Dialectics in fundamental jurisprudence: ancient approaches and modern trends

The exact methodology of research is crucial for a unified terminological, formal and semantic understanding of the basic phenomena of law. Dialectics retains importance in the formation of explanatory strategies of complex systems that combine contradictory legal values, principles, and goals. The main purpose of the work is to find relevant points of application of the dialectical method in fundamental jurisprudence. For this purpose, the essential features and the concept of dialectics are consistently considered; the history of its origin and development; possible use in modern legal science of approaches formed in Antiquity. The work uses systematic, normative-value, historical-legal, comparative-legal, theoretical-prognostic structural-functional and dialectical methods. The author explores the heuristic potential of dialectical laws, categories and principles to clarify the ontological status of elements of legal reality. The transformation of approaches to the categorical pair “cause – effect” is noted in the light of the achievements of analytical philosophy, including through the establishment of the property of supervenience. Particular attention is paid to the intersection of holistic ancient methodology and modern approaches in dialectics. Methodological holism corresponds to the principle of the material unity of the world, which is realized in the objective existence (not necessarily in the sense of “existere”, but in the sense of “est”) of a set of elements of legal reality. Holism and dialectics exclude the reduction of the complexity of legal problems to the level of analysis of a particular case without taking into account its relationship with other elements of the whole. Accordingly, both methodologies assume cognitive strategies with a holistic approach to the problem, rejecting its narrowly sectoral solution.