Abstract

The essay investigates the constitutive form of the State with respect to changes in historical forms. The thesis is that the State’s form rests on the relation between existentiality and normativity and that the State – and its Constitution – survives only if that connection is not dissolved. To this end, it moves from the concepts of the State in theories of law and in the history of modern experience to arrive at a scientific foundation of the naturalness of the State’s ought-to-be. Finally, the essay draws from its normative existence interpretive consequences of Constitutional Law.