practical jurists are generally confronted with are those regarding the manner and methods by which law is to be implemented and correctly applied - apart from the ambiguities in the material prescripts of legal doctrine. Hägerström describes his philosophy of law as being a non-transcendental theory directed against the ancient and hereditary methods of natural law.82 He gives examples by describing the study of law in its two principal shapes. Law as an object can essentially be regarded from two aspects, either as “… an object of theoretic cognition, i.e., the kind of cognition which determines the nature of what really exists. But it is also regarded as something which is in essence presented only to an evaluating consciousness, i.e., an awareness of what ought to be regardless of the actual constitution of reality.”83 However, according to Hägerström, positive law neither has to subscribe, defer, nor correspond to any supra-positive system of law in order to ensure the legitimacy and validity of the rules of positive law. In fact, positive law is nothing more nor less than the specific system of rules addressed to the state organs that the state in question actually decides to implement.84 Hägerström’s characterization of the difference between natural law and positivism is an excellent summary of metaphysics in all of its practical misery: “The idea of rights in another sense than the advantages which the individual is granted through the system of rules, is an idea of super-sensible powers. And since the super-sensible cannot be conceived without contradiction alongside the sensible, every such idea is a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 317 2 . 2 the sci ent i f ic nece s s i ty of a non-transcendental phi losophy of law 82 Hägerström, Selbstdarstellungen, pp. 45-48. 83 Hägerström, “Är gällande rätt?,” p. 59; “Is Positive Law?,” p. 17. Swedish: “… ett föremål för teoretiskt medvetande eller ett sådant medvetande som bestämmer det verkliga. Men den betraktas också som väsentligen given blott för ett värdemedvetande eller en uppfattning av vad som bör vara oavsett verklighetens beskaffenhet.” 84 See, e.g., Hägerström, Selbstdarstellungen, p. 47.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=