This article attempts to show the tension between particularism and universalism in the theory of Friedrich Karl von Savigny. In other words, it attempts to give an account of Savigny as an author who is rifted between two different theoretical compromises. In this sense, this article starts analyzing the relation between Savigny's thought and Johann Gottfried von Herder's philosophy. The tension proposed in this article appears clearly when it is observed that Savigny rejects certain conclusions of Herder's romanticism, without abandoning his fundamental thesis. This supposes that the particularistic impulse of Savigny's theory on the origin of law mixes with his universalistic intention when he builds the idea of legal science and makes it work. Indeed, this tension can be observed in Savigny's dogmatics when he proposes a difference between patrimonial law and family law.