Kelsen’s Freudian Moment

Abstract

What makes Kelsen argue that we are no Kantian angels? Why is the Kelsenian state a centralised coercive order understood in terms of law as a system of norms? The chapter continues the exploration of Kelsen’s milieu and expands on it to examine how the impact of Freud’s psychology and philosophical anthropology on Kelsen’s thought relating to the dynamics of human nature, society, and the political as a problem of authority and obedience is shown to be real and profound. To zoom in on the core of Kelsen’s philosophy and political theory is to recapture a breathtakingly rich and realistic account of You and Me that makes clear, in the best of the Realist tradition, that where there is Us, the struggle for power and conflicts of interests are here to stay.