Moral Foundations of Legal Communication

Abstract

The article is founded on the position that social communication as an evolutionary option for the development of communication of all living beings must also include legal communication. In this existential context, legal communication is not reduced only to the transfer of symbolic (textual) information determining the behavior of subjects of law. It is also considered as a vital option for adapting to the environment, which allows both individuals and society to survive, develop and self-realize. Legal communication involves not just cooperation and interaction between legal subjects, but also the observance of the necessary conditions for the implicit and explicit goals of legal communication to be achieved and realized. Implicit (universal, transcendental, evolutionarily necessary) goals are reflected at the sociobiological level in the reciprocal altruism (ego-altruism) of communicants, at the philosophical (rational) level — in the principle of mutual legal and moral recognition, at the religious level — in the commandment “love your neighbor as yourself.” The authors reveal the connection between these concepts and the concept of communication by J. Habermas and the principle of mutual recognition by A. Honneth, on the one hand, and the idea of intuitive law by L.I. Petrażycki and the ideal of “free all-unity” by P.I. Novgorodtsev, on the other hand. It is shown that the findings of these scholars lie at the heart of the communicative theory of law and are supported by neuroscience data. According to the position put forward in this research, the rejection of mutual recognition inevitably entails the assertion of parochial altruism, the ideology of tribalism, the ideological justification of authoritarianism, violence as a universal political method, the neglect of human rights and, as a result, the deformation and destruction of legal communication.