Fuller’s Clock: A Case for Legal Non-Positivism in Artefactual Theory of Law1

Abstract

AbstractThis article covers the traditional problems of the philosophy of law: the controversies between realism and normativism, on the one hand, and positivism and non-positivism, on the other. The author, adopting the ontological perspective of the artefactual theory of law, attempts to attain two research aims. First, he argues that artefactual theory of law paves the way towards a moderate position overcoming realism-normativism duality. Second, he advocates the thesis that the supposedly ontological difference between positivist and non-positivist views might be dispelled and described as merely conceptual. Therefore, the opposite points of view could be considered as metaphysically equivalent ways of grasping the same social reality. According to the crucial premise of the argument law is a meliorative thick concept. The essay was inspired by an analogy between the philosophy of law and the philosophy of science first discussed by Lon L. Fuller.