The Russian Neo-Kantian philosophy of law: a unique development of Kant's ideas or a dead-end project?

Abstract

The article examines the reception of neo-Kantian philosophy of law in pre-revolutionary Russia in order to show the significance of neo-Kantianism for the modern stage of development of philosophy of law. The article focuses on the problem of the legal ideal, which is particularly relevant now, when the state is attempting to legally protect traditional moral values and develop a consolidating national identity. It is noted that in the early twentieth century Russian jurisprudence was strongly influenced by the ideas of Rudolf Stammler, which led to the “revival” of the concept of natural law, while in the West it happened later, after the Second World War, and resulted from the influence of the ideas of another neo-Kantian thinker, Gustav Radbruch. The author of the article comes to the conclusion that a number of key provisions of the neo-Kantian philosophy of law, especially with regard to the problem of legal ideal, retain their persuasiveness in our time. Firstly, it is the idea of distinguishing between the real and the proper, secondly, the understanding of the legal ideal as a regulative idea, i.e. as a formal principle by means of which all the existing legal norms are evaluated, and, thirdly, some left-liberal ideas. Thus, the author claims, the teachings of Russian neo-Kantianism can be regarded as an independent milestone in the history of political and legal thought – a milestone on which we can now rely without mindlessly opposing ourselves to the West.