Hägerström’s critique of natural law and the Begriffsjurisprudenz allows the conclusion that neither right, duty, illegality, nor justice are substances in the philosophical meaning of the word, or for that matter substantive concepts proper. Concepts such as these, on the contrary, are ontologically speaking merely functions of the rules of positive law. No rule: no right, no duty, no illegality, no justice. For if these concepts were substances, then the positive content of law necessarily would have to collect its content from these substances, and law would then become the function of the concepts - the substances. Since the basic postulate for legal thought, whether or not metaphysical, is that dogmatic causality should reign over law, legal practice, and jurisprudence, it is thus inevitable that the concepts invariably should also correspond to, and absorb their actual meaning and content from, the positive rules of law alone.The idea that law is a function of certain concepts of law is one that contravenes the essence of both legal thought and theory, whereby such an understanding of legal epistemology and legal causality must be rejected, which sets aside the fundamentals of natural law and Begriffsjurisprudenz. Furthermore, to imagine the legal concepts as being substances implies that the concepts of law have political priority in the proa ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 463 Conceptual Analysis in Practical Fields of Legal Science chap te r 6 6 . 1 substance s of law and substant ive conce pts of law
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