Scienze sociali e giuridiche nella Francia tra Otto e Novecento: le “affinità elettive” delle teorie. Note sul positivismo sociologico di Léon Duguit

This article aims to reconstruct the cultural climate of the crisis fin de siècle in Europe and, above all, in France. The crisis of the foundations of knowledge and the Enlightment legacy coincided with the destabilization of the Law theory and the Jacobin idea of the State. Léon Duguit was, in that context, one of the main actors of the change of paradigm in Law philosophy, tring to hybridize State theory with rising social sciences. The article is intended to highlight the hybridization between social theory and legal doctrine in French Troisième République, and the role of Durkheimian sociology in that process of intellectual contamination. In particular, the article illustrates the sociological positivism of Léon Duguit, in relationship with Durkheim’s social thought and opus, and his revolutionary approach to rethinking of State model, sovereignty, “socialism” and individual in modern Law theory according the category of social solidarity and social interdependence. The article also delves into Duguit’s functionalist reflection on the groupement professionels and the mouvement social of intermediate bodies as orderly responses to the problems of the emerging industrial and labour society. An elaboration precisely comparable, in some respects, to that of a «positivist sociologist». Keywords: Sociological positivism, Law theory, Social sciences