ABSTRACT
In this chapter Piotr Szymaniec presents Petrażycki’s views on religion against the background of the religious research of his time and highlights Petrażycki’s original contributions to that research. Szymaniec shows that Petrażycki’s considerations on religion are closely connected to his conception of law. He used religion to reject the legal-positivist view that associated law with the state. In this chapter, Szymaniec also discusses Petrażycki’s treatment of such para-religious elements in legal thinking as “general will,” “reason,” and the “national spirit.” Moreover, Petrażycki used his own conceptualization of law to demonstrate that law plays a significant role in religion, as it is legal consciousness that endows certain supernatural beings with rights and duties through which they exert authority over humans. According to Szymaniec, this latter observation is Petrażycki’s original contribution to the sociology of religion in general.
