CRITICISM OF HANS KELSEN'S LEGAL POSITIVISM AND OTHER APPROACHES THAT ARE CLOSE TO HIM

in this paper we present a critique of the legal positivism of Hans Kelsen, whose work we will not take as an isolated piece of twentieth-century intellectual production. Instead, we will compare it with other approaches that are close to it. The structure of the paper follows the steps towards a greater understanding of Kelsen's contribution and at the same time towards a critique of it from our perspective, which is clearly favourable to natural law. The last step, then, serves as a conclusion. The path is as follows: 1) Kelsen as a theorist of law contrary to natural law; 2) reduction of the iuspositivist theory (including in its Kelse-nian version) to a theory of power; 3) examination of the antecedents of Kelsenian iuspositivism. ) Examination of the beginnings of philosophical positivism (Saint-Simon and Comte), 3.2.) Examination of the three national traditions of positivism in the nineteenth century (French, English, German), 3.3. ) Study of Kelsenian legal positivism proper, 3.4.) Kelsen and Austin: outline of a comparison between the two approaches; 3.5.) Study of other intellectual roots of Kelsen's positivism. ) The Constitution as a problem and the recursivity of systems of norms. Finally, after all this, section 5) Conclusion: the crisis of the Kelsenian approach and outline of an iusnaturalist critique. The division of the sections follows a "path" which leads us to these critical conclusions.