As David Hume and Immanuel Kant have demonstrated, the overriding problem of the rationalistic philosophy of the 17th and 18th centuries is that it exaggerated and overestimated, or overrated, its reach and tenability.137 For instance, the primary problem of mos geometricus is that, strictly speaking, it is a method of logic adapted to physical sciences, in particular physics, and as such its transferring to jurisprudence becomes tenuous. For while physics and geometry deal with objects that exist independently of men, a sufficiently large (read: any) portion of the entirety of law is man-made, historical, and contingent, hence positive. Therefore, the scientific analysis of lawmore geometrico, rather than discovering the true essence of law, will formulate abstractions of positive lawand analyses of such essentially human abstractions in order to deduce that which proper positive lawought to contain, as well as attempt to derive the natural legitimacy of positive law from “natural law” (which, in fact, is nothing but a compilation of positive law, rather than being a rational necessity). a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 597 1. 3. 5 summary and conclus ions 137 Bachmann, Die naturrechtliche Staatslehre ChristianWolffs, p. 22.
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