Romantic Origins Of The Historical School Of Law

Between the late18th century and the early19th century, an ideological trend named as romanticism was sweeping across the whole Europe. This romantic movement was later on highly spoken of by Isaiah Berlin as the most significant turning spot in Western political thought. Almost at the same time in Germany----the place where romanticism first germinated, the Historical School of Law replaced the Classical Natural Law School and became a rising star shining high above for the remaining19th century. The question is, is there any connection between the two? If the answer is yes, then where exactly does the connection lie? And what kind of inspirations could the connection between the two offer us with? These are the three questions this article means to answer.The article first distinguished between the two different kinds of contexts of using the word romanticism, and then by way of analyzing the definition and main characteristics of romanticism came to draw a conclusion that romanticism as in the specific historical event refers to the drastic reformation in arts and morality that first came into being in18th century Germany and later gradually spread out to the whole Europe. This reformation had two main characteristics: First, it emphasized the importance of free will and denied the nature of things. Second, it tried to break the concept that things do enjoy a solid structure. After that, the article went on to compare the main theories of Savigny, the representative of the Historical School of Law, and those of romanticism, then reached the conclusion that the Historical School of Law could be looked upon as the influence of romanticism in the field of law. The connection between these two was reflected in the two similarities that shared both by romanticism and by Historical School of Law: the first was that they both showed a rebellion against traditions, the second was that both of them valued the differences between things other than their similarities. At last, starting out from all that stated above, the article meant to say that the possible inspirations Historical School of Law and its romantic origins could offer us with mainly lies in the plurality of law, more specifically, in the plurality of values and the plurality of systems.