Spiritual and Idealistic Foundations of I. A. Ilyin’s Legal Doctrine

Ivan A. Ilyin is a great Russian thinker, religious philosopher, lawyer and statesman, whose views formed the basis of the ideology of modern Russia. His works contribute to the rethinking of the past and present of our state, as well as the choice of the path of its development in the future. The range of issues to which Ilyin’s work is devoted is unusually wide: from the development of Russian Civilization to the spiritual education of man. This article examines Ilyin’s views of the state and legal persuasion, based on patriotism, Christian values and the monarchical ideal of state structure, i.e. having conservative outlines. At the same time, they also contain elements of liberal thought, manifested in the recognition of the dominance of natural law over positive law and the contractual principle in the origin of the state. The purpose of this study is to reveal Ilyin’s general vision of the main legal categories: legal consciousness, law and state. For this purpose, the scientist’s works devoted to this issue are analyzed, their content is assessed, including taking into account the socio‑political situation in which they were created. At the same time, the author of the article focuses on provisions that are distinguished by their originality from the point of view of modern legal theory. As a result, it is discovered that the essence of legal consciousness, law and the state is revealed by Ilyin through the same or maximally similar concepts, which for the most part have an idealistic and spiritual‑moral content, and Ilyin’s doctrine of law and the state itself remains relevant to this day. The methodological basis of the study is a set of such methods and means of scientific knowledge as logical operations (including deduction, induction, abstraction), hermeneutics, historical and comparative analysis, reconstruction of past teachings, legal relativism and a formal‑legal approach.