Human and the State before the Alternative Kantian or Hegelian Idea of Law

• Main Authors: S. Ye. Yachin, I. V. Kruglova
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ассоциация независимых экспертов «Центр изучения кризисного общества» (in English: Association for independent experts “Center for Crisis Society Studies”) 2020-10-01
• Series: Контуры глобальных трансформаций: политика, экономика, право
• Subjects: political and legal institutions; the state; liberalism; civilism; the idea of freedom; property; community
• Online Access: https://www.ogt-journal.com/jour/article/view/676

The political and legal institutions of the modern Western world received their justification and justification in the idea of law, which is embedded in the philosophical systems of Kant and Hegel. Both of these thinkers are unanimous in that freedom is the regulatory principle of law, but it is interpreted in significantly different ways.  In the Kantian version, freedom is the basis of the individual’s rights, which is reflected in the legal system of Western societies, in the theory of “natural rights” and in the political principles of liberalism. In the Hegelian system, freedom is predominantly a public domain, personified by the state in its specific forms of realization of  the common good. It is Hegel who gives the systemic justification of the state-centric model of society. The Western world went mainly along the path of implementing the Kantian idea of law, during which it achieved  high perfection in regulating civil relations. At the same time, this model encountered fundamental difficulties in regulating the relations of social (religious, ethnic and other) communities and groups, including the relations of nation states. The Hegelian philosophy of law was to a large extent perceived by Russian legal theorists as corresponding to the political traditions of imperial Russia. However, the problem with this model is that, in its apology of centralization, it creates bureaucratization of state life and eliminates developed forms of self- government. The political history of Russia is indicative of the fact that in it the clash of the Kantian, in essence, idea of sovereign human rights and the Hegelian idea of the sovereign rights of the state gave rise to specific political and legal (constitutional) insolubility. In theoretical and methodological terms, the way out is the need to establish a mediating link between the private and the universal, between man and the state. It is this link that sees the idea of civil (civilian) property, which is justified by the theory of civilism.