Therefore, the Historical School’s historical method would, if left unchecked, result in what Immanuel Kant pejoratively called dogmatism,41 but now applied to the historical study of law - in other words, a form of legal historicism.42 However, modern legal research was not deterred by the setbacks of times past, and it continued to repeat the very mistakes that Kant warned the scientific community against in1781.According to Hägerström, the blame lies in: Hägerström’s observation is that legal positivism does not necessarily preclude legal metaphysics, and if the Historical School’s method of research is used to formulate a universal definition of law, then historical, and hence relative, material is confused for something absolute, thus making the objective norm decided by a subjective, rather than an objective, selection of facts. Given these premisses, any attempt to transcend the historical material in order to establish an absolute truth is doomed to failure, as the scientific definition of law and legal concepts according to the principles of legal positivism, is bound to, and by, the historical (empirical) material used, and in a manner prohibiting the establishment of a truly universally applicable and valid definition of law and legal concepts. Consequently, any absolute definition of law based upon the reification of historically relative material is a contraditiction in terms. Incidentally, this is the eternal curse of a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 389 “der [von ihm43 ] angewandten rechtsgeschichtliche Methode der neuzeitlichen Romanistik. Das Bestechende dieser Methode liegt in dem Glauben, der eigenen Erklärung des Rechtes im subjektiven Sinne entspreche eine Tatsache - die Grundlage sei das positive, nicht das natürliche ideale Recht - sowie in der selbstverständlichen Annahme, bei der anderenVölkern und in anderen Zeiten, insoweit sie ein positives Recht gehabt haben, müssten auch Rechte im subjektiven Sinne als faktische Realitäten vorhanden gewesen sein.”44 41 Kant, Cr. P. R., pp. A vii-x, B xxxv-xxxvii, and B23-24. 42 Cf.Wilhelm, Juristischen Methodenlehre, pp. 88-128. 43 I.e., Betti, Il concetta della obligazione construito dal punto di visita dell’ azione (1920). 44 Hägerström, Obligationsbegriff 1, pp. 605-606.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=