mer to transcendent reality, the second to mundane existence.106 Quite contrary to the modern notions of reality and existence, transcendent reality was conceived as having an intrinsic nature of spirituality endowing it with a higher degree of reality than mundane reality, thus making it intrinsically real, while mundane existence was real to a lesser degree, on the verge of being unreal.107 Accordingly, an abstraction or any other category that based its philosophical validity upon factors dispensing with direct empirical and historical verification was a proposition that transcended time and space (which incidentally constituted an additional proof of the intrinsic reality and truth of the proposition). It was on such a basis that natural law built its authority, for natural law was a system of law accessible only by means of pure reason, transcendentally cognizable, as well as being historically and empirically independent. Induction as a method of legal science thus poses a problem as it runs the risk of establishing truths of law that lie in a direction other than natural law.108 According to the scientific paradigm of the 17th Century, the subject matter of science was the eternal and absolute objects. Only those objects that met these criteria were suited for scientific interest, as the qualified knowledge of science had to correspond to the metaphysical characters of the investigated object in order to qualify as scientific knowledge.109 The scientific ideals thus provided by the 17th Century restatement of the Aristotelian ideal of science followed that of the Cartesian scientific ideal, emphasizing the certainty of knowledge, the certain avenue to knowledge of the intrinsically necessary things, and so forth.110 In other words, it was a method of scientific investigation enp a r t v i i , c h a p t e r 1 590 106 Röd, Geometrischer Geist, pp. 128-136;Winiger, Das rationale Pflichtenrecht Christian Wolffs: Bedeutung und Funktion der transzendentalen, logischen und moralischenWahrheit im systematischen und theistischen NaturrechtWolffs, pp. 110-113 and 170-184; Peterson, “Rechtsvereinheitlichung,” pp. 26-27. 107 Röd, Geometrischer Geist, p. 132;Winiger, Das rationale Pflichtenrecht Wolffs, p. 86. 108 Winiger, Das rationale Pflichtenrecht Wolffs, pp. 86-95. 109 Denzer, Naturrecht bei Samuel Pufendorf, pp. 35-40;Winiger, Das rationale Pflichtenrecht Wolffs, pp. 86-103.
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