means of reason, experience, and faith.101 For instance, Samuel Pufendorf makes a scientific distinction and distinguishes the three sources of law from one another, thereby (in making the science of positive law subordinate to natural law) depriving moral theology of its last vestiges of necessary legal relevance.102 However, the logical, ontological, and causal natures and relations of the different sources of law remain the same as before.Natural law is universal and non-historical; binding as a matter of fact; identical to public international law; identical to Christian theology; and the necessary precondition to binding positive law.103 From a practical point of view, the new geometric definition of natural law still posed problems. Despite the formal strictness of mos geometricus, the problem regarding the logical relationship and actual priority between natural law and positive law, supposed to have been solved, resurfaced. But this time it came with renewed strength, as the inherent weakness of the method demonstrated - namely its disregard for empirical data, confusion of induction and deduction, confusion of truth and formal validity, confusion of is and ought, empty formalism and circularity in reasoning.104 Taken together, these weaknesses betokened David Hume’s bewilderment before the aspirations of the normative sciences, as well as Kant’s devastating critique of natural law.105 To the natural law theory of the 17th and 18th centuries these problems were brought about by the idea that natural law and positive law belonged to two different spheres of reality - the fora ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 589 101 Pufendorf, Om de mänskliga och medborgerliga plikterna enligt naturrätten: i två böcker, p. 33. 102 Ibid., pp. 33-34; Denzer, Naturrecht bei Samuel Pufendorf, pp. 266-271; Hartung, Die Naturrechtsdebatte, pp. 30-37. 103 Denzer, Naturrecht bei Samuel Pufendorf, pp. 129-143 and 218-238; Peterson,“Rechtsvereinheitlichung,” pp. 26-30; Hartung, Die Naturrechtsdebatte, p. 31. Cf. Röd, Geometrischer Geist, pp. 126-142. 104 Röd, Geometrischer Geist, see, e.g., Metabasis in Index; Peterson,“Rechtsvereinheitlichung,” pp. 18-26 and 34-35. 105 See e.g Harris, Legal Philosophies, p. 12; Hartung, Die Naturrechtsdebatte, pp. 167-168.
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