Abstract

The question of „objectivity in the law and in legal science“ was first posed in the jurisprudence of the German-speaking countries at the end of the eighteenth century, a period marked by the supplanting, at last, of the traditional subjective concept of science through the objective concept of science as definitively established by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason. The present study takes up both Georg Friedrich Puchta and Rudolf von Jhering, the former reflecting the then-prevailing scientific paradigm set by the philosophy of German idealism, the latter, a generation later, reflecting the changes in the scientific paradigm that were drawn from new developments in natural science. Both thinkers, as the study shows, sought in their different ways to establish the possibility of objectivity in the science of law. While Puchta believed he could find scientific truth in the law itself, namely in the system of subjective legal rights, Jhering saw the guarantee of scientific objectivity solely in the method of legal science, understood as having universal validity. Thus, both Puchta and Jhering find themselves in agreement not only with the prevailing scientific views of their respective times but also with their own views of correct law.