Abstract
The author shows that Petrażycki adopted a form of critical realism, and that, despite him never using the exact term “legal realism”, his approach to legal phenomena can be regarded as a form of legal realism—if understood as critical realism applied to legal phenomena. In the first part of the chapter, the author presents Petrażycki’s critical realism. Here, his theory of perception and his conceptualization of deduction/induction as a scientific method (akin to Popper’s method) is presented. In the second part of the chapter, the author shows that Petrażycki’s theory of law, as well as his legal dogmatics and legal policy, should be all regarded as forms of legal realism. To this goal, after presenting Petrażycki’s distinction between objective-cognitive and subjective-relational sciences, the manner in which Petrażycki uses terms meaning “real”, “realist”, “realistic”, is examined. When reconstructing Petrażycki’s conception of legal dogmatics, the author also draws on Lande’s writings—the most consistent developer of Petrażycki’s ideas.
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Notes
- 1.
Throughout this essay I shall capitalize the noun Subject (along with the pronouns referring to Her) to the goal of distinguishing the Subject in the sense of each of us solipsistically understood from the subject of a judgment (in a philosophical sense).
- 2.
On the other possible meanings of realism in the history of philosophy, see Fittipaldi (2016a).
- 3.
In this context, Petrażycki was focusing on private law, but I believe this point can be generalized to all branches of law.
- 4.
Such an attempt can be found elsewhere (Fittipaldi 2016a).
- 5.
For the sake of simplicity, in this essay I will not distinguish between external reality and subject-independent reality.
- 6.
My example.
- 7.
Cf. the following passage by Petrażycki: “I devoted more than 40 pages [in 1895, 581 ff.] to the problem of the factual—or experimental-inductive [opytno-induktivnaja]—test [proverka] of … deductive inferences [vyvody] by having recourse to various data, including statistical ones” (2010c [1913], 595).
- 8.
On Petrażycki’s definition of experiment, see 2010b [1908], § 3, 403.
- 9.
On Popper’s critical realism, cf. the now classical Popper (1935, 52) where—against logical positivists—Popper argues that even the seemingly simple statement “Here is a glass of water” is a Theorie, or a Hypothese. On the similarities between Petrażycki’s deductive-inductive methodology and general conception of the scientific knowledge, on the one hand, and Popper’s hypothetico-deductive methodology and evolutionary epistemology, on the other, see Timoshina (2012, 20–42, 165–176).
- 10.
Needless to say, introspection is perfectly compatible with realism, and even with the methodology of hard sciences, as in the final analysis hard scientists draw on their sensations (i.e., phenomena internal to the Subject) to establish whether or not an observation falsified a hypothesis. If, for example, the non-falsification of a given theory depends on the observation of steam during a certain experiment, the scientists’ agreement on the fact that during that experiment it was steam that was actually observed depends on each scientist who participated in the experiment, qua Subject, honestly reporting Her own visual sensations, which visual sensations are accessible only to each scientist solipsistically taken, that is to say—let me reiterate—qua Subject.
- 11.
I shall focus on the subject—just as Petrażycki does in this context. But what he says in this regard holds, too, for the other elements of a judgment (ėlementy suždenija—2010b [1908], 400).
- 12.
I use pipes in order to distinguish judgments from sentences possibly expressing them.
- 13.
Guastini’s naïve-realistic anti-psychological reduction of meanings to other sentences assumed to be synonymous with a first one seems to rule out the possibility of testing semantic hypotheses by means of neuroscientific techniques aimed at tracing meanings within the sender’s and/or the receiver’s brain. Further, if not guided by a conceptualization of meaning as a psychical phenomenon, it is not clear why, in order to investigate to what extent people assume two sentences to be synonymous with one another, one should make surveys rather than—say—toss coins or roll dice. It is only the hypothesis that meanings are psychical phenomena located within brains (which brains are assumed to be able to assess degrees of similarity between thoughts, i.e., meanings) that can justify the choice of surveying people to the goal of testing synonymy. Without the hypothesis of meanings as psychical phenomena the only criterion for justifying Guastini’s operationalization of meanings turns out to be Guastini’s own subjective choice.
- 14.
However, it should be underscored that in most occurrences Petrażycki uses the term realističeskij—often within inverted commas—to refer to Jhering’s conceptions, which he regarded as a wrong reduction of law to what courts do (see above in text).
- 15.
In order to avoid misunderstandings, whenever necessary I will use inverted commas to recall that I am speaking of projections.
- 16.
On the reason why I replace Petrażycki’s ssylat’sja na (“to refer to”) with this hendiadys, see Fittipaldi (2016b, 462).
- 17.
In this case we are facing a realistic representation, as distinguished from a fantastic one (e.g., my representation of Pegasus). Realistic representations are distinguished from fantastic ones depending on whether or not the Subject believes in the external existence of their objects. See Petrażycki (1939a [1925–26], 26–29).
- 18.
As for the physical facts internal to the Subject, testing the hypothesis of their existence may sometimes require modern technical devices (think of the ways for testing the hypothesis that an individual has a pancreas).
- 19.
This term is sometimes rendered in English with “conditioning fact” or “operative fact”. I prefer the German term, which I intentionally abstain from capitalizing (just as other German terms adopted by English—think of ersatz).
- 20.
In the text I am referring to Petrażycki uses his concept of position rather than the concept of judgment. Owing to space limitations, I will not discuss Petrażycki’s concept of position here.
- 21.
To be precise, Petrażycki distinguished postulative judgments into teleological and normative judgments, and further distinguished normative judgments into intuitive and positive (or dogmatic) normative judgments. On the other hand, based on his distinction between law and morality, he distinguished between legal-positive (or legal-dogmatic) judgments and moral-positive ones.
- 22.
Petrażycki uses the adjective ideal’nyj to refer to something existing within the consciousness of the Subject qua object of a representation she produces. In my interpretation, Petrażycki uses ideal’nyj and psychical as perfect synonyms.
- 23.
See below, fn. 24.
- 24.
I am referring to what Petrażycki called the theoretical sciences in a strict sense, namely, those sciences made up of judgments having as their subjects classes of phenomena rather than spatio-temporally individuated ones. In Petrażycki’s jargon, legal policy is a subjective-relational science based first and foremost on a theoretical science in a strict sense, namely, psychology.
- 25.
It is not clear whether he would have made an exception for the mathematical sciences.
- 26.
For example, he spoke of “Kontrole [d]er deductiven Schlüsse” (“test of [the] deductive conclusions”) of the policy of private law, or of “Prüfung seiner Prämissen” (“test of its premises”), as early as in (1895, 582 and 605).
- 27.
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Fittipaldi, E. (2018). On Leon Petrażycki’s Critical Realism and Legal Realism. In: Brożek, B., Stanek, J., Stelmach, J. (eds) Russian Legal Realism. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 125. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98821-4_5
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