Abstract

The problem of impossibility of translating descriptive sentences into ought sentences was first formulated by David Hume in his Treatise of human nature and it has been one of the most vividly discussed issue in the metaethics until today. In the first part of this paper I try to present clearly the abovementioned problem and show legal positivism as a school of thought based on the titular dichotomy. Next, I investigate how modern linguistic analysis helps to close the divide between irreconcilable words of facts and duties. My considerations in that part are grounded on the ideas of J.L. Austin, J. Searle and G.E.M. Anscombe. The achievements of these authors were originatively used by N. MacCormick in the domain of legal theory. MacCormick abandons positivistic paradigm and replaces it with the theory of law as institutional fact. At the end of this paper, I demonstrate the proximity between the idea of MacCormick and the late philosophy of L. Wittgenstein, the latter being the prolific source of considerations about the relation between language and law both for contemporary jurists and philosophers.