a matter of necessity, logically from the terms of law themselves, hence law is a function of the concepts, rather than any other fact, or what Hägerström calls “mediaeval realism.”211 Hägerström thus explains the vicious circle by reference to the uncritical dogmatism of jurisprudence, its scholastic theory of concepts. In this respect, the similarities with the methodological inversion of the Begriffsjurisprudenz that Philipp Heck (1912) criticizes are obvious; namely, in the form of the blind faith and reliance in which jurists believe - that the concepts of law by themselves can produce new and expanded knowledge, as well as new concepts of law (if needed).212 A further signifying characteristic of the criticized view is that it nurtures a hope that legal science once and for all will succeed in arriving at a universally valid definition of the concept of law.213 This is an enterprise whose feasibility rests upon the assumption that the terms “law” and “legal science” entail the objective existence of the concept of law itself. See especially Karl Bergbohm whose adherence to mediaeval conceptual realism is manifest, as he defines the concept of law as a hermitically tight cover encompassing all that is law and excluding all that does not fit into this category, for their can only be one real - universal, eternal, and objective - determination of law.214 Bergbohm’s definition of the “wirkliche Rechte” is so obviously tainted by ontological metaphysics, and hermetic mysticism, that Hägerström is fully correct when he dismisses Bergbohm by reference to Bergbohm’s mystic and exclusive understanding of the law as being a form of insight unavailable to non-jurists.215 What Hägerström wishes to demonstrate is that the definition of a concept can neither depend upon the meaning of the word alone nor rest solely upon empirical instances of the same conp a r t v i , c h a p t e r 4 444 211 Ibid., pp. 20-21. See above, Chapter 4, beginning. 212 Cf. Heck, “Die Begriffsjurisprudenz,” pp. 191-200. 213 Hägerström, Stat och rätt, pp. 21-22. 214 Ibid., p. 22. See above, Chapter 4, n 157, for full quote. 215 Hägerström, Stat och rätt, p. 22.
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