China Social Science Review

No.1, 2024

 

Marx’s Transcendence of Natural Jurisprudence—And a Review of Hans Kelsen’s Misreading of Marx’s Philosophy of Law

(Abstract)

 

Liu Enzhi

 

Natural jurisprudence is the main vein of Western philosophy of law, and many foreign scholars also classify Marx’s philosophy of law under the natural law school when they examine it. But the fact is that Marx’s philosophy of law differs fundamentally from natural jurisprudence in every theoretical respect. On the one hand, natural law as a presupposed ideal is the concrete expression of philosophical conceptualism in the political-legal sphere. In contrast, Marx deconstructed the philosophical ontology of natural law in terms of sensuous material productive activity, liberating law from the abstract domination of the idea of justice and ultimately grounding it in practical social relations. On the other hand, the dual structure of natural law and positive law is a typical metaphysics of law; on the contrary, Marx discovered the essential content of law in the world of sensibility, namely, the class interest, and finally transcended natural jurisprudence with the “non-metaphysics” of law.