Discussion On The Universal Dimension Of Savigny's Historical Jurisprudence

Savigny was a great German jurist in the 19th century. As one of the representative of historical school, he put the famous theory which views law as a reflection of national spirit. When this theory was put, culture nationalism was prevailing in German, also the national liberation movement. So, many scholars consider Savigny as a culture nationalist who advocate national jurisprudence. However, there is a doubt in this popular view. As all known, Savigny paid no attention to the German customary law which really come from the life of German. By contrary, ancient roman became the center of Savigny's academic research. There are many explanations for Savigny's abnormal attitude, one of which attributes this to the mysterious link between Germany and Holy Roman Empire. Following this line of thought, by inspecting the history of European historical discourse, we know the political mean of the position which was possessed by Rome in European history; we also know the deformation of historical discourse in the end of 18th century or the beginning of 19th century and the inherent meaning of this deformation. The reason why Savigny only did research in roman is that Rome was a country who had universality and the predecessor of Germany just was Holy Roman Empire. So, Savigny's true purpose was to make German to be the only successor of the Great Rome. There are no fundamental difference between Savigny and Hegel because they have the same target----the brilliant of German. It is in this sense there are no fundamental difference between Savigny's historical jurisprudence and natural law theory. Both of them pursue those universal things.