The Eternal and Temporal in Law

Barna Horváth’s synoptic legal theory is perhaps the most authentic and controversial achievement of twentieth century in Hungarian legal philosophy. He builds his sociology of law in its individual aspects by combining the epistemological-methodological tenets of the neo-Kantian paradigm dominant on the continent of the period with the pragmatic empirical aspect of the Anglo-Saxon legal culture. The synoptic filling of the irrational hiatus between fact (Sein) and value (Sollen), necessity and freedom, the society as such, its underlying objectifications (economy, struggle, power, knowledge, procedure and law itself: from the act of law through legislation and law application to jurisprudence) paradoxically cannot but be seen by the doers and the observers. „What then is ouvre a sociology (of law), in what sense?” – in our study we seek to answer this question.