The article outlines the general perspectives and some areas of application of hermeneutic optics to understand the problem of natural law. The latter is considered as a problem of the ratio of factuality and normativity in the structure of human experience.

Hermeneutic comprehension of the natural law problem occurs in three steps. First, the author reconstructs the theory of hermeneutic experience as an experience of understanding oneself, others and the world. Understanding is thought of as a human’s mode of being in the world, which is possible due to hermeneutic openness and the initial recognition of the Other.

The second part of the article aims to identify the legal dimension inherent in the structure of hermeneutic experience. It is localized in the constant tension between the mutual recognition, which makes the experience of meaning possible, and the inevitable risk of non-recognition.

 Finally, the connection between the structure of hermeneutic experience and the legal institutions that confirm mutual public recognition between people is clarified. In particular, the article shows that human dignity is neither an artificial construction that humanity was forced to resort to for self-preservation, nor an empty political declaration. Instead, it is the fundamental importance of other people, due to the peculiarity of our experience as an experience of understanding, possible only in dialogue.

Through the discovery of the legal dimension of human experience as an experience of meaning, the author outlines the contours of the hermeneutic theory of natural law as an ontological theory that sees the foundations of law in the ‘nature of things’. Such a theory is an alternative, on the one hand, to the relativism of legal positivism and, on the other, to the dogmatism of deontological theories of natural law.

Bibliography

Authored books

1. Gündogdu А, Rightlessness in an Age of Rights (Oxford University Press 2015) (in English).

2. Habermas J, Die Zukunft der menschlichen Natur. Auf dem Weg zu einer liberalen Eugenik? (Suhrkamp Verlag 2001) (in German).

3. Lebech M, On the Problem of Human Dignity. A Hermeneutical and Phenomenological Investigation (Königshausen & Neumann 2009) (in English).

4. Mootz F J III, Law, Hermeneutics and Rhetoric (Ashgate 2010) (in English).

5. Sherwin R K, When Law Goes Pop: The Vanishing Line Between Law and Popular Culture (The University of Chicago Press 2000) (in English).

6. Weinreb L L, Natural Law and Justice (Harvard University Press 1987) (in English).

7. Maksymov S, Pravovaja real’nost’: opyt filosofskogo osmyslenija (Pravo 2002) (in Russian).

8. Stovba О, Pravo i chas (Tim Pablish Hrup 2016) (in Ukrainian).

Edited and translated books

9. Arendt H, ‘Understanding and Politics (The Difficulties of Understanding)’ in Kohn J (ed), Hannah Arendt: Essays in Understanding, 1930–1954 (Harcourt, Brace 1994) 307–27 (in English).

10. Cosmin S C, ‘Law’s Disappearance. The State of Exception and the Destruction of Experience’ in Glanert S and Girard F (eds), Law’s Hermeneutics: Other Investigations (Routledge 2017) 186–203 (in English).

11. Grodnin J, ‘Gadamer’s Interest for Legal Hermeneutics’ in Glanert S and Girard F (eds), Law’s Hermeneutics: Other Investigations (Routledge 2018) 48–62 (in English).

12. Loidolt S, ‘Experience and Normativity: The Phenomenological Approach’ in Cimino A and Leijenhorst C (eds), Phenomenology and Experience: New Perspectives (Brill, Studies in Contemporary Phenomenology 2019) 150–65 (in English).

13. Loidolt S, ‘Order, Experience, and Critique. The Phenomenological Method in Political and Legal Theory’ in Crowell S G and Fernandez A (eds), The Phenomenological Method Today (A Special Issue of Continental Philosophy Review 2020) 10 (in English).

14. Viola F, ‘Introduction: Natural Law Theories in the 20th Century’ in Pattaro E and Roversi C (eds), A Treatise of Legal Philosophy and General Jurisprudence, volume 12 Legal Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: The Civil Law World, Tome 2: Main Orientations and Topics, сh 1 (Springer Netherlands 2016) 1065–153. DOI: 10.1007/97894-007-1479-3 (in English).

15. Weinreb L L, ‘Natural Law and Rights’ in George R P (ed), Natural Law Theory: Contemporary Essays (Clarendon Press 1992) 278–308 (in English).

16. Agamben G, Homo sacer. Suverennaja vlast’ i golaja zhizn’ (Novikov D trans, Evropa 2011) (in Russian). 17. Aristotle, ‘Nikomahova jetika’ in Collected Works, vol 4 (Dovatur A and Kessidi F trans, Mysl’ 1983) 53–293 (in Russian).

18. Gadamer H-G, Istyna i metod, vol 1 (Mokrovolskyi О trans, Yunivers 2000) (in Ukrainian).

19. Habermas J, Postmetafizychne myslennia (Duh i Litera 2011) (in Ukrainian).

20. Heidegger M, Bytie i vremja (Bibihin V trans, Nauka 2006) (in Russian).

21. Heidegger M, Fenomenologicheskie interpretaczii Aristotelya (Ekspozicziya germenevticheskoj situaczii) (Artemenko N trans, ICz ‘Gumanitarnaya akademiya’ 2012) (in Russian).

22. Hénaff M, Dar filosofov. Pereosmyslenie vzaimnosti (Vdovina I and Vdovina G and Komissarova L trans, Izdatel’stvo gumanitarnoj literatury 2015) (in Russian).

23. Hénaff M, Tsina istyny: dar, hroshi, filosofiia (Panych О trans, Dukh i Litera 2019) (in Ukrainian). 24. Merleau-Ponty M, ‘Somnenija Sezanna’ in (Post)fenomenologija: novaja fenomenologija vo Francii i za ee predelami (S Sholohova and A Jampol’skaja comp, Akademicheskij proekt 2017) 102–18 (in Russian).

25. Mauss M, ‘Ocherk o dare. Forma i osnovanie obmena v arhaicheskih obshhestvah’ in Obshhestva. Obmen. Lichnost’: Trudy po social’noj antropologii (Vostochnaja literatura, RAN 1996) 83–222 (in Russian).

26. Ricoeur P, Put’ priznanija. Tri ocherka (Blauberg I and Vdovina I trans, Rossijskaja politicheskaja jenciklopedija 2010) (in Russian).

27. Ricoeur P, Spravedlivoe (Skuratov B trans, Gnozis, Logos 2005) (in Russian).

Journal articles

28. Lebech M, ‘On the Problem of Human Dignity’ <http://mural.maynoothuniversity. ie/2374/1/ML_human_dignity.pdf> (accessed: 31.10.2020) (in English).

29. Weinreb L L, ‘A Secular Theory of Natural Law’ (2004) 72 Fordham Law Review 2287 (in English).

30. Ricoeur P, ‘Torzhestvo jazyka nad nasiliem. Germenevticheskij podhod k filosofii prava’ (1996) 4 Voprosy filosofii 27–35 (in Russian).

31. Satokhina N, ‘Vzaiemne vyznannia u pravi. Dosvid nemozhlyvoho’ (2016) 1–2 Filosofiia prava i zahalna teoriia prava 170–81 (in Ukrainian).