ДЕЯКІ ЕВРИСТИЧНІ МОЖЛИВОСТІ АНТРОПОЛОГО-БІОЛОГІЗАТОРСЬКОГО ПІДХОДУ У ЗАГАЛЬНІЙ ТЕОРІЇ ТА ФІЛОСОФІЇ ДЕРЖАВИ І ПРАВА

Abstract

The idea of the possibilities of expanding the methodological tools of legal sciences with the application of а biology-driven anthropological approach, in particular, to cognize the genesis of the state and a created (sanctioned) positive law using the conclusions of evolutionary biology, ethology, sociology, sociobiology, psychology, the biological direction in philosophical anthropology, etc., is presented in the article. Certain heuristic possibilities of this methodological approach in jurisprudence are shown by the example of the concept of “the war of all against all” (T. Hobbes) as the natural state of people in the pre-state society. Examining the reasons declared by this philosopher for the emergence of such a war (natural equality of people, fear, and desire for power), the authors identify certain links between the biologically determined attitude of humans to self-preservation, the emergence of the state and establishing legal norms. The evolutionary theory of human origins helps to substantiate the natural tendency of man to aggression, and thus – to verify the hypothesis of a constant “war” between people. Social hierarchies, acting as a condition for establishing and maintaining public order, are built in this struggle. The construction of such hierarchies (inequalities) is one of the functions of aggression and results in the formation of the state as an organization secured by political power. Norms created or sanctioned by the state replace the natural equality of members of society as one of the causes of “the war of all against all” with formal, “legalized”, political equality. The latter performs a kind of the compensatory function for people: in a state of their actual inequality, it replaces the part of human nature “damaged” by the weakening of aggression. Fear, like aggression, is a response to a threat to life, but in biology terms fear provides a more reliable self-preservation. Social institutions, in particular, the state and positive law, contribute to overcoming human aggression and fear of external threats. Designed to stop (in fact, weaken) “the war of all against all”, the state takes measures to ensure peace and protect people in order to weaken the natural desire of some to dominate others. By legal norms, the state forms a person’s sense of protection from the threats, thus suppressing the instinct of self-preservation which is based on aggression and fear, determines, in particular, the desire for power and is destructive for establishing and maintaining social ties between naturally equal people. On the one hand, the state weakens the influence of the human installation on self-preservation by using positive law, but on the other hand, if you will, it fills the “insufficiency” of the “first” (biological) human nature for this self-preservation. As a result of such “filling”, being part of the “second” human nature (culture), the state and positive law perform the function of adaptation of each person to the conditions of his/her existence.