Abstract

A central problem for legal thinkers of the 19th century was the question, whether the treatment of the law could be conceived as a scientific activity in the true sense of the word. According to the criteria which had been proposed by Kant with regard to the natural sciences, different answers seemed to be possible. G. Hugo argued that material given by experience could not be subject of an „exact science”︁. P. J. A. Feuerbach on the contrary advocated a concept of legal thinking, in which the method of physics served as a model. These two positions indicate a certain lack of self‐confidence, as a foreign standard is accepted in determining the status of the own discipline. This situation can also be interpreted as indicator for a feeling of crisis prevailing from now on in the self‐assessment of jurisprudential activity. On this background it is possible to explain many arguments and theories in the field of jurisprudence, when the corresponding counterpoint in one of the natural sciences is taken into consideration. A characteristic example is the way, in which F. K. v. Savigny has been shaping his „organic”︁ theory of specific legal correlations according to the physiological way of analysis proposed by C. C. E. Schmid. Even a statement like the one of J. H. v. Kirchmann, in which legal activity is denied any scientific value, has to be understood in this context. For Kirchmann takes the natural sciences as uncontested scientific model and accepts in this way the parameters of evaluation set by jurists like Hugo, Feuerbach and Savigny. It has still to be evaluated, whether this stream of theory led to a „turning point”︁ in the development of 19th century legal thinking, as J. E. Kuntze put it in 1856. But already now it can be stated that the close contact between Kuntze and G. Th. Fechner has been contributing to a diagnostic sensitivity on the part of Kuntze, which makes him an observer of special insight. Thus it may well be that the considerations sketched here have been introducing a leading theme into the following theoretical discussions in the field of jurisprudence during the second half of the 19th century. This question deserves further interdisciplinary research.