theory of Law and Social Sciences of the Faculty of Law of Comenius

The article presents a summarizing view of dominant philosophical theories that have in the past dealt with the issue of “thing” (object) with the focus on the intersections between philosophical and legal discourse. The conclusion of the article is devoted to considerations of pro futuro challenges that rights in rem may face in the future.

In our view, the new (pro futuro) conceptual normative definition of a thing (rem) should take into account current social, cultural and technological trends and the way things (rem) are perceived. In recent years, we have witnessed in Slovak legislation (in particular), a narrowing of the scope of the term of thing (rem), for example in the context of the extended process of animal dereification (i.e. the animals are no longer legally considered as “thing” but as a sentient being). One option is to continue this trend and gradually create partial changes - exceptions to the normative definition of thing (rem).

The second option is a conceptual and comprehensive change of the approach to the term “thing” as a central concept of rights in rem. Such an approach may result in a paradigmatic change in perception that takes into account the current episteme and creates an adequate and promising model for future developments.

In this context, it is promising to once again point out the philosophical discourse on the nature and substance of things. The unifying line of modern philosophical concepts (for instance of the phenomenology) is the pursuit of an autonomous definition of the term of the thing (object), which would be objective and independent (i. e. from the subject who perceives the object/thing). This objective can also be essential for legal science, which will be confronted with several challenges due to technological developments in the near future, including the area of the rights in rem.

Key words: thing, rights in rem, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, paradigmatic shift, civil code.

Філософські передумови майнових прав

У статті представлено узагальнюючий погляд на домінуючі філософські теорії, які в минулому займалися питанням «речі» (об'єкта) з акцентом на перетинах між філософським і юридичним дискурсом. Висновки статті присвячено міркуванням про потенційні виклики, з якими можуть зіткнутися майнові права в майбутньому.

На нашу думку, нове (pro futuro) концептуально нормативне визначення речі (rem) має враховувати сучасні соціальні, культурні та технологічні тренди та шляхи сприйняття речей (rem). В останній час ми спостерігаємо, як, зокрема, у словацькому законодавстві звужують поняття речі (rem), наприклад, у контексті тривалого процесу дереіфікації тварин (це означає, що на законодавчому рівні вони сприймаються вже не як «речі», а як розумні істоти). Перший альтернативний варіант передбачає продовження такої тенденції та поступове впровадження часткових змін - винятків до нормативного визначення речі (rem).

Згідно з другим варіантом, окреслені концептуальні та комплексні зміни у підході до розуміння терміну «речі» як центрального концепту речового права. У такий спосіб можливо досягти парадигматичних змін у розумінні, з урахуванням сучасних знань (епістеми), та створити адекватну та перспективну модель для подальшого розвитку.

З огляду на це, доцільно ще раз окреслити філософський дискурс природи та змісту речей. Фактором, що об'єднує сучасні філософські концепти, є пошуки окремого визначення поняття речі (об'єкту), що було би об'єктивним та незалежним (від суб'єкта, що сприймає об'єкт/річ). Таке завдання може бути визначним для юридичних наук, які протистоятимуть окремим викликам технологічного розвитку у близькому майбутньому, у тому числі у сфері речового права.

Ключові слова: річ, майнові права, Платон, Арістотель, Кант, парадигматична зміна, цивільний кодекс.

Back to the things themselves

In recent years is the Slovak legislation challenged by a need for a conceptual and systematic change of its civil legal code. The actual legal rules in the area of the civil (substantive) law are the heritage of the previous socialistic regime as the Civil Code from 1964 is still in force. This conceptual transformation and the creation of a brand new civil code should reflect the actual and modern perception of the social reality. The modernization of the civil law should also include the reconstruction of the property rights, including the rights in rem (ius in rem).

The new approach to the ius in rem should be established on the outputs of analysis and reflection of the fundamental terms and concepts concerning this area of law, mostly and above all, on the new concept of thing (rem), which is an essential term for the rights in rem. This reconsideration of the term “thing” should be grounded particularly in the philosophical doctrine. The reflections on the philosophical determinants of the rights in rem could be properly introduced by an allusion to the well-known appeal of Edmund Husserl [1, p. 15]. Just like him “called” back to the things themselves, we could also define our primary methodological goal in relation to the definition of the thing (rem) and thus creating a new doctrinal approach to rights in rem.

Thing (rem) as a part of the philosophical discussion

At first glance, it may seem that the term “thing” is not a concept which definition could pose a problem. From a semantic point of view, we can define (in the Slovak language) several meanings of this term. Things (rem) can be understood as:

1) everything that exists outside human as a concrete or abstract phenomenon;

2) a specific subject, a sensible phenomenon; a person-serving item, personal property;

3) fact, reality; deed; event (e.g. known thing; serious thing; main thing, unpleasant thing);

4) problem, question; affair (e.g. this is your thing);

5) activity, work and its results.

In the context of doctrinal considerations of rights in rem, the first two semantic meanings appear to be particularly applicable. In the context of the first semantic framework, the autonomy and independence of the thing (rem) and at the same time its separation from the human entity are emphasized. This meaning is prominent especially in Kant's philosophy [2, p. 49-50], and its (pre-) image can be found in the Kantian definition of “thing- in-itself”. The second meaning of thing operates with the thing (rem) as with a concrete part of the natural material world - as a perceivable and knowable object that serves a man.

The presented semantic interpretation of the term thing (rem) is compatible with the natural, intuitive perception of the term things as it reflects common linguistic practice. At the same time, the first two semantic fields reveal the fundamental problems that have played a dominant role in the philosophical discourse on that matter (especially in metaphysics and epistemology) [3, p. 22].

In philosophy, a thing (rem) is perceived as an object that existence is defined both in relation to man and at the same time in relation to other things. This creates two levels of analysis, both important for the legal discourse - one determined by the relationship between human and thing and the other by the relationship between things. While the first area deals with the question of objectively knowable things and their separation from human, the second approach concentrates on the problem of identity and the mutual difference between things, as well as the problem of object-to- object and subject-matter [4, p. 487-488].

Reactions to these questions/problems have a direct and immediate impact on the legal discourse, for example, on the possibility of the erga omnes effect of the rights in rem [5]. The attribution of this specific legal feature to rights in rem (i.e. the erga omnes effect) is conditional on things (rem) having objective qualities that are universally identifiable and recognizable and their existence does not depend on the knowing subject but exists on their own (i. e. universally). Based on our everyday experience, this conclusion may seem trivial, but in the context of philosophical reflections, it is a premise that is ambiguous and has been the source of several polemics rooted back in ancient philosophy.

Plato was convinced that the cause and essence of things was the idea and things only partially participate (methexis) in this ontological, teleological and logical model. In other words, in his view, things were only a mirror of the idea and were not the ultimate goal of knowledge. Empirically - by the senses - we could not know the true objective nature of things [6, p. 163-175].

A shift in the perception of things has already occurred with Aristotle, who defines things through the prism of its substance (usia). The substance is the essence of things, and Aristotle defines it as a separate “being” that exists in itself and represents the union of substance and form. The thing - according to Aristotle - is therefore always an embodiment of a form on a material substrate, which is a possibility because it takes a certain and determinable shape (form). This shift in the perception of things was very important (and its consequences were later taken into account in relation to law) - “the lasting benefit of Aristotle's theory of science is that he has combined human knowledge with the real world” [7, p. 230].

Later, Immanuel Kant also presumed the existence of “thing-in-itself”. In Kantian perception, a thing is an object in itself without relation to human imagination (perception), but it allows affection, which is a prerequisite for all experience. By affection, he means a physical-empirical effect of the thing-in-itself, which non-empirical effect is called experience. Ultimately, Kant argues that we cannot know the thing-in-itself (it is transcendent) and we perceive it only at the level of a phenomenon that we rationally reconstruct in our imagination based on empirical experience of the object (thing) [8, p. 7-37].

The relevance of the philosophical approach to the thing (rem) regarding the rights in rem pro futuro

The term thing (rem) in the legal sense is determined by the norms of the legal order. However, the legal terms and definitions are determined by the philosophical worldview, to which the normative framework is to be attributed. This also applies to the term “thing (rem)”. This could be proven by a philosophical-historical overview of the development of normative transformation of the rem in legal systems: Aristotle's metaphysics had a significant influence on the conceptual definition and determination of the thing (rem) in Roman law and the Kantian philosophy have had a significant role in the development of Allgemeines bьrgerliches Gesetzbuch (ABGB) in 1811. For example, one of the many normative conclusions that emerged from Kant's philosophy is the impossibility of a legal relationship between a person and a thing (i.e. a thing can always be only the subject of legal relations) [9, p. 67].

These examples of the intersection of law and philosophy are specific for every historical era. Michel Foucault - a French postmodern philosopher - introduced a new concept of “episteme”, which defined the scheme of discourse of every specific period. In his book The Archaeology of Knowledge, he defined the episteme as follows: “An episteme is a set of relationships that unite discursive practices that allow the emergence of epistemological figures, sciences, or other formalized systems in a given period” [10, p. 285].

Each historical epoch has its own “episteme” and manifests itself by its specific basic codes of culture. In our opinion, our historical epoch has also created a specific episteme and its particularities should also be reflected in the legal discourse, even at the conceptual definition of the thing (rem). In the previous section of the paper, various philosophical concepts of perception of things that fulfilled their historical role (Plato, Aristotle, Kant) were presented.

In our view, the new (pro futuro) conceptual normative definition of a thing (rem) should take into account current social, cultural and technological trends and the way things (rem) are perceived. In recent years, we have witnessed in Slovak legislation (in particular), a narrowing of the scope of the term of thing (rem), for example in the context of the extended process of animal dereification (i.e. the animals are no longer legally considered as “thing” but as a sentient being). One option is to continue this trend and gradually create partial changes - exceptions to the normative definition of thing (rem).

The second option is a conceptual and comprehensive change of the approach to the term “thing” as a central concept of rights in rem. Such an approach may result in a paradigmatic change in perception that takes into account the current episteme and creates an adequate and promising model for future developments. philosophical legal rem

In this context, it is promising to once again point out the philosophical discourse on the nature and substance of things. The unifying line of modern philosophical concepts (for instance of the phenomenology) is the pursuit of an autonomous definition of the term of the thing (object), which would be objective and independent (i. e. from the subject who perceives the object/thing). This objective can also be essential for legal science, which will be confronted with several challenges due to technological developments in the near future, including the area of the rights in rem.

From the perspective of the philosophical discourse on things (rem) presented in this paper, it is clear that the everlasting effort of the philosophy was to define the substance of things (rem) in relation to humans, examining, in particular, the relationship of these two elements. Technological development, however, causes gradual approximation, overlapping or even joining these two elements.

As an example of this phenomenon, a United States Supreme Court's judgment could be presented. In Riley v California, the court banned the search of detainees' mobile phones content without a court order, stating in the reasoning of its ruling that: “mobile phones are now a ubiquitous and integral part of our daily lives, to the extent that an imaginary visitor from Mars may conclude that mobile phones are an important part of human anatomy”. This decision points to a significant shift in perception of the relationship between humans and things and shows the things (in here: mobile smartphones) became an integral part of the human body. As our historical-philosophical excursion has shown, the thing was normally defined as something that exists outside the sphere of the human being. However, this thesis is now beginning to have significant gaps.

Another - and by far not the last - area that will present a conceptual challenge in the definition of a thing (rem) in future is the virtual space (internet) in which the question of identifying and perceiving a things/ rem opens up (and perhaps more intensively than ever) the questions of the existence of the things-in-them- selves.

The new concept of rights in rem should be prepared for future challenges and one way to achieve this goal is to incorporate the modern concept of the thing (rem) into the normative system.

References

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