Methodology of the Neo-Kantian Philosophy of Law: the transition from “due” to “being”

Abstract

The article shows the influence of Kantian philosophy on jurisprudence. From the position of neo-Kantianism, law and the state are not objective “things in themselves”, but transcendental logical constructions of the cognizing subject. Law is twofold: as a subject of logic and as a social phenomenon included in social relations as their regulator. In the concept of law, rational and irrational elements are distinguished. According to neo-Kantian methodology, the state can be the subject of research both nomothetic (the state is a recurring fact) and idiographic (the state is a unique phenomenon) sciences. It is shown that in the Russian Philosophy of Law of the 19th - early 20th centuries of the neo-Kantian orientation, special attention was paid to the problems of finding a social ideal, the connectedness of the state by law, the theme of a legal state, the basis of which is a self-sufficient person. The ethical and legal basis of the neo-Kantian Philosophy of Law in Russia was Kant’s idea of individual freedom, its autonomy, of the external protection of all members of society by the state with the help of the rule of law and non-interference in the inner world of a person. In the late 19th - early 20th centuries, Kant’s philosophy was extrapolated to the conditions of the historical reality of that period in the form of requirements for the legal provision of individual rights and freedoms in a legal state.