 There were theorists prior to Austin who arguably offered views similar to legal positivism or who at least foreshadowed legal positivism in some way. Among these would be Thomas Hobbes, with his amoral view of laws as the product of Leviathan (Hobbes 1996); David Hume, with his argument for separating “is” and “ought” (which has been taken by some as a sharp criticism for some forms of natural law theory, those views that purported to derive moral truths from statements about human nature, Hume 1739, Section 3.1.1, but see Chilovi and Wodak 2021, raising questions about the relevance of Hume’s views here for either natural law theory or legal positivism); and Jeremy Bentham, with his attacks on judicial lawmaking and on those commentators, like Sir William Blackstone, who justified such lawmaking with natural-law-like justifications (Bentham 1789).