The problem of optimal selection of methods for studying everyday legal awareness in the Russian folk tales

Abstract

This article is dedicated to problem of optimal selection of methods for studying everyday legal awareness in the Russian folk tales. Attention is turned to the complexity of such choice due to intricacy of the empirical base. The article provides an overview of the study of Russian folk tales by the representatives of various sciences: philology, folklore studies, philosophy, culturology, and psychology. The author believes that the methods of analysis (criticism) of the written sources, generalization, comparison, and specific historical methods are optimal on the empirical stage of research. On the theoretical stage, these are the methods of abstraction, analysis, system-structural method, induction, deduction, sociocultural approach. Hermeneutical and phenomenological methods rather carry significant risks. The author demonstrates the advantages of “morphological analysis” of tales proposed by V. Y. Propp. The author outlines the result of studying the legal phenomena in the Russian folk tales, namely acquisition of objective, reliable and scientifically proven knowledge on the system of natural correlation between the reflection and translation of legal ideas of the early period in the Russian tales, as well as on the inverse determining links between legal ideas of the early period and their reflection in folklore. The article provides the original definition of legal archetype as an element of the collective unconscious, which represents a prototype of the ideas on justice, norm and extent, reward, freedom, property, essence of agreement and its force, power, and judgment. The conclusion is made that the plotline of the Russian folk tales reflect the process of establishment of legal awareness based on individualization of self-consciousness of a person. At the same time, the sociocultural approach towards studying the phenomenon of tales is considered central, since the described in Russian folk tales sociocultural reality is the determinant of the development of law in the objective sense.