The denial of natural law theory, in favour of the down-to-earth view that laws are made and enforced by human beings. In the formulation of John Austin, law is the ‘command of the sovereign’, where the sovereign refers not necessarily to a single person, but to whichever body or combination of bodies has the power to make and enforce directives, and from which there is no further channel of appeal (a sovereign body may also delegate to subsidiary bodies the power to issue commands in the form of more local laws and ordinances, but it retains overall authority). Sovereignty is a status accorded to someone or some body by common consent or convention.

It was influentially objected by Hart that many laws are not commands, but devices for enabling such things as the making of contracts or the transmission of property. However Austin’s formula can well embrace such laws, since they in effect command the officers of the law to recognize the possession of assets or credits, debts, or obligations if, but only if, the conditions laid down in the laws telling how to confirm or transmit these things have been satisfied. Another worry of Hart’s was that Austin’s formula allows the arbitrary commands of a despot or gangster to count as law, to which the reply may reasonably be made that if the gangster or his council command the allegiance of a group, and a monopoly of coercive power within a territory, then it is not an objection to positivism, but a plausible and welcome consequence of it, that his word is indeed law. It may be bad law, but positivism is perfectly hospitable to the distinction between law as it is, and law as it ought to be. See also Bentham; law, philosophy of; rule of law.

The philosophy of Comte, holding that the highest or only form of knowledge is the description of sensory phenomena. Comte held that there were three stages of human belief: the theological, the metaphysical, and finally the positive, so-called because it confined itself to what is positively given, avoiding all speculation. Comte’s position is a version of traditional empiricism, without the tendencies to idealism or scepticism that the position attracts. In his own writings the belief is associated with optimism about the scope of science and the benefits of a truly scientific sociology. In the 19th century, positivism also became associated with evolutionary theory, and any resolutely naturalistic treatment of human affairs. Its descendants include the philosophy of Mach, and logical positivism. For legal positivism see law, philosophy of.