ABSTRACT
In the decade that I have known Antje Wiener, I have become aware that we share a particular affinity – one that I detect more often with native German speakers than with speakers of my own language. I should say here that Antje considers herself an English-speaking scholar; I believe she underestimates the importance of her Gymnasium years on the way she thinks. The affinity we share is an architectonic tendency in organizing our thoughts. “By architectonic [Architektonik] I understand the art of constructing systems.” So said Immanuel Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason (A832/B860; 1960, 653). No one better exemplified this tendency than Kant himself, but, among other thinkers who have influenced me, I would add Karl Marx, Max Weber, Hans Kelsen and Jürgen Habermas to this category.
