Positivismo jurídico: uma tentativa de introduzir o método experimental de raciocínio nos assuntos morais

Abstract

This work deals with the neutrality/externality problem of the descriptive method of analytical legal positivist theories. The first chapter investigates the roots of philosophical empiricism in the Scottish philosopher David Hume, seeking its philosophical origins and foundations, which support the basic structure of analytical legal positivism. It seeks, therefore, to establish the basic premises of such philosophical current and the respective incorporations within the positivistic legal theories. The second chapter seeks to focus more specifically on the central question regarding the descriptive method. With an explanatory approach, it seeks to detail how the descriptive method was incorporated into jurisprudence by Jeremy Bentham — which was maintained by John Austin, Herbert L. Hart, and, in this decade, by Scott J. Shapiro. It is, therefore, a historical reconstruction of the descriptive method within jurisprudence and legal theory. The third chapter, in its turn, presents the main criticisms of the descriptive method, especially the criticisms directed against the (supposed) neutrality of it, and the consequent rigid distinction between fact and value. The main purpose of the work is, therefore, a general exposition of the origins of the descriptive method; its maintenance and evolution in jurisprudence; and the main criticisms. The work’s approach is the hermeneutical "method", the basis of the Hermeneutical Critique of Law, and also a bibliographical revision. As partial results, it can be said, from the philosophical referential adopted by analytical legal positivist theories, albeit unconsciously, that the characteristics of the scientist's neutrality and externality cannot be more than mere artificial constructs, insofar as the rigid distinction between fact and value has already been overcome in both theoretical and practical scopes of philosophy and law. The introduction of the experimental method of reasoning in legal theory, therefore, fails to achieve the advocated neutrality/externality.