ABSTRACT
The deconstruction of political theology the expansion and enhancement of Feuerbach's critique of the supernatural concept of God to encompass the supra-legal concept of the State is the fundamental premise for a pure theory of law predicated upon the identification of the State with the legal order. An undue extension of this framework led Kelsen, in his analysis of the sociology of law by Max Weber, to formulate the dry statement that sociology had ultimately nothing to add to what the normative theory of law had already demonstrated. It has been noted that the relationship between Kelsen and Weber has never been one of mutual recognition. Hence, for Kelsen, compared to his predecessors, Weber alone avoids the risk of 'substantialising' the State, through hypostasization, but he also oscillates, in many historical-juridical reconstructions, between a formal level and a material level of analysis, sacrificing his own work of conceptualization 'to the linguistic usage of everyday life'.
