Between these two theories of law, legal positivism is the more persuasive legal theory for many people. As critical theorists frequently argue, there is no "God's eye view" from which society can ascertain any moral truths, such as those necessary to ground an ahistorical view of morality. Simply, there is nothing to see "correctly"; there are only shifting webs of contingency. This position does not make critical theorists moral sceptics, at least insofar as that term connotes a negative or irrational quality. As discussed below, questions of morality are extremely important in thinking about law, but they are important in ways that are different than in an essentialist search for moral certainty, understanding, or philosophical clarity. Notions of certainty, understanding, and clarity are important ends for scientific research, but they are less useful or attainable in the pragmatic legal criticism advocated here. Similar to Vaclav Havel's sense of politics in The Art of the Possible (1997), my sense of legal criticism derives:

"From a strong and utterly personal sense of responsibility for the world, a politics deriving from the awareness that none of us – as an individual – can save the world as a whole, but that each of us must behave as though it were in his power to do so."