Ota Weinberger

Ota Weinberger (20 April 1919 – 30 January 2009) was a Czech-Austrian jurist, legal philosopher, and logician. He was the Professor of Legal Science at the University of Graz and the University of Prague.

Biography
Weinberger was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia on 20 April 1919 into an assimilated Jewish family of intellectuals. He was respected in the professional world as a logician and legal theorist who became known to a broad public beyond the academic framework as a political admonisher. For a long time, he suffered greatly from the political conditions in his homeland. As a Jew, he was first persecuted by the Third Reich. He was initially unable to complete his law studies at Masaryk University in his hometown and spent four years in concentration camps. After the war, he completed his studies and entered the court service.

As a democrat and liberal thinker, he refused to join the Czechoslovak Communist Party and was subsequently repressed by those in power. In the years 1953–1956, he had to work as a locksmith for political reasons. Despite the most adverse circumstances, he managed to embark on an academic career as a Professor at the Charles University in Prague, where he taught logic between 1956 and 1968.

In meantime, he defended his PhD dissertation at the Charles University in Prague named ''Studie k logice normativních vět: Proč nemá smyslu mluvit o pravdivosti normativních vět. Dvě oblasti logiky normativních vět. Theorie důslekových vztahů a podmíněná normativní věta. Několik poznámek k normativni interpretaci systémů K1 a K2 J. Kalinowského''. In 1963, Weinberger became Docent (associate professor) at the same university.

During the Prague Spring in 1968, Weinberger was in Vienna at the World Congress of Philosophy and never returned to his homeland. Only after the collapse of communism was he rehabilitated in the Czech Republic. Weinberger died on 30 January 2009, after a long and serious illness.

Thoughts
In his PhD dissertation, Weinberger defends the applicability of logic to norms or normative propositions respectively. He created a pioneer work of the then-new discipline of deontic logic he preferred the term logic of norms.

Honours and awards

 * 1989–1990: Humboldt Prize (Humboldt-Forschungspreis).
 * 1989–1990: Gold Medal of Honor of the State of Salzburg (Land Salzburg das Goldene Ehrenzeichen).
 * 1993: The University of Salzburg awarded him an honorary doctorate.
 * 1994: Member of Academia Europaea.
 * 2004: Čestný doktorát or Doctor Honoris Causa (Dr.h.c.) in juridical science at Masaryk University in Brno.