On the Diversity of "Pure" Doctrines of Law

Abstract

The subject of the study is one of the epistemological problems in the history of political and legal thought, as well as the modern theory of state and law. We are talking about the attempts of the authors of various historical periods, at least over the past two centuries, to construct a model of the study of law as a "pure" phenomenon, or call for the "purity" of the methods of its cognition. There is a strong opinion in the modern legal literature that the "pure doctrine of law" is the creative result of the Austrian lawyer G. Kelsen. His teaching is often a variant of logical positivism, in which an interpretive model of law was created, in which one subject corresponds to a special and only method – legal, and all the others were declared superfluous. In fact, in the history of legal thought, attempts have been made more than once to write "pure" doctrines about law, and long before G. Kelsen. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the analysis and illumination of new facets of the history of political and legal thought, which previously remained completely unexplored in both domestic and foreign political and legal thought. The article analyzes both well-known and previously virtually unknown scientists and thinkers who have developed original concepts of "pure doctrines of law". In this regard, G. Kelsen's teaching is justifiably considered as one of the many variants of this kind of teaching, the uniqueness of which is connected only with the idea of interpretation as a philosophical paradigm, which allowed him to combine well-known legal concepts and techniques within the framework of the methodological doctrine of law.