Abstract

This essay deals with the legal realism of Axel Hägerström, a Swedish legal philosopher who has been studied in detail by Silvana Castignone. Hägerström’s choice to precede his legal philosophical analyzes with a preliminary consideration of the concept of reality deserves attention. Although the author supports his aim of clearly distinguishing legal realism from the current philosophers of legal positivism, he considers Hägerström’s orientation towards a strict separation between the knowing subject and reality to be highly problematic, especially when it comes to the cognition of social facts.