The Intuitive Positive Law of Georges Gurvitch and the Uselessness of the Notion of Natural Law Thinking About How to Solve the Antinomic Challenge of Law

The basis of the idea of natural law, whether classical or modern, is the existence of a superior norm for law, and this norm is the criterion for judging the validity and correctness or incorrectness of the positive law. It is possible to abandon, as the historical school did, the antinomic approach to law, and replace natural law with positivism and positive law; and thus overcome as much of the pre-eminence of metaphysics over reality as of the anxiety of the interplay of value and reality. Gurvitch does not accept the antinomic approach to law and his concern is the interaction of value and reality. Therefore, he resorts to empirical intuition as the basis for the validity of the law. According to him, this intuition is objective so that he does not fall, like Petrazicky, into the trap of individual intuition; and its pluralism is not borderless. Gurvitch tries to base positive law on empirical intuition which does not necessarily have authority over formal positive law because it is not supposed to be a criterion for evaluating the validity of this positive Law. If so, then Gurvitch's conception of value must be seen as a rejection of the idea of natural law. And yet, the fact is that Gurvitch could not hide his interest in the correctness. He could not pass from correctness and as a result, his claim to deny natural law must be reduced to a terminological claim.