Transformation of Foundations of Legal Thinking in Russian Jurisprudence in the Second Half of 20th and the Beginning of 21st Centuries

Abstract

The article highlights the basic lines due to which Soviet jurisprudence is becoming less Marxist and more neo-Kantian. This is the logic and methodology of the science, ontology and axiology. The very structure of theoretical knowledge — ontology, epistemology (logic + methodology), axiology — is accidental for both authentic Marxism and for later developed “Leninism.” The logic appeared the first in this sequence, inevitably followed by neokantian metaphysics that, however, remains behind the scenes of teaching and does not find its implementation in scientific research.

During the Thaw, the Moscow Methodological Circle rehabilitated neo-Kantians idea of methodology as a special section of the theory of cognition. A slightly different fate befell the ontology of law that for seven decades had been evolving from the denial of law (bourgeois law under socialism) and socialist law thinking (law as a social order, exchange attitude and a set of orders of government) to a “broad” or “liberal” approach to law (the distinction between law and the law act). Regardless of logic, methodology and ontology, neo-Kantianism manifests itself in ethics, which is terminologically fixed even in the term “axiology.”