In the periods of deep qualitative transformations – being the stage of development Ukraine is now experiencing – society has a particularly growing demand for traditional and new instruments to resolve life conflicts and reconcile social environment. In the well-developed world, particularly in the countries of the European Union, the United States and Canada, one of such efficient instruments is mediation. In 2017, with the aim of implementing the experience of these countries in the national practice, necessary changes were made to procedural legislation of Ukraine, and as a consequence, a significant array of progressive world mediation practices have been acknowledged binding upon relevant national actors. However, this immediately entailed a range of worldview-related and theoretical methodological issues for professionals as well as for the general public in Ukraine. One of them was the need to clarify the legal nature of mediation, this being the factor crucial for identifying adequately the entities able to effectively implement mediation and determining the optimal procedures for it. The purpose of this article is to provide justification for the most fundamental – human-immanent legal determinants of mediation which are concretized in the following objectives of mediation: from this perspective, to reconsider the basic existential features of man and their functional role in human existence; to discover the distinction of spontaneous (unconditional) and conditional exchanges of goods and reaches between people and to demonstrate how the latter entails the need for mediation. The subject matter, goal and objective of the study defined the methodology of this article, in particular: practical philosophy and material phenomenology which are the most efficient tools for cognition of such an “invisible” phenomenon, according to M. Henri, “as the scope of inter-subjectivity”. The generally accepted list of existential features of man has been supplemented with the provision about the attribute pertainance to this list of human needs for goods and riches. The article proves that unconditional exchange of goods and riches between people inevitably transforms the excess of human autonomy from the potential to the factual state. This new quality of human autonomy excess, being realized in communicative solidarity of people, gives rise to intrapersonal and interpersonal tensions and conflicts. In turn, the conditional exchange of goods and riches between people makes such conflicts total and extremely dangerous for existence of individuals. The author gives a well-grounded conclusion that it is the latter that constitute the principal -attribute to humans – group of determinants, which determine the need for mediation as one of the efficient means to solve life conflicts by own efforts of individuals. It is proved that mediation has a dual legal nature, since it is, firstly, a product of fundamental (consumption-oriented) way of co-existence of individuals in society, and secondly, a system of interrelated legal obligations between such individuals, with the help of which a reconciled social environment is formed. Mediation may be defined as mutual legal self-defense of individuals.

List of legal documents 

Legislation 
1. Directive 2008/52/EC of the European Parliament and of The Council of 21 May 2008 on certain aspects of mediation in civil and commercial matters [2008] OJ L 136/3 (in English). 

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