The Science Of Right
contributor: Eric Lease Morgan (Infomotions, Inc.)
creator: Kant, Immanuel
date: 0000-00-00
extent: 303750
format: text/plain
language: en
publisher: Eris Etext Project
rights: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/
source: 4
subject: state
subject: possession
subject: will
subject: people
subject: science
subject: object
subject: principles
subject: promulgate
subject: external
subject: legislation
subject: kant
subject: immanuel
subject: western
subject: philosophy
type: text
local mirror: kant-science-146.txt
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plain html: kant-science-146.htm
sort title: Science Of Right, The
full text: 1790 THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT by Immanual Kant translated by W. Hastie INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT. GENERAL DEFINITIONS, AND DIVISIONS. A. What the Science of Right is. The Science of Right has for its object the principles of all the laws which it is possible to promulgate by external legislation. Where there is such a legislation, it becomes, in actual application to it, a system of positive right and law; and he who is versed in the knowledge of this system is called a jurist or jurisconsult (jurisconsultus). A practical jurisconsult (jurisperitus), or a professional lawyer, is one who is skilled in the knowledge of positive external laws, and who can apply them to cases that may occur in experience. Such practical knowledge of positive right, and law, may be regarded as belonging to jurisprudence (jurisprudentia) in the original sense of the term. But the theoretical knowledge of right and law in principle, as distinguished from positive laws and empirical cases, belongs to the pure science of right (jurisscientia). The science of right thus designates the philosophical and systematic knowledge of the principles of natural right. And it is from this science that the immutable principles of all positive legislation must be derived by practical jurists and lawgivers. B. What is Right? This question may be said to be about as embarrassing to the jurist as the well-known question, "What is truth?" is to the logician. It is all the more so, if, on reflection, he strives to avoid tautology in his reply and recognise the fact that a reference to what holds true merely of the laws of some one country at a particular time is not a solution of the general problem thus proposed. It is quite easy to state what may be right in particular cases (quid sit juris), as being what the laws of a certain place and of a certain time say or may have said; but it is much more difficult to determine whether what they have enacted is right in itself, and to lay down a u…