Mission of DPSP Project
DPSP is not oriented primarily at disseminating ideas, but at creating an open platform for a specific, highly specialized research. To keep focus Symposia and Workshops are organized around certain themes. The contributions to these activities form the main part of the research articles in DPSP Annual. The themes of the Symposia or Workshop are elaborated into research questions and the articles for DPSP Annual should be submitted to one of these research questions. In the editing process of the journal much attention is spent to tailor the articles to the theme and to take care that the articles elaborate Paul Scholten’s view.
The thirteen research articles of the first Volume 2020 have for example all their own approach and should be read on their own merits and for their own views. Still they also substantially contribute to the debate DPSP aims to stimulate and facilitate. The editor brings the answers each article gives and the new questions the article evokes into discussion on the website. Articles on the website relate to each other. Newly submitted articles pay attention to earlier discussions on the website. In this regard it should be pointed out that the editing process is not a techical job, which should be done as fast as possible. Authors preferably take the time to let their article grow in consultation with the editor and the reviewers.
Academic frame of discussion
The DPSP project takes the academic philosophy of life as point of departure. This ontological point of view emphasizes the dialogical nature of scholarly debate and rejects the formal structure of scientific debate as of only marginal relevance in legal philosophy. Crucial for an academic conception of the world is the assumption that there is no correspondence between concepts and reality. This means that formal models used to describe, explain and prove will fail because the minor premise in these syllogistic models, i.e., the proposition: “this here is a ……,” is inherently problematic. This is the reason the academic model of old conceives a scholarly discussion as an itinerant, dialogical process. Each quest brings a new topic to the discussion platform, which makes it possible to define a number of formal steps for the purpose of bringing order and clarity to the discussion, but the quest is doomed at some point to get stuck in conceptual problems. A new starting point introduces a new route, again facilitating a degree of order and clarity, and so on in an inexorable process. An all-encompassing view is simply not possible. At the same time, every voyage enhances one’s conception of the world.
Posted Research questions
The routes which DPSP research questions invite scholars to explore will overlap and a meta research question can at some point be proposed to generate a degree of order and clarity in the relationship between different research questions. Users of the site can propose new research questions. (email to the contact address of the website)
New Perspectives on Law and Reality