Competition between Methodological Approaches in the History of Political and Legal Doctrines

Abstract

The paper is devoted to various approaches to the study of political and legal doctrines. Each of them in its structure contains a methodological basis. It is the methodology of political and legal ideas that largely determines their scientific validity and practical feasibility. In this regard, methodological techniques are of great importance. The peculiarity of the history of political and legal doctrines as a scientific and educational discipline is that it not only uses certain methods of scientific cognition, like any other science, but also has a powerful methodological potential itself. Currently, we are witnessing an uncompromising war of ideologies having certain values and interests behind them. In this context, the paper reveals methodological approaches used in the cognition of the political and legal reality reflected in the ideas of thinkers of past eras and modernity. The paper does not consider general, particular and special methods of cognition. The emphasis is given to certain cognitive approaches and actions in order to analyze the content of political and legal doctrines. In this regard, the author attempts to consider history, for example, not as a science, but as a scientific method. The same applies to philosophy and sociology. This is somewhat at odds with certain «standards» regarding methodology as a set of methods and techniques for obtaining scientific knowledge. Nevertheless, in relation to the history of political and legal doctrines, such an approach is justified by virtue of the object and subject of the study. Competition between these approaches means only freedom of choice of research techniques and their ability to complement each other.