World History of Law and Psychological Stages
World History of Law and Psychological Stages

Summary/Abstract: The article analyses ancient or archaic systems of law and jurisprudence, feud and vendetta, the judicial systems of evidence such as judicial combats, oaths, ordeals, and torture, the objective responsibility in form of trials against animals and corpses, collective punishment and ignorance of intention, and the brutal-sadistic patterns of the criminal law. These structures pervaded law and jurisprudence right across continents and times, being replaced by rational and humane systems only in consequence of higher stages of civilization. The discipline history itself has not the means to explain both the omnipresence of these archaic patterns in the premodern world and the emergence of the rational systems in recent centuries. Developmental psychology can evidence that these ancient or archaic patterns are inevitable manifestations of the preoperational stage, while the civilized patterns emerge from the adolescent stage of formal operations. Stage theory, relying on developmental psychology, is crucial to the explanation of the world history of culture, sciences, politics, law, morals, arts, and religion. It is advancement of the human being itself that has caused this historical transformation. Stage theory can describe both the advancement of the human being and that of culture, too. The history of law exemplifies this idea perfectly.

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