of some mysterious force, such as a cognitively inaccessible supersensible power.114 Hence, natural law in theory makes positive law redundant, both materially, as a body of valid law, and formally, as an epistemological legal category. Followers of natural law, however, would not see anything truly contradictory in this account of the relationship between the two different spheres of law. For according to natural law, it constitutes in itself a legal order that both exists and binds on account of its inherently rational nature and of which one gains knowledge through reason or faith.115 Non-positivists would even contest the possibility that empirical reality could invalidate their metaphysics.116 Accordingly, non-positivists argue that objective positivistic or empirical law is based ultimately upon metaphysical law117 and is metaphysical by its very nature, which also carries over to the realms of subjective law: Hägerström’s philosophy brings about the rejection of the foundations of natural law theory, which are deemed to be unscientific on account of the fact that the natural phenomena that naa ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 327 114 See, e.g., Hägerström’s analysis of Immanuel Kant’s metaphysical legal theory in Hägerström, “Naturrätt?,” pp. 321-323. 115 Ross, “Naturret contra retspositivism,”Tidsskrift for Rettsvitenskap (TfR) 76 (1963): pp. 498 and 510-511. 116 Hägerström, “Förhållandet mellan staten och rätten (1924),” pp. 264-266. 117 Hägerström,“Nehrman-Ehrenstråles uppfattning,” pp. 595-597; Recht, Pflicht etc, pp. 41-44. 118 Hägerström, “Förhållandet mellan staten och rätten (1924),” pp. 261-262. My translation. Swedish:“Rättigheten är såsom sådan en osinnlig makt, och plikten är såsom ovillkorlig själv icke något relativt, vilket är fallet med allt i tid och rum inneslutet. Alltså träffa icke, kan man säga, våra argument dessa filosofers bevisning för staten som en osinnlig vilja [negativt], lika litet som man skulle kunna sägas ha bevisat att Gud icke existerar genom att ådagalägga, att han icke kan återfinnas i vår till tid och rum sig hänförande verklighet” (contents of square brackets added here). “The right as such is a super-sensible power, and the duty, which itself is unconditional, is not relative, which is the case with everything enclosed within space and time. Accordingly, one can say, our arguments do not affect [negatively] these philosophers’ demonstration of the state as being a super-sensible will, anymore than it can be said to be demonstrated that God does not exist by proving that he cannot be found in our reality belonging to time and space.”118
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