2 - The Great Divide in Legal Discourse: Toward a Global Historical Ontology of the Concept of Positive Law

Summary

If one accepts that there is a remarkable continuity in the human propensity to formalize and categorize the world, it is necessary at the same time to note the no less obvious differences in the methods of conceiving and implementing this process of efficacious formalization, but also in the finalities associated with it. In this respect one could speak of legal revolutions just as one speaks of scientific revolutions. The idea of legal revolution suggests two things: one, substantial, is that there have been break points in how the world has been categorized in the legal sense; the other, of a more methodological nature, is that it would no doubt be useful to make good use, in the history of law, of what the philosophy and history of science and technology have continued to accumulate over several decades.