to explain how the attitudes of those segments of society that have no interest in upholding the law can be reconciled to the idea of the law of the land as being a category maintained through the “will of the state”, in its guise of the will of the commonalty in total.22 So Hägerström, given the validity of his observations, is correct when he rejects the scientific validity of the “will of the state” with the following words: “Der sogen[annt] Staatswille als Träger des Rechts ist nur ein Gespenst…”23 and “… dass der Staatswille als der das Recht tragende Wille eine reine Fiktion ist.”24 In his further analyses of contemporary legal theory, Hägerström points to a solution to the dilemmas of modern legal science, namely to adopt the psychological explanation of law, and to conceive the law as being a legal machinery maintained and fuelled by human emotions, more precisely by fear.25 What might be objected to in this solution is that historically the problem has been that legal scholars have veered from the straight and narrow into superstition, by construing the legal order sociologically while simultaneously endowing human emotions with a supernatural determination - which, for example, is the case: “Wenn man aus dieser der Rechtsordnung eigentümlichen [sic!] Kraft einen Gemeinschaftswillen, gerichtet auf die Aufrechthaltung des Rechts im Ganzen, macht, bewegt man sich auf dem Gebiete der Dichtung und nicht derWirklichkeit.”26 Therefore, all that is left of the elaborate attempts of jurisprudence to uphold a metaphysically infused factual explanation of law is a pipe dream of scientific glories. For instance, when it comes to the will-theory and the “will of the state” this duo constitutes a direct a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 383 22 Ibid., pp. 15-16. 23 Ibid., p. 16. 24 Ibid., p. 17. 25 Ibid., pp. 16-17. 26 Ibid., p. 17. 1. 2 . 4 law as a machine ry fue lled by emot ions
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