Stahl, Savigny, and the Historical School

My interpretation of Stahl (which corresponds with Masur's interpretation [Masur, Gerhard. Friedrich Julius Stahl : Geschichte seines Lebens, Aufstieg und Entfaltung, 1802-1840. Berlin: Mittler, 1930]) is that Stahl's philosophy constitutes a deepening and grounding, and forms the necessary fulfillment, of Savigny's historical method.

As I mention in the "General Preface" to the Principles of Law, the interpretation of Dr. John E. Toews of the University of Washington differs. His interpretation is found in “The Immanent Genesis and Transcendent Goal of Law: Savigny, Stahl, and the Ideology of the Christian German State,” The American Journal of Comparative Law, 37, no. 2 (Winter, 1989), 139-169; idem, Becoming Historical: Cultural Reformation and Public Memory in Early Nineteenth-Century Berlin(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), ch. 5: “The Tension Between Immanent and Transcendent Subjectivity in the Historical School of Law: From Savigny to Stahl.”

Essentially, Toews sees Stahl as subverting the original positivist orientation of the Historical School by his "subordination of jurisprudence to theology" (Becoming Historical, p. 306).

Or, as Toews put it in "The Immanent Genesis": "In contrast to Savigny, especially the Savigny of 1814, therefore, Stahl envisioned the genesis of legally and politically structured historical communities not as the self-articulation of national cultural collective subjects, but as the imposition of an organized totality on the corrupted individual wills of the people.... The task of interpreting the guiding principles of national consciousness was displaced by the task of interpreting the guiding principles of divine revelation. Jurisprudence was subordinated to theology" (pp. 166, 167).

Stahl therefore, rather than furthering the project of the Historical School, diverted and corrupted it.

Personally, I believe a close reading of the Principles of Law contradicts such an interpretation.