ABSTRACT
In this chapter Mikhail Antonov analyzes the different conceptions of normative facts developed by Leon Petrażycki and Georges Gurvitch. The distinct ways these two thinkers understand normative facts reveals their disagreement concerning the sources of legal normativity and their divergent political convictions. Petrażycki’s liberal position led him to emphasize individual psychological experience, which was for him the ultimate source of normativity. By contrast, Gurvitch focused his research on collective mentality, which predisposed him to anarchism and socialism. Antonov contends that the political convictions of both thinkers influenced their methodological ideas, and vice versa. Antonov advances several arguments to substantiate this contention.
