DOI

The liberal idea and the sequent idea of legal justice were stated and introduced largely owing to the name of Aleksandr Kunitsyn, who was an advocate of natural law. According to Kunitsyn, legal justice is determined by the presence or absence of such essential legal principles as the recognition of the inherent value of a human person and the priority of human liberty, rights, and responsibilities over any other values. Kunitsyn related liberty, justice, and subjective rights with legal obligations and interaction based on equality. These ideas have been more or less accepted by representatives of the latest Russian "revived" natural law. The combination of the liberal and traditional (in relation to power) intentions makes it possible to refer Kunitsyn's law conceptions to the conservative/mild/reasonable natural law. Kunitsyn was not the creator of a new law theory. He tried to impart ideas which could release people from oppression and alter the political form of state in Russia. He was inspired by the ideas of liberty and fight against tyranny. He inspired the others with these ideas. According to Kunitsyn, the doctrine of law or legal philosophy formulates laws derived from the nature of the human mind. Evidently, such conclusions have to be based on the methodology unknown in the times of Kunitsyn. However, the human-centric concept itself preserves its scientific and philosophic significance nowadays with regard for the necessity of its modern interpretation. According to the post-classical interpretation, both human liberty (self-ownership) and the freedom of human will are still a condition of normal interaction and realization of human potential by everyone. Equality in endowing with liberty and justice are important as well. They are considered as cooperation that determines our solidarity through joint exercising of mutual rights and responsibilities. However, the human-centric legal philosophy in Russia has had its critics from the times of Kunitsyn till the current time of post-perestroika. The ideas of liberty, human rights, respect for human dignity, opposition to tyranny and autonomous power of the rulers have never been hardwired in the legal consciousness of the people. The main task of today's Russian legal philosophy is to acknowledge and affirm the ideas of human liberty and dignity in public legal consciousness as it is impossible to talk about legal justice itself without these principles.
Translated title of the contributionALEKSANDR KUNITSYN AND THE ISSUES OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE RUSSIAN IDEA OF LEGAL JUSTICE
Original languageRussian
Pages (from-to)99-106
Number of pages7
JournalВЕСТНИК ТОМСКОГО ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОГО УНИВЕРСИТЕТА. ФИЛОСОФИЯ. СОЦИОЛОГИЯ. ПОЛИТОЛОГИЯ
Issue number56
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 2020

    Research areas

  • ALEKSANDR KUNITSYN, natural law, IDEA OF LEGAL JUSTICE, Russian philosophy of law

    Scopus subject areas

  • Social Sciences(all)

ID: 62376903