On the Diversity of "Pure" Doctrines of Law

Abstract

The subject of this study is one of the largest epistemological problems in the history of political and legal thought, as well as the modern theory of the state and the 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 the law as a "pure" phenomenon or call for the "purity" of the methods of its cognition. There is a strong opinion in modern legal literature that the "pure doctrine of law" is the creative result of the Austrian lawyer Hans Kelsen. His teaching is often a variant of logical positivism, in which an interpretive model of the 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 long before Kelsen. The scientific novelty of this research lies in the analysis and illumination of new facets of political and legal thought history that previously remained completely unexplored in both domestic and foreign political and legal thought. This article analyzes well-known and previously unknown scientists and thinkers who have developed original concepts of the "pure doctrine of law." In this regard, Kelsen's teaching is justifiably considered one of the many variants of this kind of thought, 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 the law.