The Contribution of the History of Concepts to the Critical Understanding of the State

Abstract

The paper develops the problems of critical understanding of the phenomenon of the state. The author comprehends the contribution of the German history of concepts (Begriffsgeschichte) and the British Conceptual History to the critical understanding of the emergence of the state as a concept and social phenomenon in Modern times. Representatives of these lines of thought trace the appearance of the English State and the French État to the 17th century, the German Staat to the second half of the 18th century. Russian followers of these traditions explore the historical and ideological context of the emergence of the state in the 15th– 18th centuries. The researchers emphasize that in Germany the concept of the state is formed two centuries later than that in France, but it immediately becomes political and subordinates the rest of the meanings of the word, creating a theoretical basis for the development of state studies and public law, while the French état and English state in the meaning of the state have long been used in relation to non-state political and even nonpolitical phenomena. An important contribution of the history of concepts was the search for the ideological and social foundations of modern state legal terms and models — state sovereignty, citizenship, legal and social state, endowed with meaning primarily in the continental tradition. The author continues the study of the problems of critical understanding of the state, which began in the article «Critical Concepts of the State and their Significance for Russian Jurisprudence: Introduction to the Problem» (Lex russica. 2020;6:122-138).