Uppsala School formulated their principal thesis, namely that positive law itself constituted a thought structure permeated with the untenable ideas and concepts of natural law - that is, metaphysics.57 The observation that the study of law is infused with metaphysics is partly founded upon what Hägerström’s moral theory predicated about the ontological character of morality, namely that moral judgments, and so on, are at best outbursts of emotion or, at worst, expressions of metaphysical nonsense, but in neither case do they express anything objectively valid of or about reality.58 (See Part IV). Seen from this point of view, it is likely that the Uppsala School’s critique of legal science constitutes a reaction against not only the scientific foundations of the school of classical natural law, but also against the foundations of the German Begriffsjurisprudenz.This line of argument is further strengthened by the fact that the Uppsala School argues that the aforementioned schools of legal science rely on the metaphysics of residual medieval scholasticism.59 However, the difference between classical natural law theory and modern jurisprudence was that the latter considered itself to deal with positive law exclusively, denying its metaphysical intellectual heritage, thus worka ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 309 57 See Olivecrona, “Editor’s Preface,” pp. xx-xxvii. Cf. Hägerström, “Rättsidéers uppkomst (1917),” p. 118. 58 Hägerström, Selbstdarstellungen, pp. 22-24, 26-48, especially 42-48; Olivecrona,“Editor’s Preface,” pp. xi-xii. 59 Hägerström, Stat och rätt, pp. 20-21. Cf. Hägerström, “Kelsen,” pp. 98-99; Lundstedt, Principinledning: kritik av straffrättens grundåskådningar;Till frågan om rätten och samhället: svar till professor Thyrén; “Kritik av nordiska skadeståndsläror,”Tidsskrift for Retsvidenskab (TfR) 36 (1923); Grundlinjer i skadeståndsrätten band I. Förra delen: Culpa-regeln, vol. I; Grundlinjer i skadeståndsrätten, vol. II:2; Föreläsningar över valda delar av obligationsrätten: III. Obligationsbegreppet. Förra delen: Fakta och fiktioner, vol. 3. See also Markku Helin who argues that Scandinavian Realism rejected the conceptualistic legal argumentation of the Begriffsjurisprudenz on account of the school's conflicting views regarding the analysis of subjective rights. Helin, Lainoppi, pp. 436-437 and 440; and Källström, Den gode nihilisten, pp. 35-43, who summarizes the core ideas of Hägerström’s critique of legal science. See also Ekelöf, who refers to Lundstedt’s and Hägerström’s lectures, which Ekelöf attended, wherein Begriffsjurisprudenz and similar notions of law were discussed at length. See Ekelöf, “Ett stycke vetenskapshistoria,” in Valda skrifter 1942-1990, pp. 77-80.
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