In his description of contemporary legal science Hägerström concluded that since legal positivism in its practical realization still relied upon a scientific apparatus and scientific method inherited from the metaphysics of 17th and 18th Century natural law, modern legal theory (legal positivism) and especially its theoretical rejection of natural law, constituted an unfinished scientific project.95 By uncovering the historical origins of the modern theories of rights and duties, which with respect to its fundamental concepts and legal categories of private law still rested heavily upon Roman law, Hägerström demonstrated that modern jurisprudence still had a tremendous task before it - namely, to free legal science from its burdensome legacy of natural law (a term including naturallaw in its classical, overt, as well as its modern, covert, forms).In order to liberate itself from such invalid traditional principles and doctrines of law, modern legal positivism had to undertake a truly anti-metaphysical revision of its fundamentals and scrutinize the validity of legal ontology, legal epistemology, legal methodology, and argumentation as well as subject itself to amore thorough scientific transformation than the mere cosmetic shift frommetaphysical jurisprudence to legal positivism performed during the19th Century.96 For the scientific revolution performed by legal theory and jurisprudence during the 19th Century was a revision of legal ontology alone, consisting of the rejection of natural law as a possible object (as made possible by Immanuel Kant’s critique of das Ding an sich, which in turn carried over to all branches of science, metaphysical and non-metaa ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 407 2 . 2 an unf ini shed sci ent i f ic proj ect : legal pos i t ivi sm 95 Hägerström,“Nehrman-Ehrenstråles uppfattning,” pp. 573-574 and630; Recht, Pflicht etc, pp. 13-15 and 86-87. See also Hägerström, Obligationsbegriff 1, pp. 599-612. 96 For further examples of Hägerström’s program and its implementation, see Hägerström, “Nehrman-Ehrenstråles uppfattning,” pp. 573-574; Recht, Pflicht etc, pp. 13-15. See, e.g., Hägerström, Objektiva rättens begrepp, passim; “The Notion of Law,” passim; Obligationsbegriff 1; Selbstdarstellungen, pp. 46-48; “Är gällande rätt?,” pp. 59-60; “Is Positive Law?,” pp. 17-18; “Begreppet viljeförklaring”; “Declaration of Intention.”
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