Philosophical and Legal Foundations of the Scientific Worldview of A. L. Blok

Abstract

Introduction. Next year marks the 170th anniversary of the birth of Alexander L’vovich Blok (1852–1909), a talented scientist and statesman, professor and dean of the Law Faculty of the Imperial University of Warsaw, a philosopher, a man of “Aristotelian erudition”, and the father of the Russian poet Alexander Blok. His name is associated with the birth of the scientific school of sociological and political positivism in the Russian science of state law. However, there are no special studies devoted to the evolution of the ideas of sociological positivism in Russia. In this regard, the appeal of the work of one of the founders of this school, who brought up a whole galaxy of talented scientists (Taranovsky, F. V., Spek- torsky, E. V., Reisner, M. A.), is of undoubted scientific interest. Theoretical Basis and Methods. An attempt is made to reconstruct both the philosophical and legal foundations of the scientific worldview of A. L. Blok. When writing this work, a broad methodological base was used, characteristic of the history of the teachings on law and the state. The combination of metaphysical and dialectical approaches with the use of a methodological arsenal of socio-political and natural-legal doctrines made it possible to study and systematise the conceptual provisions of the scientific heritage of A. L. Blok. Results. The article traces the evolution of the scientist’s state-legal views in the context of the development of the science of state law in Russia. The study of the works published by A. L. Blok pays testimony to the independence of his ideas, his critical attitude to the pre- vailing Western European theories, and the originality of the methodological approaches developed by him to the study of state-legal phenomena. Discussion and Conclusion. The search and reconstruction of the main scientific work of the scientist-”Fundamental questions of politics”, on which he worked all his life, “like Plato on ‘Politics’ or Goethe on ‘Faust’, remains an unresolved task of historical and historical – legal science” [Spectorsky, E. V., 1911, p. 65], as well as the systematisation of the key ideas of the scientific school created by him.