Ota Weinberger was a Czech-Austrian jurist, whose core academic work on issues of democracy was mostly published in the 1990s. In his writings, he focused primarily on legal philosophy from a positivist perspective. However, there are also significant overlaps with the field of political theory as Weinberger examined the conditions for the functioning of contemporary democracies. In this paper, some of the main features of his conception of the so-called “structured democracy” are clarified. The conception opposed several other democratic theories, (...) especially the elitist (Schumpeterian), the majoritarian, but also the discursive one, as represented by Jürgen Habermas, with whom Weinberger fundamentally disagreed. The paper focuses on several key elements of his theory, such as the leading ideas, the role of institutions, open society, and his critique of marketing methods in politics. (shrink)

Why the social ontology uses the game as paradigmatic example of social object? Is social reality a game? In this short essay, shared characteristics and differences of ludic and social acts are explored to explode the myth of the normative structure of social reality. In order to explain and demonstrate their theories, major authors of our research sector as Searle and Smith appeal to ludic phenomenons as unmistakable evidences of regulated social activities. Nevertheless well valued theorists don’t recognize that there (...) are tens of different typologies of games, about which it should be appropriate to draw up a regional ontology, as much there are tons of rule types, not always prescriptive and not always descriptive. The instant article demonstrates that social reality is not explainable by appealing to regulated behaviors, opening in this way a research context that involves the Interactive Fiction of play. Therefore the ludic phenomenon rests the base of social reality, however disconnecting it from the concept of rule, which too much influenced the research on mind, language and culture. (shrink)