N.A. Zaozersky on the Spiritual Side of Law

Purpose. The spiritual and moral crisis of our time predetermines the need to protect traditional spiritual and moral guidelines, which has become the most important strategic task of state development. Due to their deep content, these guidelines are difficult to formalize and apply. As a result, scientific research into ideas about the presence in law of not only formal requirements, but and spiritual basis. Original, but currently unstudied, such ideas belong to the professor of the Moscow Theological Academy Nikolai Aleksandrovich Zaozersky (1851–1919), whose works concerning the spiritual side of law are the subject of this article. Methodology: dialectics, hermeneutics, philosophical conceptology, historical method. Results: the author›s atypical features of law are highlighted, such as the spiritual relationship between personality and law, the spiritual significance of the legal guarantee of freedom, the spiritual transformation of formal duties into a sense of duty. It has been established that the central ideas of the concept of the spiritual side of law are achieving a balance between duty and demand (private interests must correspond to public interests) and maintaining moral order (encouraging social mutual assistance). A conclusion is made about the special role of the church in instilling state and legal respect. The scientific and practical significance. The article is aimed at conceptualizing the historical and legal views of N.A. Zaozersky in the context of modern tasks of preserving and strengthening traditional Russian spiritual and moral values. This approach is aimed at expanding scientific and practical ideas about the development of legal regulation.