Post-postmodernism and Current Trends in the Development of Legal Philosophy: The End of the Postmodern Paradigm or a New Beginning?

Abstract

The article deals with the postmodern problematization of the possibility of a certain value scale, which, in turn, makes it possible the qualification of human acts and the subject’s responsibility for the committed acts. Based on the analysis of the state of modern culture, the prospects of the postmodern paradigm and the corresponding trends in the development of the philosophy of law are outlined. In the first part of the article, a crisis of the basic postulates of postmodern culture is ascertained. It manifests itself in such conditions as deontologization of cultural meanings (generated by the idea of narrativeness) and axiological acentrism (the lack of hierarchical structure of the cultural environment assessments and values). In philosophical postmodernism, the latter is expressed by the presumption of «sunset of metanarratives». The consequence was the destruction of subjectivity and ethics in its traditional sense, including the idea of a person’s legal responsibility for committed acts. The second part of the article discusses the problem of the possibility of law in the context of various projects for the transformation of postmodern discourse in the framework of the general program of «resurrecting the subject», that is, the creation of a new anthropology as an opportunity for moral and legal obligation: an imprinting project, a neoclassicism project, and a communication project. In their unity, the indicated strategies for overcoming the «crisis of identification» set the new stage of the evolution of postmodern philosophy – post-postmodernism – and open up new possibilities for the philosophy of law.